Elon Musk’s monetary schedule crusade could factor a constitutional clash in Trump’s second term

WASHINGTON — When Elon Musk first suggested a recent attempt to cut the size of government, Donald Trump didn’t seem to receive it seriously. His eventual name for the concept sounded like a joke too. It would be called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a reference to an online meme featuring a surprised-looking dog from Japan.

But now that Trump has won the election, Musk’s fantasy is becoming reality, with the potential to spark a constitutional clash over the equilibrium of power in Washington.

Trump put Musk, the globe’s richest man, and Vivek Ramaswamy, an business owner and former Republican presidential candidate, in fee of the recent department, which is really an outside advisory committee that will work with people inside the government to reduce spending and regulations.

This week, Musk and Ramaswamy said they would inspire Trump to make cuts by refusing to spend money allocated by Congress, a procedure known as impounding. The proposal goes against a 1974 law intended to prevent upcoming presidents from following in the footsteps of Richard Nixon, who held back capital that he didn’t like.

“We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in an view piece in The Wall Street Journal. ”We expect to prevail. Now is the instant for decisive action.”

Trump has already suggested taking such a large step, saying last year that he would “use the president’s long-recognized impoundment power to squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive reserves.”

It would be a dramatic attempt to expand his powers, when he already will have the advantage of a sympathetic Republican-controlled Congress and a conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court, and it could swiftly become one of the most closely watched legal fights of his second administration.

“He might get away with it,” said William Galston, a elder fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based ponder tank. “Congress’ power of the purse will turn into an advisory view.”

correct now, plans for the Department of Government Efficiency are still coming into focus. The nascent organization has put out a call for “super high-IQ tiny-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous expense-cutting.” Applicants are encouraged to submit their resumes through X, the social media business that Musk owns.

In the Wall Street Journal, Musk and Ramaswamy provided the most detailed look yet at how they would operate and where they could cut. Some are longtime Republican targets, such as $535 million for the Corporation for community Broadcasting.

Other plans are more ambitious and could reshape the federal government. The two wrote that they would “identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions,” leading to “mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy.”

Civil service protections wouldn’t apply, they debate, because they wouldn’t be targeting specific people for political purposes.

Some employees could choose “voluntary severance payments to facilitate a graceful exit.” But others would be encouraged to quit by mandating that they display up at the office five days a week, ending pandemic-era flexibility about remote work. The requirement “would outcome in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome.”

Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said such cutbacks would damage services for Americans who depend on the federal government, and he suggested that Musk and Ramaswamy were in over their heads.

“I don’t ponder they’re even remotely qualified to perform those duties,” he said. “That’s my main concern.”

Kelley said his union, which represents 750,000 employees for the federal government and the city of Washington, D.C., was ready to fight attempts to slash the workforce.

“We’ve been here, we’ve heard this benevolent of rhetoric before,” he said. “And we are prepared.”

There was no mention in the Wall Street Journal of Musk’s previously stated objective of cutting $2 trillion from the monetary schedule, which is nearly a third of total annual spending. Nor did they write about “Schedule F,” a potential schedule to reclassify federal employees to make them easier to fire. Ramaswamy once described the concept as the “mass deportation of federal bureaucrats out of Washington, D.C.”

However, Musk and Ramaswamy said they would reduce regulations that they describe as excessive. They wrote that their department “will work with legal experts embedded in government agencies, aided by advanced technology,” to review regulations that run counter to two recent Supreme Court decisions that were intended to limit federal rulemaking authority.

Musk and Ramaswamy said Trump could “immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the procedure for review and rescission.”

Chris Edwards, an specialist on monetary schedule issues at the Cato Institute, said many Republicans have promised to reduce the size and role of government over the years, often to little result. Sometimes it feels like every monetary schedule item and levy provision, no matter how obscure, has people dedicated to its preservation, turning attempts at cuts into political battles of attrition.

“Presidents always seem to have higher priorities,” he said. “A lot of it falls to the wayside.”

Although DOGE is scheduled to complete its work by July 4, 2026, Edwards said Musk and Ramaswamy should shift faster to capitalize on momentum from Trump’s election win.

“Will it just collect dust on a shelf, or will it be put into result?” Edwards said. “That all depends on Trump and where he is at that point in period.”

Ramaswamy said in an online video that they’re planning regular “Dogecasts” to keep the community updated on their work, which he described as “a once-in-a-production assignment” to eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse.”

“However impoverished you ponder it is, it’s probably worse,” he said.

House Republicans are expected to put Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Trump friend from Georgia, in fee of a subcommittee to work with DOGE, according to two people with knowledge of the plans who were not authorized to discuss them publicly. Greene and Rep. James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee, have already met with Ramaswamy, the two people said.

Musk brought up the concept for DOGE while broadcasting a exchange with Trump on X during the campaign.

“I ponder we require a government efficiency percentage to declare like, ‘Hey, where are we spending money that’s sensible. Where is it not sensible?’” Musk said.

Musk returned to the topic twice, volunteering his services by saying “I’d be joyful to assist out on such a percentage.”

“I’d adore it,” Trump replied, describing Musk as “the greatest cutter.”

Musk has his own incentives to push this initiative forward. His companies, including SpaceX and Tesla, have billions of dollars in government contracts and face oversight from government regulators.

After spending an estimated $200 million to back Trump’s candidacy, he’s poised to have expansive influence over the next administration. Trump even went to Texas earlier this week to watch SpaceX test its largest rocket.

DOGE will have an friend in Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who has railed against federal spending for years. He recently told Fox information that he sent “2,000 pages of waste that can be cut” to Musk and Ramaswamy.

“I’m all in and will do anything I can to assist them,” Paul said.