During his three presidential campaigns, Donald Trump promised to run the federal government as though it were a business. True to his word, upon retaking office, Trump put tech billionaire Elon Musk at the head of a new group in the executive branch called the Department of Government Efficiency.
DOGE, as Musk’s initiative is known, has so far fired, laid off or received resignations from tens of thousands of federal workers and says it has discovered large sums of wasted or fraudulently spent tax dollars. But even its questionable claim of saving US$65 billion is less than 1% of the $6.75 trillion the U.S. spent in the 2024 fiscal year, and a tiny fraction of the nation’s cumulative debt of $36 trillion. Because Musk’s operation has not been formalized by Congress, DOGE’s indiscriminate cuts also raise troubling constitutional questions and may be illegal.
