• Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy aim to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget by June 4, 2026.
• They've said they will fire federal employees, "delete" agencies, and publicize all of their work.
• The DOGE leaders have name-dropped many causes they might target, like DEI efforts and public media.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have big plans for the Department of Government Efficiency.

The two have promised to significantly reduce the federal budget, with a goal of cutting $2 trillion in spending. In 2024, federal spending reached $6.75 trillion, with nine-tenths going to federal programs. President-elect Donald Trump has long sworn not to touch Social Security or Medicare benefits, which comprise a significant chunk of the budget.

Here's a running list of things Musk and Ramaswamy have said they will do as they gear up to take on this new role.

Representatives for Musk and Trump did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment. A representative for Ramaswamy declined to comment.

Slash regulations

Musk and Ramaswamy plan to suggest regulations to cut to Trump, whom they said could then use executive actions to pause the regulations and begin the removal process.

The co-heads outlined their ideas in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal and explained that they plan to lean on two recent SCOTUS rulings, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The cases, they said, "suggest that a plethora of current federal regulations exceed the authority Congress has granted under the law."

Some legal experts previously told BI that the DOGE leaders are misinterpreting the lawsuits, which they said do not add to the executive branch's ability to curb regulations. Under the rulings, agencies still need to comply with a lengthy administrative process to change or overturn rules, the experts said.

'Delete' entire agencies, or at least vastly change them

A key part of DOGE's cost-cutting agenda has to do with scaling back government agencies — Ramaswamy promised that the group will "delete" entire departments. Political scientists and fellows at Washington think tanks previously told BI that deleting departments outright almost always requires congressional approval, making DOGE's goal seem unrealistic to some. There are more than 440 government agencies; Musk has said he wants to trim that down to no more than 99.

Here are some of the agencies DOGE plans to target:

Planned Parenthood and public media may be impacted

Musk and Ramaswamy criticized the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and "progressive groups like Planned Parenthood" in their op-ed. They said that DOGE will try to curb federal spending "by taking aim" at the funds appropriated for those services, among others.

The CPB is the largest funding source for public radio, television, and online services, primarily for local public media — in fiscal year 2024, it had a budget of $535 million. Congress created the CPB and authorizes the budget. Between 2019 and 2021, American affiliates of Planned Parenthood received approximately $148 million in federal grants, according to the Government Accounting Office.

Target expired federal spending commitments

Musk and Ramaswamy said in their op-ed that they plan to go after expired federal expenditures. According to the Congressional Budget Office, $516 billion worth of federal appropriations in 2024 have expired, with the largest programs in terms of spending relating to veterans' healthcare, drug development, and NASA. Neither Musk nor Ramaswamy have specified which expired authorizations they'll target.

Reduce the federal workforce

Musk and Ramaswamy said they want to significantly reduce the size of the federal workforce, though haven't specified precisely how many employees should be cut. There were more than 2 million federal employees as of 2023, according to the nonpartisan group the Partnership for Public Service.

Civil service workers benefit from job protections that make it difficult to fire them, but the DOGE co-leaders said in their Journal article that Trump could implement "reductions in force" that aren't directed at individual employees.

In the op-ed, Musk and Ramaswamy said that after eliminating federal regulations, "mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy" will follow. They plan to determine the minimum number of employees needed at each department and said they might enact policies that lead some staffers to voluntarily resign, like return-to-office mandates, early retirement offers, and severance packages.

Federal employee salaries don't comprise a big chunk of the budget — not including military personnel, their annual salaries and benefits total approximately $305 billion, or 4% of spending, per the Washington Post. If Musk and Ramaswamy got rid of 25% of the federal workforce, government spending would fall by around 1%.

Relocate some federal agencies and reform building use

Musk and Ramaswamy raised the possibility of relocating federal agencies outside Washington in their op-ed, a point that Ramaswamy has spoken more about online and in interviews. When talking to Fox News in November, he said he "absolutely" wants to move agencies elsewhere and called the fact that some employees don't go into the office a "dirty little secret."

In a post on X from late November, Ramaswamy said addressing the cost of maintaining federal buildings "sounds like a job for DOGE." According to a 2023 report from the Government Accountability Office, 17 of the agencies reviewed use about 25% or less of their buildings' space. The federal government spends around $2 billion each year to maintain federal office buildings and $5 billion to lease space to agencies, the report found.

Conduct audits of agencies

In their opinion piece, Musk and Ramaswamy said that audits conducted during temporary payment suspensions could bring big savings. They called out the Pentagon and wrote that the agency failed its seventh consecutive audit. Support for the proposal came from an unlikely place: progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders. In a post on X, Sanders said that "Elon Musk is right," pointing out that the Pentagon has "lost track of billions."

Publicize all the changes the commission makes

Musk said he will publish all of DOGE's actions online for "maximum transparency" in a post on X.

"Anytime the public thinks we are cutting something important or not cutting something wasteful, just let us know!" he wrote. In the same post, he said DOGE will create a "leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending." Ramaswamy promised in a post that DOGE will start "crowdsourcing" for sources of waste and fraud.

Disband DOGE no later than July 4, 2026

When Trump announced the creation of DOGE, he said the committee would disband by July 4, 2026. The committee's leaders, though, have said they think their work will be done earlier.

