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We found the $2 trillion

by David Dayen
How Democrats should deal with DOGE has become a top-level conversation. One school of thought calls out Musk’s game of using spending cuts to make room for their own tax cuts. Others draw red lines on cherished, popular programs like Social Security & Medicare or highlight serial conflicts of interest. Still others counsel constructive engagement. The Musk/DOGE plan is one of self-enrichment & outward punishment. A different path is needed!
https://prospect.org/economy/2025-01-27-we-found-the-2-trillion-elon-musk-doge/?vgo_ee=GG6ob%2BbCwhSOn8QUIpJLr23zxK8rsRh1OGo6yEWFpNseKko%3D%3Ah2I%2B6Zjkikw2c%2BDktK%2BCgI0%2B2q3rs5vX

We Found the $2 Trillion

Elon Musk wants to cut government spending. But the waste in the system goes to elites like him. Here’s a better way to bring down deficits.

by David Dayen

January 27, 2025
[This article published on January 27, 2025 is available on the Internet, https://prospect.org/economy/2025-01-27-we-found-the-2-trillion-elon-musk-doge/?vgo_ee=GG6ob%2BbCwhSOn8QUIpJLr23zxK8rsRh1OGo6yEWFpNseKko%3D%3Ah2I%2B6Zjkikw2c%2BDktK%2BCgI0%2B2q3rs5vX.]

This article appears in the February 2025 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here.

Illustrations by Hugh D’Andrade

Sometime between the 2024 election and the 2025 inauguration, Americans discovered that they had actually voted for Elon Musk for president. Since the election, Donald Trump has faded into the background, while center stage has been taken by the South African–born billionaire with the Twitter addiction of an adolescent, whose frenetic posts are often being treated like official government statements.

Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy were named co-chairs of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which sounds like a federal agency (and was actually tucked into an existing White House department) but is actually an outside agitator, tasked with devising recommendations to reduce the size and scope of government. During the campaign, Musk said he was confident he could remove $2 trillion in unnecessary waste from the budget. If he meant annually, that’s nearly one-third of total federal expenditures.

More from David Dayen

Skepticism is heavily warranted. Presidents going back to Ronald Reagan have impaneled blue-ribbon commissions to hack away at deficits, with minimal success. Nongovernmental advisers carry no formal power, and Congress holds the purse strings tightly. “One person’s waste is another person’s vital congressional jobs program,” said Michael Linden, a former official with the White House Office of Management and Budget.

There are signals that DOGE will be even more useless than its predecessors, with early proposals consisting primarily of things that sound funny but serve valuable functions, or things that are far too minuscule to make a meaningful dent in the budget. Hilariously, Musk gave up on his $2 trillion goal before the Trump presidency even started, calling the number a “best-case outcome” in an interview on his social media site and declining to identify specific cuts. And he also gave up Ramaswamy, who was unceremoniously dumped before the project ever got started.

Many Republicans, however, are dead serious about slashing social spending and obliterating the administrative state. House leaders have been passing around a menu of $5.7 trillion in cuts over ten years, including a large chunk from health care and food assistance for the poor. Musk’s following among the rank and file could provide ballast for these long-held conservative wishes, while catering to his own pocketbook in the process.

How Democrats should deal with DOGE has become a top-level conversation. One school of thought argues for calling out Musk’s game of using spending cuts to make room for their own tax cuts. Others draw red lines on cherished, popular programs like Social Security and Medicare, or highlight serial conflicts of interest. Still others counsel constructive engagement.

The Musk/DOGE plan is one of self-enrichment and outward punishment. Someone should outline a different path...
by Taylor at VRIC
Collapse of the Dollar: A Simple Breakdown of a Complex Crisis
1/29 - 16 min
https://youtu.be/O2mMASKka0g?t=785
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