Elon Musk’s $1 Trillion Government Cuts Under Fire: Legal Blocks, Layoffs, and Lofty Claims:

Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who is currently spearheading President Donald Trump's federal government spending reduction initiative, has stated that he plans to cut government spending by a whopping one trillion dollars by the end of May. Musk claims that his Department of Government Efficiency will be able to achieve those savings in cost over a period of 130 days, which is purportedly the amount of time he believes it will take for him to meet his self-imposed deadline of January 20th. To achieve this, he would have to cut more than half of $1.8 trillion the US spends on non-defense discretionary programs. On Baier’s show called Special Report, Musk stated, “I think we will accomplish most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within that time frame.” Musk is classified a special government employee, which means he is a temporary federal worker who is being employed for only 130 days a year.

Musk mentioned his goal is to reduce 15% of government spending - $6.75 trillion for FY 2024. Musk sees slashing spending by a trillion dollars feasible. He claims “without impacting any critical government services,” that amount can comfortably be cut.

The interview happened a few days after Trump noted he expected to be “satisfied” with DOGE’s spending cuts within the month or two. DOGE has made it clear that the proposed cuts are not “a very popular thing to do,” which certainly exposes the political risk Musk's plans incorporate.

Currently, a large portion of federal expenditure goes to mandatory spending – programs like Medicare and social security. These programs leave little room for budgetary cuts. Musk still stands by his claims that these programs have far too much fraud and waste even if he does not provide evidence for such claims.

DOGE has sent at least 10 employees into the Social Security Administration's to find fraud. However, there is no evidence suggesting there was any significant misconduct. The Social Security Administration estimated that roughly $72 billion dollars were in improper payments from 2015 to 2022 and an inspector general report suggested it was less than one percent of the benefits given.

DOGE Team

With The Fox interview, this was the first that many essential people around DOGE spoke about there works. Baier associated Steve Davis, who has been a longtime Musk staffer, to the Doge chief operational officer. The interview was also attended by Joe Gebbia, the co-founder of Airbnb, who is a billionaire and sits at the board of directors for Tesla Inc.

So far, Musk's own team's accounting shows that they are still far from the $1 trillion mark. The $22 billion in contract savings that the DOGE website, which has been error-ridden and overstated, claims is far less than $1 trillion. They assert in aggregate cost reductions that aren't broken down to components, about $130 billion which is not described.

Musk’s DOGE has also led a increasing wave of federal government layoffs and that has been initiated by the agencies in the past few weeks.

Musk attempted to dismiss the job cuts by claiming that “practically no one has been fired.”

In recent weeks, agencies have publicized a series of job cuts. The Department of Health and Human Services announced around 10,000 job cuts earlier this month. The Education Department has already stated that it is cutting 50% of its staff, and the Small Business Administration is also letting go of 43% of employees. The Veterans Affairs Department claimed it would let go of 80,000 employees and the Department of Treasury has also stated through court documents that they plan on implementing widespread cuts.

When it comes to the legal issues DOGE has had to face, there have been multiple losses due to judges stopping some of their cuts. Musk’s aide has also been denied permission to some systems and files, like those at the Social Security Administration.