Last week, Donald Trump announced the creation of the Ministry of Government Effectivenesswhich promises to “dismantle government bureaucracy, reduce excessive regulations, cut wasteful spending, and restructure federal agencies.” And to lead the new cost-cutting department, Trump tapped the businessman he calls the world’s “biggest cutter”: Elon Musk.

If you’re considering taking a chainsaw to the federal government, Musk seems perfectly suited for the job. HAS Twitter, it eliminated a staggering 80% of staff, or more than 6,000 people. HAS Teslahe cut 10% of the workforce, saying the company needed to be “absolutely uncompromising on cutting staff and costs.” He also laid off 10% of employees Spaceinsisting on the fact that its teams must be dynamic and agile. Cutting, for Musk, is usually job #1.

For the most part, Musk’s slash-and-burn tactics have paid off. Twitter usage, according to Musk, is at an all-time high. Tesla’s stock is up 28% over the past year. And SpaceX – now valued at $250 billion – retrieves rockets from the sky with giant chopsticks. In the business world, fewer workers often translate to higher profits.

The question is: Can the cost-cutting tactics Musk employs in the private sector help reduce waste and bloat in the federal government? Musk and his DOGE co-chairman, the biotech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamysaid they were looking to hire “very high IQ small government revolutionaries” to help deliver $2 trillion in cuts — about a third of all federal spending — and shrink the federal workforce up to 75%. It’s a dream that has eluded every Republican administration since Ronald Reagan — and it’s a dream that may prove elusive even for Musk, the man now billed as America’s leading cost-reducer.

There is certainly no shortage of waste and inefficiency within the federal government, which is calling for streamlining. In 2019, the Department of Defense paid more than $22 million for lobster tails. In 2020, the IRS sent $1.4 billion in tax refunds to deceased Americans. Millions of square feet in federal buildings remain unoccupied.

In theory, a bold exterior figure like Musk might be the very thing needed to shrink an operation as large and intractable as the federal government. Large organizations need a force of “creative destruction” to change, says Michael Morris, a professor at Columbia Business School. “Things don’t disappear on their own. If you want to innovate, you need someone who is willing to deliberately dismantle things.” And when a new number causes a massive shock to the system – whether at the government or private level – “it often backfires,” Morris says.. “There is often very fierce and active resistance to change.”

Even if Musk had the right idea, he’s not sure he could implement them.
Andy Wu, associate professor at Harvard Business School

As CEOMusk has the latitude to overcome this resistance and overhaul corporate culture. But things are going to be different with DOGE. Despite its “department” image, the new body will function only in an advisory capacity: Congress holds ultimate responsibility for authorizing spending and elimination of agencies. Government, by design, is an intensely collaborative process, intended to bring out the competing needs of different stakeholders. Musk, on the other hand, is used to ruling by decree.

“Musk certainly has considerable control over his businesses that he won’t have in the federal government environment, where we have checks and balances,” says Andy Wu, associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School . “Even if Musk had the right idea, it’s not clear he could implement them.”

The federal government is infamous for clinging to past practices, even when they no longer make sense. Linda Bilmes, a lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, cites the continuous minting of the penny, each of which costs three cents to produce. Last year, in an economy that has largely moved away from cash, the government spent $179 million on coins. Yet calls made to get rid of the penny have not reached a single red cent.

“The danger would be that Elon Musk somehow thinks he’s the first person to ever consider cutting costs in government,” Bilmes says. “A lot of people who are familiar with government have come up with a lot of good ideas. The potential for utility would be if he could take already reasonably good ideas and help them be implemented.”

THE Government Accountability Office and inspectors general have already recommended various potential targets. They’re not always flashy: This year, the GAO recommended that agencies use predictive models to plan maintenance, saying they could save $100 million or more. He also urged the IRS to focus on collecting taxes owed by individual property owners, which could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. If the government implemented all of its 5,480 suggestions, the GAO estimates, it would “produce measurable financial benefits” of up to $208 billion.

