Elon Musk and DOGE: What You Need to Know About Department of Government Efficiency

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new U.S. government initiative aimed at lowering the federal budget deficit.

The initiative, called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and with an acronym identical to the ticker of Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, will “eliminate excessive regulation, reduce wasteful spending and restructure federal agencies,” according to the president-elect Donald. Trump.

However, some details about the project remain unclear. Here’s everything we know so far about DOGE.

What is DOGE?

DOGE is an upcoming US government initiative that Elon Musk first tweeted about last August.

While the project initially appeared to be a joke – created as a joke, and unsurprisingly driving up the price of Dogecoin whenever it was mentioned by Musk – Trump threw his support behind DOGE’s attempt to cut government spending, suggesting that the once fictional department actually a real life US government affiliated entity.

“Together, (Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy) will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, cut redundant regulations, reduce wasteful spending and restructure federal agencies – essential to the ‘Save America’ movement,” Trump said in a speech on Tuesday. statement.

The project will be active until “no later than July 4, 2026,” Trump said; which is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Notably, DOGE is not an official U.S. government department in the traditional sense of the word, as only Congress — and not the president — can authorize the creation of new federal government departments, according to the U.S. Congress website.

Rather, Musk’s meme-linked brainchild will exist “outside” the government system, Trump said. That means DOGE will likely receive no government funding. It also means that the project’s ability to directly control the budgets of US government agencies will be minimal, although DOGE’s directives could be implemented by Trump’s supporters in Congress.

Who will lead DOGE?

Billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will take charge of the Department of Government Efficiency. Neither executive will receive compensation for their work, according to a Twitter message Musk published on Thursday.

Musk is, of course, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and the owner of Twitter (aka X). Ramaswamy is an entrepreneur and onetime Republican presidential hopeful who dropped out of the race during the primaries and threw his support behind Trump.

The initiative will also be staffed for now by a number of “small government revolutionaries with super-high IQs who are willing to work 80+ hours a week on unglamorous cost savings,” according to the department’s official notice Thursday. It is not yet known how many workers will be hired to staff the project, but the gigs will be unpaid, Elon Musk tweeted this week.

Neither Ramaswamy nor Musk immediately responded Declutter request for comment.

What is DOGE actually going to do?

DOGE’s mandate is to streamline the U.S. government by issuing reports that provide advice and guidance on reducing government regulations and spending, Trump said.

“Your money is being wasted, and the government’s Department of Efficiency is going to fix that. We are going to take the government out of your pockets,” Musk said in October at a rally for Trump at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

However, the quasi-department’s billionaire leaders have made varying statements about the extent to which U.S. federal government spending should be cut.

Musk has proposed cutting federal spending by $2 million – a third of the US federal government’s entire budget. Meanwhile, Ramaswamy has said he wants to cut as much as 75% of the U.S. federal workforce, although the budget implications of such a cut are unclear.

Despite these differences, DOGE leaders appear to be in agreement on phasing out scores from employees of the federal government and several U.S. agencies, such as the Department of Education and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), to reduce costs, according to recent public comments from Ramaswamy and Musk.

“The scale of waste (government funds) is beyond what the public could ever imagine,” Musk tweeted on Thursday, referring to US federal government spending, which will surpass $6 trillion in 2023.

Musk has said that DOGE will hold weekly livestreams to share updates on their progress.

Why is it called DOGE?

The faux department’s initialism, DOGE, appears to be a cheeky reference to the ticker for Dogecoin (DOGE), a high-market-cap meme coin beloved by Elon Musk. That link was reinforced by an official T-shirt sold by Trump featuring President-elect Musk and a Shiba Inu dog.

The meme, famous for its Shiba Inu mascot, was invented in 2013 by a pair of software engineers. Musk has said he owns a “bunch” of Dogecoin, and he has routinely tweeted and spoken about the coin in recent years. He even referred to himself as the “Dogefather” in 2021 and mentioned the coin while hosting Saturday evening live.

Dogecoin’s value rose during Musk’s support of Trump on the campaign trail, then skyrocketed after Trump’s victory and amid DOGE’s official leadership announcement. The coin reached its highest price in three years last week and has also caused other notable meme coins to rise in value.

Edited by Andrew Hayward