Musk said on X that DOGE will complete its goals "much faster," and Ramaswamy told Fox News that "people will be surprised by, I think, how quickly we're able to move with some of those changes." To complete its work, DOGE plans to employ "a lean team of small-government minded crusaders" that works closely with the Office of Management and Budget, according to the leaders' opinion piece.

They've hinted at abolishing Daylight Savings Time and other initiatives

Though posts on X don't equate to an official DOGE plan, Musk and Ramaswamy have both posted about other things they might tackle in their roles, some of which would require Congressional approval.

Musk has posted about abolishing Daylight Savings Time, continued spending in Afghanistan, and "fake jobs" in the government.

Ramaswamy said in his own posts that DOGE could be used to address subsidies from the CHIPS Act, DEI efforts at universities, and how the federal government buys technology services.

• Donald Trump will decide whether to renew subsidies that make the ACA marketplaces more affordable.
• Biden's enhanced ACA subsidies, which lowered premiums for the middle class, will expire in 2025.
• Ending the subsidies would save the government money, but increase premiums for many Americans.

Federal subsidies meant to make health insurance more affordable for low- and middle-income Americans could be on the chopping block when Donald Trump returns to the White House.

President Joe Biden's enhanced version of the Affordable Care Act subsidies — which provide lower premiums and reduced out-of-pocket costs for lower-earning Americans who don't get health insurance subsidized by their employer or a government program like Medicaid — are set to expire at the end of 2025. At some point next year, Trump and a Republican-led Congress will decide whether to renew or end the subsidies.

Ending the subsidies would save the government money but restrict healthcare options for the people and families who rely on them. If the subsidies are allowed to expire, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that nearly 4 million people would drop coverage in 2026. 

The president-elect has been inconsistent with his support for the Affordable Care Act and has previously proposed cuts to healthcare programs like Medicare and Medicaid. The Trump transition team did not respond to BI's inquiry about ACA subsidies but previously shared a statement that Trump would "protect Medicare" as president.

Trump has not publicly said whether he plans to let the enhanced ACA subsidies expire, but he has made cost-cutting a cornerstone of his second-term promises.

The Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — was passed in 2010. The law introduced the ACA marketplaces, which were meant to make health insurance more affordable for lower-earning people whose incomes would be too high to qualify for Medicare and Medicaid. It also requires insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions, like diabetes and heart disease.

Biden's expansion increased the financial assistance for people already on ACA plans and lifted the income eligibility cap for those benefits. Some middle-class families had previously been priced out of health insurance.

Since 2020 — the year before the subsidies went into effect — the number of people with ACA marketplace coverage has grown by 88%, to 21.4 million people from 11.4 million, per KFF.

Gary Young, the director of Northeastern University's Center for Health Policy and Healthcare Research, told Business Insider that the ACA subsidy debate underlines a growing problem: America's healthcare costs are ballooning, and it's taking a toll on people's finances and federal budgets.

"We are having this debate at the same time that we are beginning to see healthcare costs ramp up," Young said.

How ending ACA subsidies would impact Americans and government spending

Ending subsidies would be cheaper for the government and taxpayers. Some Republicans like Vice President-elect JD Vance have said they want to inject needed competition into the health insurance marketplace. Young said a more robust marketplace could lead to more diverse insurance plans being available, allowing people to choose coverage that best fits their needs without the government footing the bill.

"There's concerns about whether the subsidies maybe went too far," Young said. "They're providing people with financial resources to purchase more extensive insurance than they otherwise would purchase, and it's not necessarily an efficient way of using federal resources."

Still, Young said letting the ACA subsidies expire would probably make healthcare more expensive for millions of people. Nearly all Americans on ACA plans would pay higher premiums, he said. KFF reported that low-income people would see the steepest increase in healthcare costs relative to their income.

Any move by Trump to change ACA policies would need congressional approval. Because insurers have to submit their plan proposals next summer for the 2026 enrollment period, Trump will probably need to decide early in his term whether to extend the enhanced ACA subsidy.

Trump's 2nd term has a cost-cutting agenda

The US government spent $6.75 trillion total in fiscal year 2024, which resulted in a national deficit. At $912 billion, the Department of Treasury reported that healthcare — programs like Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more — is a top government expenditure behind Social Security. Medicare costs add another $874 billion. If the enhanced ACA subsidies were to become permanent, the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation estimate that it would cost $335 billion over the next 10 years.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy were tapped by Trump to co-lead a new Department of Government Efficiency. The pair plans to propose cuts for the government's most costly programs, but it's not yet clear if that will include healthcare programs.

Trump's nominees for the top healthcare positions are Robert F. Kennedy Jr. leading the Department of Health and Human Services and Dr. Mehmet Oz leading the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Neither Kennedy nor Oz has outlined a specific plan for affordable healthcare in 2025, and neither responded to a request for comment.

In an opinion piece published in 2020 on Forbes, Oz said he supports a universal healthcare plan, but the stance is likely to be at odds with the Trump administration's cost-cutting agenda.

Are you doing anything to prepare your finances or healthcare plan for Trump's second term? If so, please reach out to this reporter at [email protected].

Correction: December 2, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated who is eligible for the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies. The subsidies apply mostly to people who purchase health insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces. Some Medicare recipients are also eligible, but not Medicaid recipients.