• Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy pressured Republicans to scrap their bill to keep the government funded.
• The US government is now set to shut down early Saturday morning if Congress doesn't act.
• A shutdown would furlough thousands of federal workers, impacting programs many Americans rely on.

The US is once again on the brink of a government shutdown following intense pressure from President-elect Donald Trump and his newly created DOGE commission.

It would mean federal workers are temporarily out of work, and Americans could experience slowdowns at airport security and customer-service delays for programs like Social Security. During the last government shutdown under Trump, national parks shuttered and flights were delayed or rerouted because of limited transportation staffing.

The possibility of a shutdown starting at 12:01 a.m. Saturday comes after the House of Representatives seemed poised this week to approve a continuing resolution to keep the government funded through March. However, following intense criticism on social media from Trump and the leaders of his new Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, House Republicans scrapped the bill.

They took issue with the inclusion of a range of items in the bill that they said were not relevant to government funding, including pandemic preparedness and a pay raise for lawmakers.

Ramaswamy posted on X on Wednesday morning that the bill is "full of excessive spending, special interest giveaways & pork barrel politics."

Musk also wrote on X on Wednesday that a government shutdown is "infinitely better than passing a horrible bill."

Trump and his vice president-elect, JD Vance, released a joint statement Wednesday saying the resolution would "give Congress a pay increase while many Americans are struggling this Christmas."

Now, Congress must find a new funding solution in just over 24 hours, leaving Americans on the brink of the first government shutdown since 2018. Here's what that could mean.

What happens in a government shutdown

Every federal agency is required to prepare for a government shutdown by creating contingency plans to submit to the Office of Management and Budget. Each agency outlines how it will structure its workforce in a shutdown, including how many workers it will furlough and for how long.

This means federal workers would be affected first, with many finding themselves temporarily out of work. The longer the shutdown lasts, the more severe the consequences for Americans would be, but if federal workers are furloughed, agencies will be strained to carry out their usual daily functions.

For example, the Social Security Administration's latest contingency plan said it expects to furlough 8,103 of its 59,000 employees at the start of a shutdown. This means that while Social Security payments would still continue to reach Americans, customer service would be limited for beneficiaries dealing with payment issues.

During a government shutdown, active-duty military service members would remain on duty but may go unpaid until funding is restored. The Department of Education's latest contingency plan, from 2023, said that it would have to pause most of its grantmaking activities during a shutdown, including its review of grant applications from local school districts.

The Department of Transportation's contingency plan in 2024 said that while facility service inspections and air-traffic-controller training would cease, essential services like air travel would continue. The Department of Homeland Security's most recent contingency plan said that the Transportation Security Administration would furlough over 2,000 workers, likely resulting in longer wait times for travelers at airports.

The US Postal Service, however, would not be affected by a shutdown because it's an independent agency.

Additionally, a 2023 brief from the progressive think tank Center for American Progress said that a number of federal programs "immediately cease" during federal shutdowns, including the processing of new small business loan applications, workplace safety inspections, NASA research programs, and federal loans to farmers.

The collapse of the previous deal means the clock is ticking for both parties to come to an agreement on avoiding a government shutdown before the weekend.

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, criticized the recent government shutdown threats in a statement Wednesday.

"Triggering a damaging government shutdown would hurt families who are gathering to meet with their loved ones and endanger the basic services Americans from veterans to Social Security recipients rely on," she said. "A deal is a deal. Republicans should keep their word."

• Elon Musk's DOGE has hired about 10 people so far, per Bloomberg.
• Boring Co. CEO Steve Davis and ex-Trump tech adviser Michael Kratsios are interviewing hires.
• The commission said in November that applicants could send their résumés via DM on X.

Elon Musk is tapping a mix of old and new faces to meet DOGE's staffing needs.

Last month, President-elect Donald Trump announced that Musk would co-lead an advisory group called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, alongside Vivek Ramaswamy.

DOGE, Trump said in his announcement, would be tasked with slashing excess regulations and trimming wasteful government spending. The commission is set to conclude its work by July 4, 2026.

On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that The Boring Company CEO Steve Davis and former US chief technology officer Michael Kratsios were interviewing potential hires. DOGE has hired about 10 people thus far, the outlet reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Musk's commission is also looking to recruit software engineers, including those with experience in artificial intelligence, per Bloomberg.

Much of the group's staffing is still unclear, including whether these are full-time roles, where they will be based, and how they will be paid.

According to a Bloomberg, DOGE is currently operating out of a SpaceX-leased office located near the White House.

In November, Musk said in an X post that DOGE employees will be involved in "tedious work" and draw zero compensation.

DOGE so far: a mix of Musk and Trump staffers

Davis is no stranger to Musk's enterprises.

The Boring Company chief holds a doctoral degree in economics from George Mason University and started out as a SpaceX engineer. Musk later handpicked Davis to run his tunneling company.

Davis was also involved in Musk's purchase of Twitter in 2022 and played a key role in Musk's pro-Trump super PAC, America PAC.

Joining Davis is Kratsios, who served as Trump's top technology advisor during his first administration. Prior to joining the Trump administration, Kratsios was tech billionaire Peter Thiel's chief of staff and a principal at Thiel Capital.

Kratsios is a managing director at Scale AI, a data labeling startup.

DOGE's first reported hire was announced by Trump — not Musk or Ramaswamy — earlier this month.

In a Truth Social post on December 4, Trump said that Republican lawyer William Joseph McGinley will serve as the commission's counsel.

McGinley, a former partner at the law firm Jones Day, served as Trump's White House cabinet secretary from 2017 to 2019.

Silicon Valley appears to have figured prominently in Musk's work on DOGE.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has reportedly been consulting Silicon Valley leaders, such as venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and Uber cofounder turned food tech entrepreneur Travis Kalanick, about his plans for the commission.

In November, the commission started an account on Musk's social network X and said that applicants could send in their CVs via direct message.

"We don't need more part-time idea generators. We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting," the post said.

Musk did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Elizabeth Warren wants President-elect Trump to set conflict-of-interest rules for Elon Musk.
• Warren called any lack of rules an "invitation for corruption on a scale not seen in our lifetimes."
• Musk is set to play an influential role in Trump's second term as a co-lead for the DOGE.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday asked President-elect Donald Trump to set conflict-of-interest rules that would apply to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who's set to take on a high-profile role as a co-lead of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The Massachusetts Democrat and former 2020 presidential candidate sent the letter to Trump's transition team, according to The Washington Post, noting that the team's members have to adhere to an ethics policy that compels them to "avoid both actual and apparent conflicts of interest."

Musk, who spent over $250 million to help elect Trump and boost other GOP candidates ahead of the 2024 general election, has been one of Trump's most omnipresent confidants in recent months, accompanying the president-elect on trips and sitting in on his talks with world leaders.

Trump has tasked Musk and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy with cutting government waste through the DOGE. The pair have said they want to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget.

"Putting Mr. Musk in a position to influence billions of dollars of government contracts and regulatory enforcement without a stringent conflict of interest agreement in place is an invitation for corruption on a scale not seen in our lifetimes," Warren said in her letter.

"Currently, the American public has no way of knowing whether the advice that he is whispering to you in secret is good for the country — or merely good for his own bottom line," she continued.

Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt in a statement to Business Insider responded to Warren by praising Musk's influence and criticizing the Democratic lawmaker. Leavitt called Warren a "career politician whose societal impact is 1/1024th of Elon Musk's" and said Trump's transition team was adhering to high ethical guidelines.

Musk was one of Trump's highest-profile surrogates during the presidential race, spending weeks campaigning for the president-elect in pivotal Pennsylvania, which Trump would go on to win en route to a national victory.

• The government lost billions of dollars to fraud and improper payments last year.
• Both Musk and Ramaswamy have indicated they'll crack down on fraud through DOGE.
• Some experts told BI they're optimistic about action on fraud, but the DOGE leaders have to be willing to invest in the issue.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have an opportunity to take on fraud in government programs once President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

Musk and Ramaswamy are tasked with leading the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which seeks to reduce government waste and slash spending. Musk set a goal of cutting $2 trillion in annual outlays.

One of Musk and Ramaswamy's aims for DOGE could lead to a relatively early win with bipartisan support: eliminating fraud in federal programs like Medicare. In a recent interview, Ramaswamy told CNBC that "the dirty little secret is that many of those entitlement dollars aren't even going to people who they were supposed to be going to in the first place."

"There are hundreds of billions of dollars of savings to extract" through basic fraud prevention measures, he said.

Musk shared that sentiment, posting on X in November: "The sheer magnitude & audacity of government fraud is mind-blowing!"

Data from the Government Accountability Office showed that government agencies have made about $2.7 trillion in improper payments since 2003, and in fiscal year 2023, the GAO estimated agencies made $236 billion in improper payments. Notably, those improper payments include other categories than intentional fraud, like administrative errors, Orice Williams Brown, the GAO's chief operating officer, said in a September testimony to Congress.

"While all fraudulent payments are considered improper, not all improper payments are due to fraud," Brown said.

The top impacted agencies were Medicare and Medicaid, which the GAO said had $51 billion and $50 billion in improper payments, respectively, followed by pandemic programs, including the Paycheck Protection Program.

Experts told Business Insider that there's potential for DOGE to make progress on the issue if they focus on effective solutions like system modernization and improved data analysis, an area where Ramaswamy and Musk could leverage their Silicon Valley tech experience.

Both fraud and improper payments have been difficult for the government to address because of "outdated technology and a limited focus on program integrity," Linda Miller, cofounder of the Program Integrity Alliance — a group that focuses on fraud prevention in the government — told BI.

"You need to use advanced technology and data in order to really move the needle," Miller said. "And the government is not using advanced technology and data to solve this problem."

Jetson Leder-Luis, an assistant professor at Boston University and researcher on government fraud, told BI that DOGE could pursue "a lot of low-hanging fruit ideas" to combat fraud in big industries like healthcare.

"I think DOGE has the opportunity to make big strides on fraud," Leder-Luis said, adding that if they boost enforcement funding and create enhanced data pipelines, "they have a major opportunity to save tens of billions of dollars."

The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

How government programs make way for fraud

The government has been unable to implement widescale fraud intervention in recent decades because of a lack of resources and staff to investigate fraud, and a failure to modernize data and technology systems, according to Miller and Leder-Luis.

The GAO found that the government's annual financial losses from fraud were between $233 billion and $521 billion, based on data from fiscal years 2018 through 2022.

Miller pointed to the pandemic as the "perfect storm" for fraud, with the Paycheck Protection Program and disaster loan programs as key examples. Miller said that all that aid being available, coupled with limited oversight at the government level during a national emergency, made it easier for fraud to go undetected; some of the programs allowed individuals to self-certify their loan applications, paving the way for misrepresentations.

"The lack of modernization of our digital technology at the state government level was a real hindrance to fraud prevention during the pandemic," Leder-Luis said.

There have been a number of instances where individuals attempt, and sometimes succeed, to game the system and score welfare benefits that they're not entitled to. But, Miller said, the bigger concern is beyond the individual circumstances; it's the "large-scale fraud schemes" that have taken millions of dollars from the government. For example, the FBI opened an investigation into a scheme that Medicare officials said defrauded the program out of $3 billion after some companies billed the program for catheters patients never requested or used.

Lawmakers and the Department of Justice have worked to take action over the past years to address fraud, including with the federal Pandemic Response Accountability Committee that oversaw pandemic-era programs. Still, Miller said that while agencies are focused on getting benefits to the beneficiary, there still isn't enough attention on ensuring benefits are going to the right person.

"That's the kind of thing that I think really angers Americans," Miller said. "You wonder, 'What are your tax dollars going to if they're not stopping that kind of fraud?'"

Where DOGE can play a role

Miller said she expects DOGE to look for "quick wins" soon after Trump takes office. These could include modernizing IT systems and investing more resources into fraud detection. A critical point DOGE will have to contend with is that cracking down on the cost of fraud would require some upfront investments.

"It can be very helpful to have a private sector lens come in and look at this," Miller said, which is why Musk and Ramaswamy's backgrounds could be useful in introducing new technology to government systems. However, she said, the two DOGE leaders have to be willing to invest in new fraud detection systems because, even amid their goals to slash spending, modernizing technology is not going to be free.

The GAO's Brown also outlined recommendations for federal agencies to better prevent fraud, including using external data from third parties to verify information Americans provide on loan and insurance applications.

With Republicans soon holding control of both Congress and the White House, DOGE's recommendations to Trump and lawmakers would likely see an easier path to passage. Addressing fraud has also seen Democratic support; Rep. Jamie Raskin introduced the Government Spending Oversight Committee Act in April, which would give federal inspectors general tools to combat fraud across major funding bills.

To be sure, some lawmakers and experts are skeptical of DOGE's approach. The US spent $6.75 trillion in fiscal year 2024, data from the Treasury Department showed, and it wouldn't be as simple as the DOGE leaders have said to ax that spending, lawyers told BI.

While administrative law requires a lengthy process to rescind regulations in federal agencies, Musk and Ramaswamy previously said they would recommend a list of regulations that Trump could "immediately pause." Some lawyers previously said the process is a lot more complicated, and the DOGE leaders would likely face legal hurdles if they pursued that route.

Musk and Ramaswamy also aren't the first to suggest cuts to government spending. Former President Ronald Reagan's Grace Commission, aimed at eliminating waste and inefficiency in the federal government, eliminated $22 billion in social welfare programs that ended up being offset by his tax cuts and defense spending.

Still, Leder-Luis said, what DOGE determines as "waste" is up for interpretation, whereas fraud is illegal, and there's support across the aisle to take that on.

"If we lose $50 billion a year to fraud in just the healthcare system alone, that's ultimately paid for by us," Leder-Luis said. "There are so many things that people want the government to be able to pay for that we all think are good and valuable, like better roads and schools. And when we say, 'I'm sorry, we can't afford that,' well, we are affording healthcare fraud instead."

• 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.

• The CFPB finalized a rule that allows banks to cap overdraft fees at $5 or set the fee at an amount that covers losses.
• The rule, which will take effect in October 2025, is projected to save Americans $5 billion annually, or $225 per household.
• The CFPB previously found that banks were charging Americans unnecessary overdraft fees.

Americans who spend more than they have in their bank accounts won't be burdened with hefty fees come October next year.

