Trump tapped Musk to co-lead the “Department of Government Efficiency.” What the heck is that?

President-elect Donald Trump introduced on Tuesday that two of his most vocal supporters, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the “Division of Authorities Effectivity.”

“Collectively, these two fantastic People will pave the way in which for my Administration to dismantle Authorities Paperwork, slash extra rules, lower wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Companies,” Trump mentioned. “It would grow to be, doubtlessly, ‘The Manhattan Undertaking’ of our time.”

When you’re questioning why you’ve by no means heard of this division earlier than, it’s as a result of it doesn’t exist. Regardless of the deceptive identify — govt departments can solely be established by Congress — Trump merely seems to be forming a brand new presidential advisory fee or activity drive to supply steerage.

So at first look, this fee might sound completely unserious. Its acronym, “DOGE,” is an obvious homage to the meme cryptocurrency that Musk typically promotes, and the coin’s worth surged after Trump made the announcement. It’s additionally considerably ironic {that a} fee on the lookout for authorities inefficiency and waste requires not one however two co-chairs.

However the undertaking isn’t solely an inside joke, it’s additionally a part of Trump’s present plan to decimate the federal workforce. His marketing campaign referred to as for relocating authorities staff out of Washington, DC, and making important cuts to civil service jobs — an try and dismantle what Trump and his allies name the “deep state,” despite the fact that these jobs are sometimes essential to maintain the federal packages operating — and “DOGE” reveals that he’s a minimum of beginning to execute that plan.

Trump didn’t acknowledge that the so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity is new, nor did he actually clarify what it should appear like. He solely supplied imprecise particulars, like how the fee would “present recommendation and steerage from outdoors of Authorities, and can associate with the White Home and Workplace of Administration & Funds to drive massive scale structural reform.” The fee, in different phrases, is unlikely to have any regulatory tooth by itself, however there’s little doubt that it may well have affect on the incoming administration and the way it will decide its budgets.

What Musk and Ramaswamy need, and why it’s harmful

Whereas it’s nonetheless unclear what this fee will appear like or how large will probably be, there’s loads of motive to take the risk that it poses significantly. On the marketing campaign path, Musk, who served as a Trump surrogate, promised to search out $2 trillion that might be eradicated from the federal authorities’s $6.75 trillion finances. And Ramaswamy, who ran in opposition to Trump within the Republican primaries however later campaigned for him, has proposed shedding 75 % of the federal workforce and abolishing companies just like the FBI, IRS, and the Division of Training.

The dimensions of these cuts could be catastrophic. In October, Musk himself mentioned his plan to slash the federal finances would trigger financial turmoil, trigger markets to crash, and “essentially contain some non permanent hardship.” Specialists have additionally mentioned Musk’s $2 trillion determine is greater than merely aspirational — it’s virtually unimaginable to search out that a lot cash to chop with out placing social packages on the chopping board.

“You may’t get to cuts of the dimensions they’ve been throwing round with out gutting issues folks actually care about and depend on,” Sharon Parrott, president of the Heart on Funds and Coverage Priorities, mentioned by e mail.

As my colleague Eric Levitz wrote, if Trump doesn’t lower Social Safety, Medicare, or protection spending, he would want to chop different authorities packages by as much as 80 %:

That will contain gutting all social providers for low-income People, meals inspections, air security, medical health insurance subsidies, and infrastructure investments, amongst numerous different issues.

The fee, which Trump mentioned will conclude its work inside two years, can be riddled with conflicts of curiosity. Musk’s firm SpaceX, for instance, has greater than $10 billion in authorities contracts, and companies like NASA are already overly depending on it. The federal authorities has additionally been investigating and submitting lawsuits in opposition to Musk’s corporations, and Musk himself has typically complained about his corporations dealing with an excessive amount of authorities oversight. Now, Musk can be advising the subsequent president on which companies he ought to attempt to get rid of.

The “Division of Authorities Effectivity” isn’t essentially a brand new thought

Politicians at all times promise to finish authorities waste, and a frequent goal is the civil service. Underneath the Clinton administration, for instance, Vice President Al Gore led the Nationwide Partnership for Reinventing Authorities, an initiative geared toward streamlining the federal paperwork by eliminating pointless jobs and rolling again wasteful spending. Whereas the undertaking succeeded in some respects, it additionally created unhealthy outcomes. The discount within the federal workforce wasn’t particularly properly focused, and because of this, folks with crucial and particular expertise left, which made it more durable for the federal government to really work higher, as promised.

President Ronald Reagan — who in his inaugural tackle mentioned, “Authorities is just not the answer to our downside; authorities is the issue,” — additionally promised an enormous scaling again of the federal authorities’s attain. He had plans to abolish main authorities companies, just like the Training and Power Departments, and imposed a hiring freeze on the primary day of his administration. However Reagan’s plan to scale back the federal authorities’s footprint failed, and by the point he left workplace, there have been extra folks employed by the federal authorities than when he began.

Trump’s plan to dramatically cut back authorities spending and downsize the federal workforce will probably run into related hurdles. A part of the explanation Musk and Ramaswamy may need a tough time discovering legitimately wasteful spending is as a result of the federal workforce hasn’t grown all that a lot. The federal authorities employs about 3 million full-time staff — roughly the identical as within the late Sixties. And whereas that quantity is way larger (about 10 million) whenever you take contractors into consideration, that additionally hasn’t modified a lot because the Nineteen Eighties, principally ebbing and flowing however not exponentially growing.

The newly created fee is very unlikely to reach discovering important sources of waste — a minimum of nowhere close to $2 trillion — as a result of it’s in all probability not going to go after areas of spending that truly want higher accounting, just like the Pentagon, which has failed its audit six years in a row. However that doesn’t imply the fee received’t advocate any cuts, and the size that Musk and Ramaswamy are hoping for will virtually actually have a destructive influence on the economic system.

So whereas the announcement of the fee may need excited some Republicans and meme-coin buyers, they need to know that if this fee succeeds, there may be a recession on the opposite aspect.