To fulfill his longtime promise to drastically reduce government spending, President-elect Trump recently announced that billionaire entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would be heading up the new “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE. 

The Trump administration has not yet clarified how DOGE will take form. Despite being named a department, it’s likely that it will take the form of an external advisory committee. In an interview with Fox, Andrew Rudalevige, a Bowdoin College Government Professor, said, “It is not a department, no. Congress would be required to create an actual government department, this is a nickname at the moment for what might turn into a White House office if the president wants to structure it that way. It will more likely be some kind of advisory committee or commission.”

Though its form is unclear, the purpose of DOGE is clear: federal spending cuts. In a recent Wall Street Journal piece, Ramaswamy and Musk revealed that their primary aim would be to cut “the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended.” They listed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which receives $535 million a year; international organizations that receive $1.5 billion a year in grants; and Planned Parenthood and other “progressive groups” that receive about $300 million a year as groups on the chopping block.

It remains unclear where the remaining $497 billion will be cut.

Ramaswamy’s remarks at the America First Policy Institute Gala may give some more insight into DOGE’s intentions: “But I also want to thank [President Trump] for making sure that Elon Musk and I are in a position to start the mass deportations of millions of unelected federal bureaucrats out of the DC bureaucracy,” Ramaswamy said. “And I don’t know if you’ve gotten to know Elon yet, but he doesn’t bring a chisel, he brings a chainsaw and we’re going to be taking it to that bureaucracy. It’s going to be a lot of fun.” Ramaswamy’s extreme rhetoric suggests that the DOGE will be recommending massive layoffs as part of the group’s 500 billion dollar cut goal. 

Though DOGE’s true intentions are not clear, what is clear is the narrative that Musk, Ramaswamy, and the Trump administration create. In a recent interview, Musk claimed “Yeah I mean the idea is pretty simple is that we’ve got this suffocating massive federal bureaucracy.” The concept of an overly large, overly spending federal government is nothing new. 

Mass layoffs isn’t a new strategy to Musk. After he bought X—the social media platform formerly known as Twitter—in 2022, he promptly fired roughly 80 percent of the staff. While Musk bought the company for $44 billion, it is now valued at roughly $9.4 billion.

With President Elect Trump taking office in January, we can expect to see DOGE begin to advise his actions. If the group makes good on its $500 billion promise, mass layoffs may be imminent.

Article by Zev Wacks