Donald Trump on Tuesday announced that billionaire Elon Musk and failed presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will play a role in his incoming administration — and his plan is equal parts cockamamie and conflicted, with all sorts of problems and potential roadblocks.
So let’s count the ways, starting with the name. In Trump’s announcement, Musk and Ramaswamy are set to co-chair the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE. That abbreviation is the first hint that this project exists at least in part to serve Musk and his cronies. “DOGE” appears to be a reference to the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which has long benefitted from Musk’s support, so this new government-adjacent group doubles as a promotion for a Musk-adjacent product. The value of Dogecoin — along with many cryptocurrencies — had already spiked in the aftermath of Trump’s election win.
Trump’s announcement refers to Musk and Ramaswamy as “two wonderful Americans” who “will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.”
Musk is quoted in the announcement as saying this “department” will send “shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!” That lines up pretty well with the “hardship” he told Americans to expect if Trump was elected. Musk has openly called for cutting a third of government spending — a plan that, as executed by Argentina’s Trump-friendly strongman Javier Milei, caused the poverty rate to reach 50% in the ensuing months. Even some conservatives have said Musk’s plans to take a chainsaw to government spending are absurd.
Ramaswamy’s ideas are even more extreme: As a presidential candidate, he called for cutting 75% of the federal workforce, which would “unravel significant parts of the civil service and disrupt government services that are central to the operation of modern American society, including law enforcement, background checks for firearm purchases, student financial aid and special education programs,” according to The New York Times.
So this group, explicitly focused on “efficiency,” involves two people doing the same job. And neither of them have any experience running a government of any size. Although both are massive beneficiaries of government spending (Ramaswamy’s enrichment has mostly come via local governments, notably), they will advise Trump on who does and doesn’t deserve to receive government funding. Sounds like an obvious conflict of interest. Except that Trump’s statement says this “department” won’t actually be part of the government, which would seem to leave the door open to Musk and Ramaswamy remaining at the head of their companies while steering the GOP’s administrative policy. According to the announcement: To drive this kind of drastic change, the Department of Government Efficiency will provide advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before.
So Trump seems to want this quasi-governmental group to have direct influence on his administration’s policymaking. Keep in mind this is the leader of the same Republican Party that complains about “unelected bureaucrats” wielding political influence. But now the president-elect is planning to give unelected, nongovernmental ideologues the power to shape his policy agenda. Practically speaking, it’s unclear what kind of power this “department” will have, sitting “outside of government.” But it’s troubling that Trump is willing to reward people like Musk and Ramaswamy with this kind of influence.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. Recommended
