Elon Musk says DOGE probably won’t find $2 trillion in federal budget cuts
Elon Musk says DOGE probably won’t find $2 trillion in federal budget cuts
Musk previously said his Department of Government Efficiency would be able to recommend cuts to the federal budget of “at least $2 trillion.”
Summary
Elon Musk, co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency under Donald Trump’s advisory team, revised his claim of finding $2 trillion in federal budget cuts to a “best-case outcome” of $1 trillion.
Musk’s earlier target, dismissed as unrealistic by experts, had included the entire discretionary budget of $1.7 trillion.
While Musk and co-lead Vivek Ramaswamy plan to recommend cuts, specifics remain unclear.
Experts warn savings may require targeting mandatory programs like Medicaid, potentially causing hardships.
Anyone who actually believed they would find $2 trillion was an idiot, the rest of us knew they'd just cut the things they hate, bump the subsidies that favor them and their friends, and call it a day.
The funny thing is....it's not like their voters would care if they lied. They could literally say "We cut the budget by $17 trillion by making sure the trans kids don't get surgeries!" And their voters would fucking cheer.
They wouldn't look deep enough to actually care what they cut.
So the question is why even make this announcement? I'm guessing it's a distraction from something else.
Surely it's essy to find $2tr in the Homeland Security/ military budget?
Not even there. DoD is ~$840B and DHS another sixty. Not even one trillion in the entire US security apparatus, but they were going to so easily find twice that. It was always pure nonsense.
Gasp. Lying cunt lied cuntily.
While having no fucking clue what he was talking about. More news at ten.
Is cuntily an adverb? If not, I feel like it should be.
Remember when he landed people on Mars in 2022?
Can I get a video of the before and after claims? Gotta make the presentation super simple in this day and age.
Sounds like they’re not an efficient use of government resources and should be cut
Oh? The places he's looking at actually work fairly efficiently already? Or the inefficiencies are outside their control? The inefficient sections are the places he can't go, like the DOD?
Any inefficiency likely comes from private industry bending the government over and stealing our wallet. I've been paid obscenely better as a contractor than my government counterparts, and I'm probably only seeing half of what my company charges. Entire departments are twenty contractors at a cost of $5 million per year and two actual government employees making a grand total of $60k each. Maybe double that at most by the time you include all the benefits.
But if you try to trim that, you're cutting into the profits of private industry, and we sure as fuck can't have that, can we?
And a bunch of bureaucracy in government with budgets, approvals and checks etc were put in place as cost cutting in the first place.
Or they've already had their budgets slashed so much that there's nothing left to slash. Which is pretty common unfortunately.
But those things actually help poor people. Can't have that, can we?
Wherever he cut, you can safely assume it will only hit the people at the bottom, not those at the top.
It will hit whatever annoys him, his companies and that extends to everybody who kisses his ring sufficiently.
But yes, social and worker protections probably match that criteria.
i’m actually kind of shocked he admitted this. isn’t his usual strategy to promise super unrealistic things, not deliver, and then make the same promise the next year?
Indeed, but I bet he isn't used to hide things in the public. This is a federal budget, not yet another of his corporations. I bet he knows the very best accountants but that's just different.
If he cuts anything it’ll be support for middle class and poor people and itll be jack shit, it will fuck everything up and it will be touted by clowns as a success.
If allowed, Elon will find trillions to funnel to himself and Trump's cronies however.
Oh make no mistake, his goal is to be the world's first trillionaire within the next 4-years. Why else would he so publicly be going full fascist unless he was ready to fully embrace the concept of "fuck everyone and everything ever to be" money.
Oh please, you're not even going to get $100 billion without stepping on some toes in the Military-Industrial complex, and that's going to make you some lifelong political enemies.
Oh that's not what he meant at all.
He meant slashing social security and Medicare. Obviously rich people aren't going to feel the pinch.
Can we take a moment to acknowledge a few billionaires made their own government department, and people are just rolling with it?
They're a random private company. Why are we just letting that fact slide???
Because the media is owned by that same billionaire class
No but like... Even on lemmy, even left wing streamers, even my friends just kinda laugh and go "yeah, things are fucking crazy"
It's like everyone just accepted it... Not the they like it, but that they've just accepted a billionaire has made a fake government department that is going to dictate terms to the rest of the government, and no one seems to really take a second to acknowledge that idea
$2 Trillion was more than the discretionary budget of the US. It literally couldn't be done.
Which is why it was a stupid promise and literally anyone with any expertise could tell you that. Which shows you how unserious Musk is about this.
Now that he cut the promise in half and it's still politically impossible but not literally impossible, I reiterate my request...say how you plan to do it. Give us a rough idea what programs are being cut, even the easiest 20%.
By having the conversation about the number alone, we're buying his political premise. The money is not there for no reason, these are democratically popular government programs, that's why they exist. So which popular programs are you getting rid of to save this money?
As an Ontarian I feel we are actually more than a few years from America in terms of this bullshit.
You can go back to when Rob Ford won the mayorship of Toronto talking about "stopping the gravy train". He found no gravy.
Fast forward to Doug Ford becoming premier to "stop the gravy train" of which he found no gravy. In fact he unlawfully terminated numerous contracts costing Ontarians even more money.
Short story, people who try to reduce complex economic issues into simple solutions are snake oil salesmen not to be trusted.
Unfortunately in today's media landscape it works.
How much of the budget could be reduced if we fired all military personnel and sold at auction most of out military assets?
$176 billion/year could be saved by firing all military personnel.
Ya, so, we're not going to do any of the things we promised. We're just going to try to punish our political enemies and fuck shit up while looting every last penny that we can and running away while the country burns.
