The Tesla CEO said DOGE only works in an advisory role.
Tesla CEO and presidential adviser Elon Musk said the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has no power to initiate major government spending cuts and that Congress needs to act.
“I am certainly an adviser. I don’t have formal power, and that’s it. The president can choose to accept my advice or not. And that’s how it goes,” he said during remarks at an economic forum in Qatar on Tuesday.
Musk reiterated that DOGE has limited power to make cuts and that it merely works in an advisory capacity.
“We’re not the dictators of the government. We are the advisers. And so we can advise, and the progress we’ve made thus far, I think, is incredible,” the Tesla CEO told the forum.
“The DOGE team has done incredible work, but the magnitude of the savings is proportionate to the support we get from Congress and from the executive branch of the government in general.”
So far, DOGE, as of this week, has cut $170 billion in government spending, according to its website. Previously, Musk had said he wanted to slash trillions of dollars in spending by the time DOGE is scheduled to end on July 4, 2026, although he revised his own projections in January before the Trump administration took office.
Referencing the original $2 trillion original cost-cutting goal, Musk said on Tuesday that other branches of the government may not want that and “are, to some degree, opposed to that level of cost savings.”
He said that DOGE’s work has gone well so far.
“I don’t think any advisory group has done better in the history of advisory groups for the government,” he said.
nce it was established in January by President Donald Trump, DOGE has moved from agency to agency and recommended cuts to various programs and staffing. However, some of the task force’s progress has been stymied by federal courts, with some judges issuing orders blocking its access to multiple agencies such as the Treasury Department, Social Security Administration, and others.
