Elon Musk and Ramaswamy push for massive federal layoffs plan
Billionaire Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy announced in an article in the "Wall Street Journal" that their team, DOGE, will present Donald Trump with thousands of unlawful regulations and propose mass layoffs of federal employees. They also intend to encourage officials to leave their jobs by eliminating telework and relocating offices from Washington to other parts of the country.
Musk and Ramaswamy thus presented in the "WSJ" a plan for the "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE), an informal body they are set to lead as "external volunteers."
In the article, the businessmen supporting Donald Trump argue that, due to two decisions made by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which revoked regulatory powers from executive agencies (including environmental regulations), many of the existing rules they introduced should be abolished.
This is antidemocratic and antithetical to the Founders’ vision. It imposes massive direct and indirect costs on taxpayers. Thankfully, we have a historic opportunity to solve the problem. On Nov. 5, voters decisively elected Donald Trump with a mandate for sweeping change, and they deserve to get it – wrote the heads of DOGE.
They announced that they intend, along with employed experts and lawyers within individual agencies, to present Donald Trump with a list of thousands of regulations to be invalidated by issuing an order without Congress's consent.
They added that abolishing bureaucratic rules and taking away the agencies' rights to create them would eliminate the justification for maintaining many federal officials, and mass layoffs should be proportional to the scale of the "drastic" deregulation.
DOGE stated that it plans to collaborate with individuals assigned to agency roles to identify the minimum staffing levels necessary for each agency to carry out its legally mandated and constitutionally authorized functions.
They argue that the law and Supreme Court decisions allow for mass layoffs of officials without Congress's consent. They also announced their intention to encourage officials to leave their jobs by eliminating telework and relocating offices from Washington to other parts of the country.
Although they did not provide the number of officials they plan to lay off, Ramaswamy has previously proposed eliminating 3/4 of federal employees. Musk, on the other hand, promised that DOGE's activities would contribute to cutting expenses by 2 trillion dollars (almost 1/3 of the entire annual budget), although most experts doubt this possibility.
Announcement of large "cutting unnecessary expenditures"
Musk and Ramaswamy also announced cuts in unnecessary expenditures, including on international organizations.
The leaders of DOGE expressed readiness to face resistance from established interests in Washington, anticipating success. They emphasized that the greatest gift for the nation’s 250th anniversary would be establishing a federal government aligned with the vision of the Founders.
Donald Trump announced the creation of the "department," whose acronym refers to an internet meme and cryptocurrency of the same name, even during the election campaign. Similar initiatives to streamline the government and reduce spending were undertaken during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.
The actions of the former led to the reduction of 300,000 federal jobs. On the other hand, the so-called Grace Commission - headed by businessman J. Peter Grace - presented recommendations for over 2,500 reforms, most of which were never implemented.