But so far, Musk has seemed more interested in the kind of flashy, small-bore proposals that attract clicks to X. He’s made a habit of sharing what he sees as examples of waste – ranging from $3 million spent on drug research to sightings of “hamsters”. fight on steroids” to a $20,000 grant that funded drag shows in Ecuador – and crowdsourcing them to the platform. This type of article could spark outrage Fox Newsbut eliminating them will do little to reduce the federal government’s $6,200,000,000,000 annual spending.

Then there is the policy of budget cuts. The last time Republicans managed to slow public spending, under Ronald Reaganthey made deep cuts to areas of government that proved unpopular, including welfare programs, student loans, and job training. Musk may be considering many areas he would like to cut, but a wide range of groups will inevitably oppose cuts to programs they view as essential. When it comes to federal spending, one person’s trash is another person’s bread and butter.

“People support the idea of ​​improving the way government delivers services,” says Joel Friedman, senior vice president for federal fiscal policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank. “I think people would take a different view if you ended up destroying the programs that they depend on and care about.” Efficiency always seems like a good thing, until it involves something you love.

Beyond the question of where to cut, Musk will face increased scrutiny Why it targets certain areas of government. His role at DOGE presents many risks of conflicts of interest. SpaceX, for example, has received nearly $20 billion in federal contracts since 2008, and Musk has sharply criticized the Federal Aviation Administration as an obstacle to launching his powerful system. Spacecraft. And its massive investments in electric vehicles and social media depend on all kinds of federal spending and oversight. When it comes to how government interacts with the market, the world’s richest man inherently has a big stake in the game. Musk’s companies did not respond to requests for comment. But Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for Trump’s transition team, said it plans to ensure that those involved in DOGE “comply with all legal guidelines related to conflicts of interest.”

These concerns also touch on the broader question of what Trump and his allies hope to accomplish by reducing the size of government. Calls for reducing “inefficiency” and “red tape” have long been a euphemism for Republicans eager to reduce or eliminate federal oversight on everything from industrial pollution to aviation safety. Less government does not necessarily mean better government, and many federal agencies remain so understaffed and underfunded, from the IRS to the Veterans Administration, that they are unable to perform even their most basic functions. more basic. The Republican Party’s goal of cutting spending, as a major Reagan ally once acknowledged, is to shrink government to a size where conservatives can “drag it into the bathroom and drown it.” in the bathtub.” On Friday, Ramaswamy directly linked DOGE to the Reagan-era dream of smaller government, promising that the new agency would finish its work by July 4, 2026 – the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

And even when the Conservatives succeeded in cutting costs, it did nothing to slow the pace of public spending. Reagan slashed $22 billion from welfare programs during his first two years in office — savings that were more than offset by his tax cuts and military spending, which nearly tripled the national debt. And in 1981, when a deep recession hit, the removal of the safety net left millions of Americans mired in poverty with even fewer resources to survive.

It is also It’s important to remember that Musk did more than shrink the size of X — he also used the platform to elevate far-right talking points and unfounded conspiracy theories. In short, he reshaped it to serve his own political purposes, making it both nastier and simpler. It remains to be seen whether Musk will do the same with DOGE. There are plenty of places where Uncle Sam could spend America’s hard-earned tax dollars more wisely. But there are also plenty of places where the man Trump’s family now calls “Uncle” Elon could deploy what DOGE calls “unglamorous cost-cutting” to bend the federal government to his own financial needs.

Musk acknowledged that Americans will feel “hardship” because of the cuts he wants to see implemented. But that doesn’t mean he won’t be able to get more performance out of fewer resources, as he has done in his own companies. When Musk downsized Twitter, critics predicted the app would collapse without enough staff to maintain it. Two years later, after some initial problems, the system works much as before, at a much lower cost. Doubting Musk, even when he appears to be acting in the extreme, can be a fool’s game.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, covering the technology industry. She writes about the biggest companies and technology trends.