On Thursday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that it finalized a rule that would limit overdraft fees at the bank. Overdraft fees are charged when customers make a withdrawal that results in a negative account balance. However, the CFPB found that some banks charged higher fees than they needed to cover their losses, leaving consumers in a financial bind.

The new rule updates federal regulations for banks with more than $10 billion in assets. It provides those banks with options for lowering overdraft fees, including capping them at $5. For banks that choose to offer overdraft as a service for their customers, the rule allows banks to set their fee at an amount that covers costs and losses. If banks do want to keep making profits off of overdraft fees, they'll have to disclose the terms of it like they do with credit cards and other loans.

These changes are expected to save Americans up to $5 billion each year, or $225 per household, the CFPB said.

"For far too long, the largest banks have exploited a legal loophole that has drained billions of dollars from Americans' deposit accounts," CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a statement. "The CFPB is cracking down on these excessive junk fees and requiring big banks to come clean about the interest rate they're charging on overdraft loans."

Lower-earning Americans are disproportionately impacted by overdraft fees, per a previous report from the CFPB. The agency found that around a third of households with income below $65,000 were charged with an overdraft or a non-sufficient fee, compared to just 10% of consumers in households earning over $175,000. Americans of color and those without a college degree were also more likely to live in households affected by those fees.

The CFPB's finalization of the overdraft rule comes as the future of the agency is unclear. President-elect Donald Trump tapped Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which aims to get rid of government waste. The two DOGE leaders said they would accomplish that goal, in part, by eliminating some federal agencies, including the CFPB.

"Delete CFPB," Musk wrote in a late November post on X. "There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies."

Chopra responded to Musk's remarks during an MSNBC interview on December 7, saying that getting rid of the CFPB would be "mayhem" and "begging for a financial crisis."

"I don't understand why people would want financial crime," Chopra said, "and if they say it's duplicative, who else will do it?"

Have you paid overdraft fees or struggled with banking fees? Contact these reporters at [email protected] and [email protected].

• Legal experts say it is obvious that Elon Musk's DOGE falls under a federal transparency law.
• The Federal Advisory Committee Act was created to bring order to outside forces weighing in on policy.
• The law would require DOGE to hold public meetings and balance its membership.

Disrupting the federal government might be harder than Elon Musk thought.

President-elect Donald Trump appointed Musk and former 2024 challenger Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the sweeping "Department of Government Efficiency," which aims to cut $2 trillion out of the federal budget.

According to legal experts, Musk and Ramaswamy's work may be complicated by a decades-old government transparency law — the exact type of bureaucracy the world's richest man has chafed against when his companies have tangled with the Securities and Exchange Commission or the FAA.

Congress wrote the Federal Advisory Committee Act in 1972 to rein in the larger number of outside advisors who weighed in on policy matters either at the president's or a specific Cabinet agency's behest. It is designed for panels like DOGE, which are led by people outside the federal government. Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that they would not officially join the Trump administration.

"Though not much information has come out yet about DOGE, it certainly looks like it is not going to be a department or government agency, it will be an advisory commission, and for that reason, it will fall under FACA's purview," Jason Arnold, an associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University, told Business Insider.

Musk wrote on X last month that DOGE would post its "all actions" publicly online, but it's unclear if that means the billionaires will fully comply with the law.

The law says Musk and Ramaswamy need to appoint a Democrat.

The advisory act would affect DOGE's operations almost immediately. The law requires that panels that fall under its definition be comprised of a balanced membership in terms of "the points of view represented."

If Trump formally authorizes DOGE after he is sworn in next month, his initial order would need to take this into account. For example, when President Obama created the Bowles-Simpson commission in 2010, his executive order required the 18-member panel to include Republicans and Democrats. The commission, tasked with getting the nation's finances in order, was also co-chaired by a Democrat, former White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, and a Republican, former Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming.

So far, Trump has named William Joseph McGinley, a long-time attorney for Republican causes, to be DOGE's general counsel. Musk has already said that DOGE is looking for staffers willing to work 80-plus hours a week for no money.

"Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lots of enemies & compensation is zero. What a great deal!" Musk wrote on X.

Posting DOGE's activities online might not be enough.

If DOGE complies with the act, it would also have to try to hold public meetings.

Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, Bowles-Simpson's actual name, held six public hearings and culminated its work with a final report that caused a political uproar over its recommendations to raise the Social Security retirement age, increase the federal gas tax, and cut Pentagon spending. The act requires at least 15 days of formal notice before a meeting and for explanations to be provided if the panel moves to conduct a private session.

It's not hard to see how the public disclosure requirements could become a political headache for Trump's White House, especially if DOGE considers changes to Social Security and Medicare. Unlike most traditional Republicans, Trump has shied away from embracing major reforms to the popular programs. Ramaswamy told Axios that DOGE would look elsewhere for cuts.

Trump and his two advisors have already sparked the ire of some Republicans on Capitol Hill by promising they may try to unilaterally cancel spending, a process known as impoundment that Congress made mostly illegal in 1974.

Musk and Trump could still try to ignore the law.

Just because DOGE looks to fit the definition of the advisory act, doesn't mean the law's application is a simple business. In describing the law, the Congressional Research Service, lawmakers' nonpartisan research arm, concluded that it may ultimately fall to the courts to determine if FACA applies.

Arnold said if Trump and Musk go this route, it may take years to resolve the dispute. This, along with some of the act's vagueness in areas like what constitutes balanced membership, leaves some loopholes.

"There are a lot of flaws with the law, one of them is that there are no penalties for violations," said Arnold, who researched FACA for his book "Secrecy in the Sunshine Era." "It's almost up to the goodwill or the legal concerns of the administration to follow through."

The Trump transition team and McGinley did not respond to Business Insider's requests for comment. Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for Ramaswamy, told USA Today everyone around DOGE "is committed to making sure all DOGE activities are conducted properly and in full compliance with ethical and legal requirements."

Past White Houses have tried to argue they could do business behind closed doors. President Clinton fought off attempts to argue that then-first lady Hillary Clinton's participation in closed-door discussions over the administration's healthcare plan ran afoul of the act. President George W. Bush's White House engaged in a years-long legal fight over whether it needed to disclose details from his energy task force which Vice President Dick Cheney chaired. It was later revealed that then-Enron CEO Ken Lay was among a host of fossil fuel executives who met with the secretive panel.

When Obama formed the Bowles-Simpson commission, then-House Minority Leader John Boehner called on the White House to make sure the panel didn't try to do its work behind closed doors.

"If it is your intent to have all proceedings of the Commission adhere to FACA, will the Commission notice all meetings in the Federal Register 15 days in advance, open all meetings to the public, and make all meeting minutes available for public inspection?" Boehner wrote to Simpson and Bowles in 2010.

Musk is already getting to work on DOGE. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa are expected to lead their respective chambers' work with the panel. Musk was on Capitol Hill this week to discuss what his department will do — those talks were behind closed doors.

"There won't be a lot of detail for the press today, and that's by design," House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters. "This is a brainstorming session."

• Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy said a SCOTUS ruling on federal regulations will help them cut spending through DOGE.
• Some legal experts said it could actually restrict some of DOGE's aims.
• That's because, under the new legal framework, it will be more difficult to change interpretations of an existing rule.

The Supreme Court might not help Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's spending cut goals as much as they might think.