If RFK is crazy because a worm ate part of his brain, it seems like Enron Musk may have had drugs that are the equivalent of 2 worms.
Musk’s earlier target, dismissed as unrealistic by experts, had included the entire discretionary budget of $1.7 trillion.
FFS! There's probably TODDLERS who know more about how the government works than Musk! 🤦
"Savings" they will find:
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any agencies that monitor, counteract or release reports on Putin and Russian activity
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agencies that regulate electric vehicle production or road safety
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Agencies that regulate space flight and aerial pollution
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The NLRB, OSHA and whichever agencies work to oppose child labor
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agencies that regulate pharmaceutical pump and dump schemes
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agencies that regulate emerald mines
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The CFPB
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agencies that monitor ethics among government employees
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agencies that regulate recreational ketamine, ritalin and cocaine use
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child protective services and agencies that intervene in spousal abuse
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anecdotes that certify or otherwise support divorce attorneys
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agencies that originate, maintain and enforce restraining orders
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agencies that track and publish flight information to enable safer travel between all of the aircraft simultaneously in the sky.
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agencies that allow for the creation, distribution and use of rape kits (yes, even though there's a backlog. You're very clever)
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Agencies that keep a database of all people with small, odd shaped penises that no longer get hard....
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Never fear rich people and corporations - Trump is still going to do another $2T tax cut regardless.
Elon is such a dumbass.
Edit: I'm sorry, *President Elon is such a dumbass.
People made a big deal about Michelle Obama missing Jimmy Carter's funeral. Why wasn't President Elon there? Hmmm. Why isn't that being covered?
I want to join truth social just to call out "president Elon"
Those two clowns couldn't find their own asses in a dark room with both hands and a flashlight.
next year they'll raise the deficit by $2T and start saying that they saved $2T off of a $4T raise to the budget
I'm shocked, SHOCKED by this revelation!
It's all going to be healthcare / social safety nets, and it's going to be dwarfed by the tax cuts Trump gives people.
of course you can't you stupid fuck.
fucking troglodyte pretends he's iron man when he can't do basic arithmetic.
Come on, give him a break. Those are some big numbers! It's not like just anybody could have figured out that 2 trillion was more than the entire 1.7 trillion discretionary budget. It takes a genius to figure out this stuff, a real genius like Elon "I'm a good dad" Musk, who is a stable genius and definitely was not an illegal immigrant at any point.
Seriously what an unexpected outcome....
The one trillion difference needs to be paid back from his salary and a potential salary claw back for this underperformance.
I think he isn't getting a salary, apart from whatever gains he reaps by removing roadblocks for his companies.
And Trump won't bring down grocery prices. I really wish Americans were smarter. It's going to be a rough ride. At least I'm not going to have to subscribe to the NYT to see the obituary that I want to.
It's because they were told they can't cut VA, SSI or Medicare, I promise.
The rich assholes always think they can just cut healthcare and retirement payouts but politicians know they will never get re-elected if it happens on their watch. The old people who rely on this shit are the only ones voting anyway.
Man who lies endlessly caught lying again. More at 7.
Ahh, his administration hasn't even officially begun and already we have the Memberberry shadow president. I think someone should have t-shirts made up.
The next 4-years are going to be.... I honestly have NFC.
You don't say...
It’ll be 2 million, and way less than the amount the DOGE department manages to embezzle itself.
Yeah, the only real "cuts" will be to regulatory agencies that get in the way of his business plans.
MF’ing d-bag backs down on his B.S.
Now that’s news!
If they go after Medicaid or Medicare it might bring more attention to how fucked up insurance is for Americans. I don't want them to be empowered to make any suggestions, but this might just bring a tense situation to a head.
That's what we said about COVID and absolutely nothing improved fundamentally.
Yeah, it is sad. I am slightly more hopeful now after the UHC CEO was killed, and a lot of normal people started talking about their bad experiences with insurance companies. I won't hold my breath for a revolutionary change, but fingers crossed.
We did this exercise as a civic learning experience in 9th year government/social studies classes. The teacher had us go through a mock (simplified) Federal budget and decide which line items to cut to achieve a "balanced budget" with debt reduction.
The problem is largely intractable for reasons that become obvious even to middleschool kids. Do you completely cut popular things like the space program? Gut entitlement spending? Massively increase taxes across all brackets? Reduce the military or infrastructure spending to laughable levels? All of those things are very unpopular but that is what it would really take to tackle the problem.
You tax the 1% until they're the 10% then shove that money into infrastructure and welfare. Then you sit back and watch the American Exceptionalism machine go brrrr again just like the 50's
The US government is not funded by taxes. Let me repeat that: THE US GOVERNMENT IS NOT FUNDED BY TAXES.
Since the USD is the defacto global currency and is backed by oil, the US can print as much money as it wants to pay it debts or fund government programs. Hence the reason for the US’ constant wars over oil resources. Got to feed the oil machine.
Taxes are used as COLLATERAL for further loans and to pay the interest on the existing government debt.
Money is created by selling bonds and again using the magic of fractional reserve banking to inflate the money supply.
The US is the only country that can pay its debts by printing its own currency.
Richest man in the world can't afford the time and expense to shave?
That scruff looks bad at all levels.
Too busy becoming the top-ranked Diablo player.
Okay, I feel like I'm going crazy here.
Can someone please acknowledge the fact that Elon Musk, as a private citizen, just created his very own government department, and people seem to be just going along with it?
The second trillion will be found when DOGE Block 3 rolls out, and Elon's gonna need ... $5 billion dollars for DOGE Block 2 and 3.
(DOGE Block 2 will find the first trillion, after DOGE Block 1 is later revised down to 750 billion)