Elon Musk is already backing away from DOGE’s $2 trillion budget cut goals

Since announcing the Department of Government Efficiency (or DOGE), Elon Musk has claimed that he will use the organization to attack and dismantle large parts of the federal bureaucracy. However, Musk is already going back on his promises, claiming that his previously stated goal — a $2 trillion spending cut from the federal budget — will likely not be achieved.

“I think if we try to get $2 trillion, we have a good chance of getting one,” Musk said. During a recent live chat on his platform X. He added that removing $2 trillion was “like the best outcome.”

Those familiar with the federal budget process already noted that Musk’s goal seemed fanciful, if not impossible. Indeed, the largest items in the federal budget – Social Security, health care, and defense spending – all constitute a third political track, so none of them are easy to cut. “A comprehensive look at the federal budget reveals that it basically consists of two things — the military, with a health and social insurance program attached to it,” said Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post. Previously written.

Of course, the plan may be to cut popular welfare programs, although that would be political suicide if that were the case. To be sure, the right-wing libertarian organizations behind Trump are focused on cutting government benefits for Americans, which they describe as government “waste.” Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute, recently He told the Utah newspaper That DOGE represents “a welcome opportunity, to say the least, to highlight some areas where the federal government should be reduced and where federal government interference in our lives can be rolled back.”

To Norristh, it appears that government “interference” occurs when the Social Security Administration sends you a check in the mail. Cato recently published a report proposing to “raise the Social Security eligibility age by three years, reduce the size of Social Security’s inflation adjustments, cut Medicare spending by a third, and allow enrollees to spend Medicare funds themselves.” Sahara news reports. Musk The possibility was similarly raised Trump has refused to cut mandatory programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, even though these programs are very popular among Trump’s base. Trump also proposed cutting taxes on Social Security payments, which would hasten the program’s financial ruin.

Musk also said he would like to see DOGE “delete” several regulatory agencies, despite criticism I noticed that this would be difficultIf not impossible. In general, Musk’s targets for deletion may be agencies that investigated his companies. Musk’s companies have been investigated by a variety of agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Justice, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and others.

This regulatory scrutiny may be well placed, as Musk’s companies have been known to court controversy. Case in point, Tesla executives this week It agreed to pay nearly $1 billion to settle claims that they had previously overpaid themselves with stock options worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The legal case stemmed from a 2020 lawsuit filed by the police and fire retirement system in the city of Detroit, which alleged that Tesla executives’ compensation package was completely unrestrained by normal compensation practices. Reuters notesFor example, CEO Robyn Denholm received up to $280 million through her compensation package.