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President-elect Donald Trump announced that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” in his second administration.
“Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” Trump said in a statement.
The announcement of Ramaswamy and particularly Musk, who leads companies with existing, lucrative government contracts, raises immediate questions about potential conflicts of interest. It is not immediately clear how the department – which Trump said would “provide advice and guidance from outside of Government” – would operate, and whether a Congress even fully controlled by Republicans would have the appetite to approve such a massive overhaul of government spending and operations.
Trump had proposed the creation of a government efficiency commission as part of a slate of new economic plans that he unveiled in early September. At the time, he said Musk had agreed to lead it if he were to secure a return to the White House.
Trump’s statement Tuesday night quoted Musk as saying that “this will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!”
Ramaswamy separately responded on X with a slogan he often used during his presidential campaign to call for the elimination of federal agencies, writing: “SHUT IT DOWN.”
On the campaign trail, Trump pointed to his proposed government efficiency commission as a way to reduce government spending. “As the first order of business, this commission will develop an action plan to totally eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months,” he said in September. “This will save trillions of dollars.”
Ramaswamy, who previously challenged Trump in the Republican presidential primary before endorsing him in January, made reducing waste in government spending a key policy platform for his campaign.
Last year, Ramaswamy – who had promised on the campaign trail to eliminate the FBI, the Department of Education and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which would lay off thousands of federal workers in the process – released a white paper outlining a legal framework he said would allow the president to eliminate federal agencies of his choice.
Musk, for his part, said while supporting Trump on the campaign trail that he’d pitch a massive rollback of government regulations, of which he has long griped. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has also floated an assessment system that threatens layoffs to wasteful employees and proposed offering generous severance packages to laid-off government workers.
Musk first suggested Trump form a government efficiency commission and appoint him to it in an August conversation between the two hosted on X. Trump responded, “I’d love it.”
A few days later, Musk posted on X an image of himself at a podium labeled Department of Government Efficiency and D.O.G.E., the name of Musk’s favorite meme and cryptocurrency. “I am willing to serve,” he wrote.
On Tuesday, he pledged on X that such an office would post all of its actions online for transparency and teased “a leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars.”
The work of the department, Trump said in his statement, will end no later than July 4, 2026. “A smaller Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of The Declaration of Independence. I am confident they will succeed!” he said.
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Conception
The idea of a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been linked to Trump's campaign promises to cut federal spending and reduce the size of government and the size of the federal fiscal deficit.
The concept of DOGE emerged in a discussion between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, where Musk floated the idea of a department for streamlining government efficiency. Later, the suggestion was made by Trump of establishing such a department and for it to be headed by Musk.
Musk has suggested that the commission could help to cut the U.S. federal budget by up to US$2 trillion through measures such as reducing waste, abolishing redundant agencies, and downsizing the federal workforce. Ramaswamy also stated that DOGE may eliminate entire federal agencies and reduce the number of federal employees by as much as 75%. Musk has also proposed consolidating the number of federal agencies from more than 400 to fewer than 100.
Musk has described deregulation as the only path to the SpaceX Mars colonization program, and promised he will "get the government off people's back and out of their pocket".
This commission is similar to attempts before it, including President Theodore Roosevelt's Keep Commission, President Ronald Reagan's appointment of J. Peter Grace to lead the Grace Commission, and Vice President Al Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government.
Functions
Despite the name, it would not be a federal executive department, which would require an act of Congress to create, instead it will serve as an advisory body operating outside of government. According to CBS News, it may operate under the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
Vox said that the body is "unlikely to have any regulatory teeth on its own, but there's little doubt that it can have influence on the incoming administration and how it will determine its budgets".
Donald Trump said the body would help to "dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies". He also stated that Musk and Ramaswamy will work with the Office of Management and Budget to address what he called "massive waste and fraud" in government spending.
According to tweets by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the ultimate goal of DOGE is to become so efficient that it eventually eliminates its own necessity. The commission has a set expiration date of July 4, 2026, the United States Semiquincentennial (250th anniversary), which follows Ramaswamy's idea that most government projects should have clear expiration dates.
