Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency taskforce has thrown open its doors to recruitment, inviting applications even before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.
Nicknamed DOGE after the cryptocurrency preferred by the Tesla CEO, its stated purpose is to radically shrink the size of the federal government by streamlining bureaucracy, eliminating jobs and shaving up to a third off of the $6.75 trillion fiscal budget.
Only the smartest Americans most ideologically dedicated to this cause should consider polishing up their resumés, however, because the task will prove gruelling and thankless, according to DOGE, which will be run jointly by Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
“We need super high-IQ, small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting,” DOGE said in a statement on Thursday posted from its official account.
Interested parties looking to throw their hat in the ring must message DOGE directly, which already bears the grey check X introduced to signify a government body. Doing so is not free, however—it involves first paying Musk an X subscription fee for the privilege and so far the account is exclusive to his social media platform.
Outstanding candidates who meet the criteria will be selected personally by Musk and his partner, it promised: “Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”
Dismantling the ‘Administrative State’
Conservatives have advocated starving the bureaucracy of resources ever since Ronald Reagan transformed the party with his famous 1986 slogan “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help’.”
Instead of creating a level-playing field for the market, the state has become synonymous among conservatives and libertarians with an ever-hungry leviathan that expands by feeding on the sovereignty of the individual (U.S. government spending as a share of the economy is however comparatively low versus other industrialized states).
“Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of ‘DOGE’ for a very long time,” Trump said in a statement this week.
Project 2025, the policy blueprint authored by right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation for a potential Republican-controlled White House, targeted this so-called Administrative State, “the dismantling of which must be a top priority for the next conservative President.”
Instead, they prefer spending to be scrutinized by Congress, with legislators becoming accountable to their constituents rather than abdicating responsibility to corporate lobbyists and federal agencies.
How DOGE will exactly operate remains at present unclear. Nor has there been an official explanation as yet regarding oversight, as Trump has confirmed it will operate outside of the executive branch but under his authority.
This means it could be little more than a glorified advisory body or it could wield considerable influence, depending on how much favor it carries with the President-elect.
‘ALL government spending is taxation’, Musk decries
Like many Silicon Valley innovators, Musk has been a huge critic of bureaucratic red tape put in place to ensure everything from employee rights to a safe working environment and the protection of wildlife biodiversity. But regulations can also shield special interest groups from the competitive forces of the free market—take for example New York City cab drivers.
He has argued in favor of a regulatory garbage collection service to beat back the growing thicket of rules and statutes that impinge on economic growth. When asked what this could entail, he suggested consolidating the number of federal agencies down to a quarter of their current level and eliminating $2 trillion from the budget.
“ALL government spending is taxation,” Musk has argued—either directly by levying duties on the population to finance its budget, or indirectly by inflating the money supply through borrowing.
Strictly speaking, the latter is only partly accurate: the Federal Reserve has control of the printing press and can choose to monetize the debt issued by the Treasury (if Trump gets his wish and the Fed loses its political independence, it may even be compelled by the Oval Office to do so). But Musk’s argument is emblematic for conservative thinking.
‘Once-in-a-century opportunity’
Trump’s DOGE has reaped scorn, however, for the decision to needlessly duplicate roles with two men in charge of the task.
But Tesla bulls see an upside: Musk can pop in when convenient to focus on the big picture strategy while leaving Ramaswamy to bear the day-to-day brunt of the political fallout and recriminations. (Musk has half-joked he will need to scale up his personal security detail due to the chance that someone from the post office might ‘go postal’ on him.)
Ramaswamy, an Ohio native who made his fortune by selling biotech investors on the promise of discontinued drug candidates, turned down a shot at J.D. Vance’s soon-to-be vacated Senate seat just for the DOGE job.
“We won and now have a once-in-a-century opportunity to radically downsize the size, scope and mission of the federal government,” Ramaswamy celebrated in a post this week.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank that has advocated for means-testing Social Security, already has an idea where they can start. On Thursday the deficit-hawk published a proposal on Thursday for how Uncle Sam can save $700 billion.