President-elect Donald Trump tapped Musk and Ramaswamy to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, aimed at reducing government waste. Since then, both have said a recent Supreme Court decision that restricts the ability of federal agencies to enact regulations would empower their plans to reduce head count at those agencies and cut unauthorized government programs.

This summer, the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron doctrine, which was established in 1984 and allowed federal agencies to interpret ambiguously worded laws while writing regulations as long as they did not counter Congress' language. Instead, courts themselves are obligated to resolve those ambiguities, rather than executive-branch agency experts.

Ramaswamy, a former GOP presidential candidate, wrote in a December 1 post on X that overturning Chevron "paves the way for not a slight but a drastic reduction in the scope of the federal regulatory state. It's coming." Musk responded to the post, saying: "We are going to use this ruling to gut the federal government."

Some legal experts said that's likely not the case, telling Business Insider that the Supreme Court's overturning of Chevron could actually constrain DOGE because it takes away an agency's power to interpret rules and make decisions independently.

Gillian Metzger, a constitutional law professor at Columbia Law School, told Business Insider that Musk and Ramaswamy's argument is "somewhat puzzling" because the Chevron decision "is about pulling back on executive and agency power."

"Chevron deference gave an agency room to change its interpretation of a statute, provided the statute was ambiguous, and the agency reasonably offered a permissible interpretation," Metzger said. "Without that precedent, it's going to be harder for them to change interpretations of statutes in ways that justify repealing regulations."

Still, Republican control of Congress and the White House could mean that DOGE's goals have a better chance of being implemented with lawmaker support.

Musk, Ramaswamy, and the Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

Holes in Musk and Ramaswamy's argument

The Supreme Court overturned the Chevron doctrine in June 2024 in a ruling on the case Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The case was brought on by a group of fisheries that disagreed with the National Marine Fisheries Service's interpretation of a law.

Nicholas Bagley, an administrative law professor at the University of Michigan, wrote in The Atlantic that following the ruling, "an agency that has already adopted the soundest interpretation of a law can't change its mind."

"If the agency were to try to adopt a new reading of the law—perhaps one that DOGE prefers—and to use that to justify rescinding the rule, the courts would stop the agency," Bagley wrote. "Saying that Loper Bright gives DOGE flexibility is about as sensible as saying that handcuffs help when throwing a baseball."

The Administrative Procedure Act, a federal statute that outlines how agencies must enact and revoke regulations, would also complicate matters. Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in The Wall Street Journal that DOGE would offer Trump a list of regulations they recommend rescinding, and Trump could then "immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission." They wrote that doing so would "liberate" Americans and businesses from complying with regulations Congress never passed.

However, to actually rescind a regulation, the APA requires a lengthy rulemaking process that includes seeking public comment and providing justification for the reasoning to rescind a rule. The Biden administration went through that process to craft its second student-loan forgiveness plan after the Supreme Court struck down the first one. Metzger said that rescinding a rule would require agency workers with expertise in the area to help conduct that analysis, something that would be difficult if DOGE fulfills its aim of cutting the federal workforce.

Cary Coglianese, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said he could see why Musk and Ramaswamy are depending on Chevron's overruling to help them slash regulations. If DOGE begins the process of rescinding existing federal regulations, there is likely to be litigation, and Coglianese said that the two DOGE leaders might be banking on courts looking at a regulation afresh and deciding that "the rule was too adventurous and acting well beyond their statutory authority."

Still, Coglianese said, that won't be easy to do — an agency has to provide extensive justification for implementing a new rule, and Musk and Ramaswamy would then be tasked with proving why the original justifications should be undone.

"There's a wild card about how much courts will be willing to reopen old precedents that were decided on Chevron grounds," Coglianese said. "They're banking on some ability to kind of be able to revisit some old statutory interpretations. It's not clear that the Supreme Court had that in mind when it overruled Chevron."

How Congress can advance DOGE's goals

Recent Supreme Court rulings might not help DOGE achieve its goals, but a Republican trifecta in Congress would. Since many of the changes Musk and Ramaswamy are seeking to make are unlikely to be accomplished by executive power alone, Congress would need to approve legislation to enact those changes.

Already, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is on board with advancing some of DOGE's spending cut proposals. Rep. Jared Moskowitz recently became the first Democratic lawmaker to officially join the DOGE caucus alongside dozens of Republicans, saying in a December 3 statement, "I believe that streamlining government processes and reducing ineffective government spending should not be a partisan issue."

Moskowitz pointed to the Department of Homeland Security as a specific agency for which he would support investigating spending cuts. Rep. Ro Khanna, another Democratic lawmaker, wrote in a December 5 post on X that he's ready to work with DOGE to "slash waste" in the Department of Defense, and Sen. Bernie Sanders recently told BI that Musk "is absolutely right" to call for defense spending cuts.

Data from the Treasury Department shows that the US spent $6.75 trillion in fiscal year 2024, with the highest amounts of spending coming from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Social Security Administration, and the Treasury Department. National defense spending also ranked high on the list, coming in at $874 billion.

With a glimmer of bipartisan support emerging for some of DOGE's goals, spending cuts could be facilitated through legislation. Musk and Ramaswamy met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill on December 5, during which GOP Sen. Joni Ernst presented a proposal to enact existing legislation to cut spending by cracking down on teleworking and getting rid of unused federal office space.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn also posted on X that she will be introducing legislation — the DOGE Act — that "will freeze federal hiring, begin the process to relocate agencies out of the D.C. swamp, and establish a merit-based salary system for the federal workforce."

Both Metzger and Coglianese said DOGE's proposals could happen through legislation, and the assumption that Musk and Ramaswamy can act on spending cuts alone — using Chevron as a backup — will likely face legal hurdles.

"If you just came along and said, 'We've got a new sheriff in town, a new president, and we don't like that rule,' that's not enough," Coglianese said. "You've got to be able to essentially rebut all that prior cases and explain why, in the face of all that you said just a couple of years ago, now, you want to get rid of a rule. That's not easy to do."

• Most Democrats aren't interested in Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's "DOGE" initiative.
• But a handful of them are signaling an openness to working with DOGE on specific issues.
• "A broken clock is right twice a day," said one DOGE-curious House Democrat.

As Republicans rush to embrace Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's "Department of Government Efficiency," most Democrats have taken a dismissive, even adversarial approach to the new initiative.

"Musk is a narcissist, a grifter, and a self-serving plutocrat," said Democratic Rep. Greg Casar of Texas. "I don't have my hopes up that Elon Musk is going to do anything other than really awful, stupid, self-serving stuff."

It's not hard to see why. Ramaswamy was one of the more right-wing 2024 GOP presidential candidates, while Musk — who just spent an immense sum of his own money to get Donald Trump elected — has emerged in recent years as a Democratic boogeyman. And while the exact contours of DOGE's agenda remain vague, there are already signs that progressive priorities could fall victim to Musk and Ramaswamy's proposals for deep spending cuts.

Yet a handful of Democratic lawmakers have signaled a willingness to engage, eyeing DOGE as an unlikely opportunity to push their own long-standing policy goals.

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, see tackling wasteful military spending as a potential point of common cause with DOGE.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida, meanwhile, became the first Democrat to join the House's DOGE caucus on Tuesday. He told BI that his "singular focus" would be restructuring the Department of Homeland Security by making the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Secret Service each report directly to the president.

