Musk: Cutting $2T through DOGE ‘best-case outcome’
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Wednesday that the best-case scenario would be to make $2 trillion in cuts to federal spending through the "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) he is co-leading.
“I think we’ll try for $2 trillion, I think that’s like the best case outcome,” Musk told political strategist Mark Penn in an interview streamed on his social platform X.
“But I do think that you kind of have to have some overage. I think if we try for $2 trillion, we’ve got a good shot at getting $1 [trillion]," he continued. "And if we drop the budget deficit from $2 trillion to $1 trillion and kind of free up the economy to have additional growth, such that the output of goods and services keeps pace with the increase in the money supply, there will be no inflation. That, I think, would be an epic outcome.”
Musk previously called for “at least” $2 trillion in cuts to federal spending, which drew some skepticism from experts during the 2024 campaign when he was President-elect Trump’s most prominent backer.
The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO also highlighted in the Wednesday interview that he thinks there is an abundance of government waste when asked if he has been able to identify some cuts yet, calling the government “a target-rich environment for saving money.”
“If you look at any direction — people are like, 'Where will you find places to save money?' It's like being in a room full of targets," Musk said. "You can close your eyes, and you can’t miss."
Trump announced in November that DOGE, which aims to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures” and restructure federal agencies, would be headed up by Musk and former GOP presidential primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Musk and Trump appear to have a close relationship, but The New York Times’s Maggie Haberman this week reported that the president-elect has been complaining that the tech billionaire is “around a lot.”
Democrats have also seemingly leaned into the billionaire's influence over Trump, questioning who is actually in charge. Despite their speculation that Musk is the one running things, the president-elect and his team say he is still the leader of the GOP.