‘Trump has enormous power in the budget,’ economist and fiscal expert Chris Edwards says.
As entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy trek to Washington to meet with GOP lawmakers this week, they have an even longer road ahead of them to achieve their goals of enacting major cuts to government budgets.
The incoming Trump administration has set itself an ambitious goal through the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which will be headed by Musk and Ramaswamy, of slashing federal budgets and even eliminating an agency or two.
In a Nov. 20 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Musk and Ramaswamy stated that DOGE’s work would focus on cutting regulations, downsizing the federal workforce, and reducing the federal budget. They called for a “lean team of small-government crusaders” to join them, seeking volunteers who would work 80 hours a week without pay.
There has been an enthusiastic response.
“I’ve been blown away by the talent of individuals that have reached out,” Anson Frericks, a longtime friend and co-founder of Strive Asset Management with Ramaswamy, told The Epoch Times. Frericks said that many people have contacted him in an effort to connect with Ramaswamy.
“It’s been people that have been former CEOs, former entrepreneurs, that have exited their companies and that don’t need the money, but they’re very committed to the idea of a smaller government, and they would be part of the group,” Frericks said.
Musk stated at an October Trump rally that he intends to cut $2 trillion from what is currently $6.75 trillion in annual federal spending. And Ramaswamy said in a Nov. 17 Fox News interview that there would be “mass reductions” in the federal workforce and that some agencies would “be deleted outright.”
Congressional Support and Limitations
GOP lawmakers appear to be receiving this less-is-more message positively.
House Speaker Mike Johnson posted on social media platform X that on Dec. 5 he will host Musk and Ramaswamy “to discuss major reform ideas to achieve regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions, and cost savings” and “revive the principle of limited government.”
But the DOGE team, for all its enthusiasm, has many hurdles in its way.