"If this is where that conversation is going to happen, I'm happy to be at the table," said Moskowitz. "And if they want to do stupid stuff, I'll call it out and I'll vote against it."

The three lawmakers' DOGE-curious posturing also offers an early look at how some Democrats, fresh off of a defeat in the 2024 election, plan to cautiously engage with a Trump administration that's set to pursue a more radical transformation of the country than the first time around.

Khanna, a Silicon Valley-based progressive who remains cordial with Musk, appears to be taking the billionaire businessman seriously when he says he wants to examine the Pentagon's budget, citing Musk's past criticism of bloated defense contracts. The congressman has also previously suggested that Democrats have unduly alienated Musk in recent years.

"If Musk is going to help bring accountability to defense contractors, that's something that Democrats should welcome," said Khanna.

But other progressives who want military spending cuts are much more suspicious.

"I highly doubt that one of the largest defense contractors in the United States — and by that, I mean Elon Musk — is going to opt for the federal government to cut the money that he is receiving directly from them," said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. "He relies on the federal government to give him money."

Sanders, who wrote on X that Musk "is right" when it comes to bloated military spending, may simply be using the unexpected synergy to highlight an issue he's long cared about. The Vermont senator told BI that he hasn't directly engaged with Musk, and that it remains to be seen how seriously the SpaceX founder should be taken on the issue.

"I would hope that he is serious," said Sanders. "If you want to save taxpayer dollars, you do it not by cutting programs for hungry children, but by getting rid of the waste and fraud in the military."

Despite these small areas of potential agreement, much of what Musk and Ramaswamy have floated so far is likely to be anathema to the average Democratic lawmaker. There's a reason why it's Republicans, not Democrats, who are set to meet with the duo at the Capitol on Thursday.

Last week, Musk said that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency established by President Barack Obama that regulates financial services, should be eliminated. And Democratic Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota warned that Musk and Ramaswamy want to "defund Planned Parenthood" after the duo called out the organization as a recipient of "federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended."

That's not deterring lawmakers like Khanna and Moskowitz just yet.

"Obviously, if they're targeting areas that are going to lead to less education funding or less consumer protection, we need to speak up passionately, vociferously, and oppose it," said Khanna. "But our opposition will be much more effective and reasonable if we're willing to work with them on areas where there is government fraud and abuse."

"Some of these recommendations, I'm sure, will be horrible," said Moskowitz. "But a broken clock is right twice a day, so if there are things that they find that we can improve, shouldn't we give it a chance?"

But while Khanna could end up serving on a new DOGE subcommittee set to be chaired by Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Moskowitz says he's steering clear.

"I'm not interested in doing anything Marjorie Taylor Greene touches," said Moskowitz. "She's not a serious member."

• Several of the world's power brokers gathered for a New York Times DealBook Summit on Wednesday.
• While Elon Musk was not in attendance, he was the most-talked-about person there.
• Here's what business leaders and politicians had to say about the richest person on Earth.

Several masters of the universe convened on Wednesday, and they had one name on their lips: Elon Musk.

At the annual New York Times DealBook Summit, the world's richest man was a topic of conversation among his fellow billionaires, CEOs, and political elite.

To be sure, Andrew Ross Sorkin, DealBook's founder and the day's MC, asked nearly all of his guests about Musk, who made headlines at the same summit last year for telling advertisers on X to "go fuck" themselves.

And while the Tesla CEO wasn't present this year, many conversations touched on his latest role. Over the past couple of months, Musk has become a political advisor and confidant to President-elect Donald Trump and one of his biggest donors, shelling out about $119 million to support his campaign.

The reaction to Musk's new role as co-leader of the Department of Government Efficiency ranged from cautiously optimistic to not giving a damn.

Ken Griffin, the billionaire hedge fund manager and GOP donor, praised Musk's entrepreneurial ability.

"He runs Tesla, he runs SpaceX at a level of excellence that very few companies can even start to relate to," Griffin said.

At the same time, he questioned just how much Musk could impact federal spending.

"He's going to have to hit the hard reality, the hard truth, that making cuts of any form whatsoever will be politically very unpopular," Griffin said. "It'll be very hard to squeeze numbers in the trillions of dollars out of the baseline budget."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who has been embroiled in a personal and legal feud with Musk, similarly praised the Tesla CEO's business acumen.

"At a time when most of the world was not thinking very ambitiously, he pushed a lot of people, me included, to think much more ambitiously," Altman said of his OpenAI cofounder.

While Altman acknowledged his feelings about Musk have changed, he said it would be unlike his former "mega hero" to use his political proximity for his own monetary gain.

"It would be profoundly un-American to use political power, to the degree that Elon has it, to hurt your competitors and advantage your own businesses," Altman said. "It would go so deeply against the values I believe he holds very dear to himself."

Jeff Bezos, whose Blue Origin is in direct competition with Musk's SpaceX, agreed that Musk's relationship with Trump was not that concerning.

"I take it face value what has been said, which is that he is not going to use his political power to advantage his own companies or to disadvantage his competitors," Bezos said. "Let's go into it hoping that the statements that have been made are correct, that this is going to be done above board in the public interest."

And Sundar Pichai, the Alphabet CEO, said Musk's xAI artificial intelligence company is a formidable competitor "given Elon's track record."

Those interviewed with actual political experience — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and former President Bill Clinton — appeared the most unfazed by Musk's new position of power.

Powell seemed confident in the independence of the Fed, even though Musk has signaled support for moving the central bank under the president's command.

And Clinton seemed to almost entirely brush off Musk's burgeoning influence — including the fact that he was on a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

"Trump's whole shtick is that all these rules and systems don't amount to anything," the former president said.

"Being the richest guy on Earth is far more important than anything else that you could be to him," Clinton added. "That's what he values. It's no big deal."

• Trump announced that William Joseph McGinley will serve as counsel to DOGE.
• McGinley is DOGE's first reported hire, and Musk and Ramaswamy have encouraged everyday Americans to apply.
• Musk and Ramaswamy, DOGE co-heads, said they want to staff the commission with "small-government crusaders."

President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday a new hire for the Department of Government Efficiency: William Joseph McGinley as the commission's counsel.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have begun sharing details about how DOGE will work, promising to staff their commission with "a lean team of small-government crusaders." DOGE's account on X, formerly known as Twitter, told those interested to send along their CV in a direct message. Various Silicon Valley leaders, including investor Marc Andreessen and Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick, have reportedly been involved with planning for the commission.

The DOGE co-heads have said they want to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. In 2024, federal spending totaled $6.75 trillion, nine-tenths of which went to federal programs.

Representatives for Musk and Ramswamy did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

McGinley has been on Trump's radar for other roles

Trump announced McGinley's role on Truth Social: "Bill will play a crucial role in liberating our Economy from burdensome Regulations, excess spending, and Government waste." In his role, Trump said that McGinley will advise the Office of Management and Budget on how to pare down the federal bureaucracy.

McGinley is a Republican lawyer who has served as counsel for the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. On November 12, Trump tapped him to serve as White House counsel, but he rolled back that choice without offering an explanation.

Trump also announced Wednesday that David Warrington was his new pick for White House counsel.

