Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy were officially appointed the co-leads of President-elect Donald Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) last week, and on Wednesday, the two men spelled out their plans for the advisory group in a long article in The Wall Street Journal.
Musk and Ramaswamy say they will “serve as outside volunteers” making recommendations that allow the Trump administration to “cut the federal government down to size.” Their primary focus is on cutting down federal agencies, which they view as wasteful and “antidemocratic.”
“Most legal edicts aren’t laws enacted by Congress but ‘rules and regulations’ promulgated by unelected bureaucrats,” write the two unelected men who have been tasked with cutting trillions from the federal budget and rewriting government operations.
Musk and Ramaswamy say they’ll hire “a lean team of small-government crusaders” to work with the Trump administration and the White House Office of Management and Budget. Their primary lever for change will be executive action leaning on two recent Supreme Court rulings — West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency and Loper Bright v. Raimondo (which overturned the Chevron doctrine) — which “suggest that a plethora of current federal regulations exceed the authority Congress has granted under the law.”
Here is how DOGE will make its recommendations for what Trump should put pause on — a process that will be aided vaguely by “advanced technology:”
DOGE will work with legal experts embedded in government agencies, aided by advanced technology, to apply these rulings to federal regulations enacted by such agencies. DOGE will present this list of regulations to President Trump, who can, by executive action, immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission. This would liberate individuals and businesses from illicit regulations never passed by Congress and stimulate the U.S. economy.
As a result, Musk and Ramaswamy foresee Trump cutting “thousands” of federal regulations and say that these cuts will allow for “mass head-count reductions” of government employees. DOGE will try to determine the “minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions.” This will almost certainly hobble many government agencies, which enforce everything from environmental protections to healthcare standards.
Musk and Ramaswamy also suggest that Trump could impose rules like requiring federal employees to return to the office five days per week, which they say could bring “voluntary terminations” they would welcome. “If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home.”
In the article, Musk and Ramaswamy list a few federal expenditures that seem to be on the chopping block, including “$535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting” and “$1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood.”
Musk and Ramaswamy aim to “eliminate the need” for DOGE’s existence by July 4th, 2026.
