In abundance by President Trump to make the government more efficient, the technological entrepreneur Illon Musk targeted full agencies to close, control the payment systems, topple professional civil staff, and pressure employees to retire early.
Although the questions revolve around whether his actions are legal, Mr. Musk’s strike on the federal bureaucracy raises a financial mystery: What do all these procedures actually mean regarding the federal budget and national debt? How do they plan the president’s budget agenda to reduce the taxes that Republicans work in Congress to achieve?
Mr. Musk claims that he discovered a mountain of waste and fraud in spending and that his efforts to achieve bureaucracy will reduce the financial deficit, which amounted to $ 1.8 trillion in 2024. On Wednesday, he wrote on X, the social media platform he ownsThis federal spending fraud is “closer to 10 % of payments, such as $ 700 billion per year. Explicit waste is not less than 15 %, so a trillion dollars+ another dollar. Anyone working in the government knows this.” He did not provide any evidence of his allegations. He previously promised that he could reduce $ 1 trillion to $ 2 trillion of annual spending of the federal budget about $ 6.8 trillion.
Why did we write this
Elon Musk’s disruption to the entire federal agencies, even if it succeeds, will leave the largest federal deficit without touching. This is the difficult mathematics of America’s financial responsibility.
On Thursday, a federal judge prepared the Trump administration’s acquisition offer, which is part of Mr. Musk’s campaign to reduce the federal workforce, pending a hearing on the legitimacy of the offer. The White House estimated that up to 10 % of employees will accept the offer.
Supporters of Mr. Trump, who was steeped in his speech about Washington elite conspiracy to waste taxpayer money on liberal causes, received Mr. Musk as a hero to reduce costs. Its clock updates on what the Ministry of Governmental efficiency (DOGE) find in places such as the United States Agency for International Development (the United States Agency for International Development) by MUSK followers as evidence of genius.
Not so quickly, the veteran deficit monitors in Washington are less. Even if Mr. Musk finds new ways to reduce waste from the federal budget-which is great if it does not add alleged savings since Assad’s share of government spending continued on social security and medical insurance programs, along with defense and debt service. The road to reducing the deficit across Congress, which has made more than two decades over difficult political options about increasing national debt.
“There is definitely a waste, fraud and abuse with a budget of 6 trillion dollars. Reducing mandatory spending or tax lifting,” says Thomas Kan, a democratic position as the director of the House of Representatives Budget Committee from 1997 and 2016.
The government “needs cleaning”, as it allows. “But if the goal is … reducing the deficit, it aims to the wrong goal.”
Mr. Musk’s efforts to highlight federal spending may be useful but not even further to address the deficit, Kevin Koussar, an older colleague at the Conservative American Projects Institute, who studies Congress. “It is good and arrogant to take a look at various federal expenses and ask,” Is this really logical? “At $ 36 trillion.
Difficult mathematics from reducing deficit
Mr. Trump pledged to extend the tax cuts he signed in 2017, which means Interrogating $ 5 trillion in revenue For 10 years, according to the Congress budget office. He also has He called for other tax cutsLike on oblique income. During his campaign, he promised to protect social security and medical care, the two largest federal programs, and he called on Congress to find more money for the army and to enforce immigration, including employing more agents.
Thursday , Mr. Trump met with Republicans in Congress To discuss what is likely that the reconciliation bill was passed on party lines. So far, Mr. Trump has not suggested any spending cuts to compensate for revenue costs, Not to mention reducing the size of the deficitRobert Pixby, CEO of the Concorde Coalition, a group of two parties calls for debt reducing. Possible items include the medical cutting block, food stamps and other social programs.
Mr. Bixby, as an intellectual experience, says that Congress can reduce all estimated spending, including defense, to zero, and eliminate large areas of the federal government. This still does not close the deficit because it will not end the payments allocated to social programs and benefits on public debt. The efforts of Mr. Musk to transfer the bureaucracy and the waste root are sufficient. “Mathematics is mathematics. We all have to realize the size [fiscal] gap.”
“People throw their hands due to the size of the federal government, and the debts frustrate people. There is a feeling that we need to be disabled. But even the standard cannot change mathematics,” he added.
How many “waste”?
Waste in public spending personal; What conservatives consider may be programs estimated by progressive, and vice versa. There is more consensus on fraud and ill -treatment. In 2023, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) set about $ 236 billion in “improper payments” by the federal government, which is formed by Medicare and Medicaid more than $ 100 billion. Mr. Musk team An analysis of the payment system of $ 1.5 trillion per year began at the Ministry of Health and Humanitarian Services for these programsThe Wall Street Journal reported.
The Government Accounting Office estimates that the improper payments that rose during the epidemic were approved by relief packages by Republicans and Democrats money outside the door. Between 2019 and 2021, these payments rose from $ 175 billion to 281 billion dollars, before decline. For example, About 8 % of the loans provided under the salary protection program Perhaps it was fraudulent. Small business loans and unemployment claims also suffered from fraud. (However, economists note that the speed of payments helped the US economy to apostasy much faster than peer countries and the development of tax revenues as a result.)
The dismantling of Mr. Musk from the American Agency for International Development is another interface of the Wajj. Mr. Trump’s support for the closure of an agency says it is run by “Radical Left Lunner”, but it is not clear whether the agency’s budget can be redirected or reduced without the approval of Congress.
Mr. Kan, who is now a teaching staff at the American University, says that going to the external match is a good policy because it is not common for voters. Voters also imagine that there are great savings that you must get: The polls indicate that the Americans believe in about a quarter of the budget He goes to external aid. In fact, this is less than 1 %, or about 40 billion dollars in 2024. ”In Piaria, this is a lot of money. But in terms of annual deficit [nearly] “2 trillion dollars is trivial,” says Mr. Khan.
The audience wants more than efficiency
In a post on X, Jessica Riedl, a long -standing hawk at the Manhattan Conservative Institute, referred to the blind spots in Dog’s focus on such discounts. Mrs. Ridel, formerly Brian Ridel, The Republicans were concerned to buy in the noise of Mr. Musk. She wrote: “Do not be proud of the presence of the voucher at the same time that you buy $ 250,000 Ferrari,” she added, “You can not reduce the deficit significantly by cutting waste, launching bureaucrats, cleaning migrants, calming migrants, foreigners. There are no discounts Easy.
Jason Saul, who is studying law and public policy at the University of Chicago, says that the campaign of efficiency of Mr. Musk has so far relied on approaches, called “inclined and burning”-cutting agencies and reducing the number of employees-targeting waste, fraud, and abuse. What neither of them is doing is to address the most difficult question about how to improve the efficiency of the programs that the public wants and expects from the government, such as the services of the veterans and the elderly.
“Everyone appreciates these results,” said Professor Saul, Executive Director of the Center for Impact Studies, who advised governments in Canada and the United Kingdom about how to measure social effects from public programs. The challenge, as he says, is to reduce the cost. “This will require a different set of tools and technologies from …[DOGE’s] Programmers of artificial intelligence and software. You will need people who can analyze [return on investment] Among the 1,000 federal scholarship programs and knowing how to obtain twice the effect of half -cost. “