Musk and Ramaswamy explained in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed how DOGE would work. They said they will rely on two Supreme Court rulings to help Trump roll back regulations. Legal experts, however, told CNN that the DOGE leaders are misinterpreting the SCOTUS cases and that some of the commission's work could face legal challenges.

McGinley did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

• Citadel's Ken Griffin is skeptical of Elon Musk's ability to cut trillions from the federal budget.
• Tesla CEO Musk has been tapped to run the proposed Department of Government Efficiency by Trump.
• Entitlement reform would be needed for the level of cuts Musk has called for, Griffin said Wednesday.

Billionaire Citadel founder Ken Griffin wants to get America's "fiscal house in order" but doesn't believe Elon Musk can do it alone.

Speaking at Wednesday's DealBook conference in New York, Griffin said it's unlikely that Musk, who has become a close advisor of President-elect Donald Trump and is set to co-run the proposed Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, will be able to cut the trillions he has called for without entitlement reform.

"Making cuts in any form or fashion will be very politically unpopular," said Griffin, who was one of the biggest donors to the Republican Party this election but declined to support Trump directly — though he said he voted for the real estate mogul.

Griffin — who paused for a couple of seconds when asked for his opinion about Musk's new task running Doge, prompting scattered laughs from a crowd that included fellow hedge-fund billionaire Dan Loeb and Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan — said the bond market could eventually become unsteady if there isn't a clean-up of the country's spending.

"To make Elon wear the entire burden of that responsibility is preposterous," he said.

Griffin, who lauded Musk's entrepreneurial abilities, also said he hopes the Federal Reserve will remain independent so it can make decisions too unpopular — but necessary — for politicians.

The wide-ranging interview between Griffin and New York Times editor and CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin revealed that the billionaire hedge-fund manager does not think Trump's most explosive economic policies, such as his aggressive tariff proposals, will go into effect.

Last week, Trump posted about implementing tariffs on countries like Brazil and Russia that were considering creating a new currency to reduce the power of the US dollar. "It's not going to happen," he said, bluntly about Trump's recent warning.

Griffin said this is how negotiating is done in real estate, and he believes items like tariffs are a "second-order" issue.

"America is open for business," Griffin said repeatedly, and he pushed that throughout the interview. Gone, he said, is the "paralyzing regulation" of Joe Biden's administration, and executives are "smiling from ear-to-ear."

"For corporate America, it's a better world today than it was before the election," he said.

Griffin's $65 billion firm had a strong November, returning 1.8% in its flagship Wellington fund. Asked if there was still room in the investment industry for smaller funds and individual investors, Griffin said there's always going to be a dominant incumbent in any industry.

"When I started out, I had to go compete with Salomon Brothers and Goldman Sachs," he said.

Now, new launches compete with his firm and peers like Millennium and Point72.

"Your entrepreneurs find a way to make it happen," he said.

• Bernie Sanders says Elon Musk is right about the Defense Department's wasteful spending.
• The DOGE co-leader criticized the Pentagon's F-35 program and $841 billion budget last month.
• "Cool," Musk said in response to Sanders' remarks.

Elon Musk has a new supporter in his push to rein in government spending — Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

"Elon Musk is right," Sanders said of Musk's criticisms of the Defense Department's spending in an X post published Sunday.

"The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It's lost track of billions," Sanders wrote.

In November, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO was tapped to co-lead President-elect Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

To be sure, Musk has yet to outline any specific cuts that the commission plans to make. But he did criticize the Pentagon's F-35 program in a series of X posts published on November 24.

Musk also referenced the Defense Department's $841 billion budget in an op-ed he wrote with his DOGE co-leader, Vivek Ramaswamy, for The Wall Street Journal on November 20.

"The Pentagon recently failed its seventh consecutive audit, suggesting that the agency's leadership has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800 billion is spent," Musk and Ramaswamy wrote.

Sanders echoed the pair's views on Sunday.

"Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud," Sanders wrote in his X post.

"That must change," he added.

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for the Defense Department pointed Business Insider to a press briefing given by the department's CFO, Michael J. McCord, on November 15. During the briefing, McCord said the Pentagon has "a lot of work to do" on its audit performance but is "making progress."

Common ground on military spending aside, Sanders and Musk do have their political differences.

The 83-year-old is the longest-serving independent in Congress, though the progressive politician did run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020.

On Saturday, Sanders released a statement saying that America needed to "defeat the oligarchs and create an economy and government that works for all, not just the few."

"Today, in America, we have a political system that is increasingly controlled by the billionaire class. In the recent elections, just 150 billionaire families spent nearly $2 billion to get their candidates elected," Sanders said in the statement.

Musk, on the other hand, was a major contributor to Trump's 2024 campaign. The billionaire spent just under $119 million on his pro-Trump political action committee, America PAC.

"Cool," Musk said in an X post in response to a New York Post story about Sanders' remarks on defense spending.

Representatives for Sanders and Musk didn't respond to requests for comment from BI.

• Marc Andreessen discussed Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency on Joe Rogan's podcast.
• He criticized the "raw administrative power" of independent federal agencies like the SEC, FTC, and CFPB.
• The investor highlighted Musk's direct business approach as a model for government accountability.

Cut, baby, cut, Marc Andreessen says of Elon Musk's DOGE cost-reduction effort.

"It is time to carve this government back in size and scope," the Silicon Valley investor said during a recent appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast.

Andreessen, who founded the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz with his business partner, Ben Horowitz, is reportedly getting involved with Musk's Department of Government Efficiency and talked about the effort in the interview published Tuesday.

"It's time to take the overall tax load down," Andreessen added.

The investor railed against independent federal agencies such as the Securities Exchange Commission, Federal Trade Commission, and Federal Aviation Administration for scrutinizing industries like crypto, fintech, and drones.

Andreessen also called out the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and said his portfolio companies had multiple founders who had been targeted by the agency.

Established by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the agency was created to oversee the financial industry in 2010 following the financial crisis. It has since drawn criticism from the Republican Party.

It appears Musk shares Andreessen's dislike of the CFPB.

A day after Andreessen's interview with Rogan was published, Musk called to "delete CFPB" in a post on X and said there were too many regulatory agencies with the same purpose.

'What did you get done this week?'

Andreessen also criticized the number of federal workers who had not returned to the office since the pandemic and referenced Musk's approach to his Twitter takeover as a potential example of how federal workers could be held accountable for their productivity under DOGE.

The VC specifically referenced a text exchange that Musk sent then-CEO Parag Agrawal shortly after being appointed to Twitter's board. The exchange was revealed as part of the court battle over Musk's attempt to back out of buying the social network. At the time, Agrawal called out Musk for tweeting about Twitter dying and questioned the disruption his internal distractions were causing.

Musk responded with a series of texts questioning the CEO's productivity and his decision to resign from his board seat.

"What did you get done this week? I'm not joining the board. This is a waste of time. Will make an offer to take Twitter private," Musk said in the texts.

In the aftermath, Musk continued to criticize Twitter's leadership and told former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who took on a role as a mediator for the two, that Agrawal was "moving far too slowly and trying to please people."

The directness of Musk's texts contrasts with the slower pace of many Big Tech companies that can take months or years to meaningfully enact change, Andreessen said.

"Imagine that statement being applied to the government," Andreessen said, referencing Musk's "What did you get done this week?" message.

Musk's direct approach is one he has continued at his AI startup, xAI.

