President-elect Donald J. Trump has vowed to cut wasteful government spending, fire what he considers rogue bureaucrats and overhaul federal agencies once he is back in power.
But slashing the budget and substantially scaling back the federal work force is a formidable task. Among other things, it could require cutting popular programs that aid older Americans and reducing resources at agencies that support the nation’s defense and security.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump tapped two loyal supporters to help find ways to carve up the budget: Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and Vivek Ramaswamy, a former pharmaceutical executive who was once Mr. Trump’s rival for the Republican presidential nomination. Mr. Trump said the two would lead a new Department of Government Efficiency that would drive “drastic change.”
Mr. Trump has not set a dollar amount that he wants the commission to cut from the federal budget. Mr. Musk has.
After Mr. Trump promised on the campaign trail to tap Mr. Musk to head an efficiency commission, the entrepreneur said it could cut “at least $2 trillion” from the $6.75 trillion federal budget, without providing many details about how that could be done. Mr. Musk also said that the 400-plus federal agencies should be pared down to 99 or fewer, though a massive reduction in the number of agencies would require congressional approval.
In an acknowledgment of just how big of a challenge this poses, Mr. Trump said the new effort could be the “Manhattan project of our time” — a comparison to the resources put into developing the U.S. atomic weapons program during World War II.