Andreessen referenced an xAI employee's recent post that said Musk recently spent 18 hours at the startup's office during which each employee had five minutes to update the billionaire on what they were working on.

The investor said that while Silicon Valley companies are typically well-run, Musk's in-person chats with every employee show a level of intensity that doesn't come close to the way most of them are operated.

"Every employee had opportunity to be recognized for their effort, every employee had an opportunity to get live feedback from the big boss," Andreessen said.

In a situation like that, he added, "there's no place to hide."

• Donald Trump's new DOGE commission, tasked with cutting spending, has floated laying off federal workers.
• Government employees said they were preparing by networking and freshening their résumés.
• Amid the concerns with DOGE, some employees said there could be benefits to its aims.

Federal employees are reporting mixed feelings about President-elect Donald Trump's new Department of Government Efficiency and its ideas to cut costs by laying off workers and enforcing return-to-office mandates.

Some are worried, some are optimistic, and most are considering their other career options, 10 people who spoke with Business Insider said. Most asked for anonymity for fear of professional repercussions.

"We're just workers. We work in a nonpartisan way," one Department of Health and Human Services employee said, adding that they were nervous, especially because they recently bought a home. "It kind of feels like we're being villainized."

On the other hand, Jesus Soriano, who's been a program director at the National Science Foundation for 13 years and is president of the agency's American Federation of Government Employees union, said that while employees were scared, there were "reasons for optimism with DOGE."

Trump said his picks to lead the unofficial commission, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, "are technologists."

"They have — both of them in their own fields — translated science into products that have tremendous impact on the public and that contribute to America being a preeminent powerhouse," he said.

Musk is the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and other various companies, and Ramaswamy started a tech-focused pharmaceutical company called Roivant Sciences.

In the wake of the DOGE Commission, many government workers said they were updating their résumés, networking more, or assessing new career options — regardless of their political beliefs.

"Everyone is putting their ducks in a row," a Department of Housing and Urban Development administrative worker of 10 years who worked under Trump's first term told BI. "You can't be lackadaisical, regardless that the government may take forever to do something. You better be one step ahead at all times."

While it's still unclear how exactly DOGE would cut government spending, Musk and Ramaswamy have pledged to eliminate some government agencies, which could mean laying off thousands of federal workers, and compel others who have been working from home to return to the office.

The federal government is the largest employer in the US, paying more than 2 million civilian workers. The Departments of Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, and Defense are among the top employers, with workers earning average salaries near $100,000. Just under half of all workers across 24 agencies were telework-eligible as of May 2024, according to an Office of Management and Budget report.

"Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don't want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn't pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home," Musk and Ramaswamy wrote about their cost-cutting plans in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.

Brian Hughes, a Trump-Vance transition spokesperson, told BI the administration "will have a place for people serving in government who are committed to defending the rights of the American people, putting America first, and ensuring the best use of working men and women's tax dollars." He didn't offer any details on cuts.

Soriano, the National Science Foundation program director, said government workers were "still scared." He said five colleagues he'd talked to were actively seeking new jobs or opting to retire.

Increased efficiency is a welcomed idea. In-office mandates, not so much.

Trimming government spending and improving efficiency is an idea often discussed on both sides of the political spectrum.

President Ronald Reagan pursued a similar goal with the Grace Commission, a team of 160 private-sector executives who proposed more than 2,000 cost-cutting measures. President Bill Clinton also attempted to reduce federal spending and improve government efficiency with the National Performance Review, led by federal employees.

The efforts had mixed results. Many proposals from the Grace Commission that relied on congressional acts didn't end up happening, while executive orders were successful in reducing the head count of federal workers. Clinton's panel similarly succeeded in cutting 300,000 federal workers but managed to get only a quarter of proposals that required legislative action through Congress.

An operations manager at the US Postal Service who has worked in the department for 27 years told BI every company had inefficiencies, and "that's what we all strive to decrease."

He has concerns, however, about people stepping in to make suggestions for the Postal Service without having "tribal knowledge" of the department.

"If you're just going to be appointed to this type of commission or committee with no knowledge of what exactly the Postal Service does, then that could potentially be a problem," he said.

DOGE's intent to eliminate remote work is also a concern for some workers. The HUD employee, who'd been working remotely, said return-to-office enforcement would "absolutely" be enough to cause them to resign. They're preparing for layoffs under DOGE by looking at other employment opportunities, and they said their colleagues at HUD were taking similar steps.

Joyce Howell, an attorney at the Environmental Protection Agency — who's been at the agency for more than 31 years and serves as executive vice president of its AFGE union — said the incoming administration had stoked concern about layoffs at the EPA and fears that its mission could be compromised.

"We have town halls once a month, and we've actually broken our Zoom account in terms of the number of people attending," she said of union meetings.

Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in the Journal op-ed that the commission would target more than $500 billion in what they called unauthorized government spending. They said federal employees who were laid off would be offered early retirement. At a town hall in October, Musk said he would consider giving laid-off workers up to two years' severance.

An employee at the Food and Drug Administration said it wasn't that easy: "We're here to support a mission. We have families to feed, and it's not as easy as just quitting our jobs," the FDA employee said.

"We're just normal, everyday people — we're being portrayed as inefficient, lazy people," they added. "It feels like they're coming for us just for their own agenda, not realizing that we're the backbone of the federal government."

Another federal-government lifer said many workers like them — people who'd been there for years — were nervous they might be the first to go. The career tenure of a median federal government worker was 6.5 years in 2024, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, well above the median 3.5 years private workers have spent in their roles.

One senior official at the Commerce Department said they anticipated a civil-servant brain drain. "The scientists are the most concerned," the official said, with those in climate, meteorology, and environmental science particularly worried.

The Department of Education has meanwhile been singled out as an entire agency that could be on the chopping block.

Sheria Smith, the president of the AFGE union at the Department of Education and a civil rights attorney at the agency, said department elimination was "on the lower end of concerns" because it would take time and need to go through Congress.

Rather, being turned into a "Schedule F" workforce, which allows government agencies to reclassify workers and remove certain protections that make them easier to fire, could mean employees who aren't "aligned with the executive wholly" could be laid off based on performance.

And given the widespread denigration of the Education Department and return-to-office threats, people are most likely looking for other work. "I'd be surprised if they weren't," Smith said.

Are you a federal worker willing to share your story? Contact these reporters at [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected].

• Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have plans for DOGE, and Workday sees an opportunity.
• Workday aims to capitalize on federal agencies' shift from on-premises to cloud systems, its CEO said.
• The federal government, the largest US employer, could face layoffs under DOGE's agenda.

As Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy gear up to try to reshape large swaths of the federal government, one big software player sees an opportunity.

Workday, the human-resources-software company that workers love to hate, is embedded in more than half of Fortune 500 companies. The $72 billion company has been building up its government customer base, from Oklahoma's Tulsa County to the US Department of Energy. In 2022, Workday was approved to work with the federal government.

Now that Musk and Ramaswamy's Department of Government Efficiency is set to advise President-elect Donald Trump on rescinding regulations and cutting administrative costs, Workday and other government vendors could stand to benefit.

On Workday's Tuesday earnings call, CEO Carl Eschenbach addressed an analyst's question about how DOGE could impact Workday's business.

Eschenbach said more than 80% of the federal government's HR systems were physically housed on local servers, what's called "on-premises." Companies and organizations have been steadily migrating from on-premises servers to the cloud for cost savings, better security, and efficiency, among other benefits.

"Postelection and with DOGE coming out, people are absolutely looking to drive more economies of scale and more efficiency. And I can tell you supporting these on-premises, antiquated systems is not a way to do that," Eschenbach said.

Eschenbach added that federal agencies were at an "inflection point" and ready to move to the cloud — and Workday has a government-focused product to sell them.

"We think this will only be a tailwind for us as we think about the federal government business going forward," he said.

Workday said in May that it would work with the Department of Energy and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

"These are critical wins for us and it's actually driving demand for us in the federal government as people recognize Workday is really pushing hard into that market," Eschenbach said on Tuesday's call.

In the last quarter, Workday brought in $2.2 billion in revenue — a 16% increase from last year. The company doesn't break out revenue by customer type. Workday's stock is up 14% in the past year.

The company didn't respond to a request for comment sent outside business hours.

Last week, Musk and Ramaswamy named several of DOGE's targets in a Wall Street Journal opinion column: work-from-home arrangements, Planned Parenthood, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and general head count, among others.

"DOGE intends to work with embedded appointees in agencies to identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions," the pair wrote.

The federal government is the largest employer in the US, with a workforce of more than 2 million Americans, so the group's suggestions could have wide-ranging implications.

The Washington Post reported on Sunday that notable Silicon Valley figures — including the Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale, the investor Marc Andreessen, the hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman, and the former Uber CEO turned food-tech entrepreneur Travis Kalanick — had been involved in DOGE's early planning.

• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is set to chair a new subcommittee that works with Elon Musk's DOGE.
• The panel will be tasked with investigating "wasteful" government spending.
• Greene said it would also "expose people who need to be fired."

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is set to get a plum new role next year: chairing a new House panel that will work with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's Department of Government Efficiency.

The Georgia Republican is expected to chair the new Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, which will be housed under the House Oversight Committee, a person familiar with the matter told Business Insider on Thursday. Fox News first reported on the creation of the panel.

The DOGE subcommittee will be tasked with investigating "wasteful" spending, examining ways to reorganize federal agencies and supporting the work of the DOGE commission.

Greene and Rep. James Comer, the chair of the oversight committee, have already met with Ramaswamy and intend to work together, this person said.

"Wasteful government spending must end, and taxpayers deserve to see their money used effectively and efficiently," Comer told Fox News. "I look forward to working with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Elon Musk, and Vivek Ramaswamy to deliver on these goals to make America great again."

Greene told Fox News that the subcommittee "will expose people who need to be fired." She added: "Bureaucrats who don't do their job, fail audits like in the Pentagon, and don't know where billions of dollars are going will be getting a pink slip."

President-elect Donald Trump announced the creation of DOGE earlier this month, naming Musk and Ramaswamy as the co-leads of the new extragovernmental organization. In a joint op-ed on Wednesday, the duo laid out their vision for DOGE in greater detail. They signaled that they would rely heavily on executive actions to carry out their recommended cuts to government spending.

That could include "impoundment," in which Trump could simply refuse to spend congressionally approved funds. Impoundment has been largely illegal since 1974, but Trump and his allies view the law as unconstitutional and have pledged to challenge it in court.

• Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy outlined their vision for sweeping federal budget cuts in an opinion piece.
• DOGE will rely on executive orders and court rulings, instead of Congress, they said.
• They said they'd be "taking aim at" funding for public media and Planned Parenthood.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have outlined their vision for the Department of Government Efficiency in a lengthy op-ed, spelling out how the duo plan to slash government spending.

On Wednesday, Musk and Ramaswamy outlined their vision for DOGE, which Musk previously said would cut $2 trillion from the federal budget.

Their opinion piece, published in the Wall Street Journal, is lengthy and dense, filled with Supreme Court rulings and decades-old statutes. Here are the main takeaways.

DOGE will be staffed by 'small-government crusaders' and work with the Office of Management and Budget.

Since its inception, DOGE has existed as an agency outside of government rather than a department — this way, Musk and Ramaswamy aren't government employees and don't have to divest from their businesses.

The DOGE co-heads re-hash this point in their column, writing that they will "serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees." They are working with Trump's transition team to organize "a lean team of small-government crusaders, including some of the sharpest technical and legal minds in America." DOGE employees will work closely with the Office of Management and Budget, which prepares the president's budget requests for Congress.

Musk and Ramaswamy will be DOGE's main advisors and oversee three categories of reform: "regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings."

DOGE will turn to recent Supreme Court rulings as a guide.

Musk and Ramaswamy wrote that their goal for deep reform will be rooted in two Supreme Court rulings.

The pair cited West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, a 2022 Supreme Court ruling in which the court restricted the agency's ability to regulate carbon emissions, and Loper Bright v. Raimondo, a 2024 ruling where the court overturned Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council (1984). The Chevron decision dictated that federal courts should defer to federal agencies in their interpretation of statutes; in overturning it, the Supreme Court stripped agencies of significant power.

Musk and Ramaswamy said in the opinion piece that the rulings from the court point to regulations that "exceed the authority Congress has granted under the law."

The pair said that rolling back a range of "illicit" regulations would create economic prosperity in the country. And they wrote that the move would be a major step in remedying what they deem to be "executive overreach."

DOGE will rely heavily on executive action to pursue its cost-cutting agenda.

Musk and Ramaswamy make clear that they won't aim to pass new laws in their roles, meaning they won't have to rely on Congress.

According to their opinion piece, DOGE will work with legal experts working at government agencies to use their interpretation of the rulings to identify which regulations to cut. After determining which regulations are wasteful, DOGE will make their recommendations to Trump, who could then take executive action to "pause" certain rules and begin the process to review and reverse them.

DOGE also plans to go after the federal government's procurement process, which agencies use to get goods and services. Musk and Ramaswamy write that many federal contracts haven't been properly investigated and that broad audits of agencies "during a temporary suspension of payments would yield significant savings."

Musk and Ramaswamy explain how they'll reduce the size of the federal workforce.

Musk and Ramaswamy make it clear that by eliminating federal regulations, there should also be "mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy."

The pair stated that DOGE will work with agencies to identify the minimum number of staffers needed for departments to function and still maintain their effectiveness.

"Employees whose positions are eliminated deserve to be treated with respect, and DOGE's goal is to help support their transition into the private sector," they wrote. "The president can use existing laws to give them incentives for early retirement and to make voluntary severance payments to facilitate a graceful exit."

And Musk and Ramaswamy poured cold water on pandemic-era work-from-home policies as they aim to reform the government's finances.

"Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome," the pair wrote.

Musk and Ramaswamy plan to target public media and Planned Parenthood.

To fulfill its promise of saving taxpayer money through executive action, DOGE plans to "take aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended." Though Musk and Ramaswamy don't detail all of the programs they hope to target, the two mention the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Planned Parenthood, along with other "progressive groups."

Congress created the CPB in 1967. It is the single biggest funding source for public radio, television, and online services, largely for local public media stations. Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio each receive some of their funding from the CPB.

Musk and Ramaswamy address critiques about spending goals and executive overreach.

Since DOGE was announced, critics have questioned whether Musk's previously stated goal of cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget is feasible, particularly given their limited power without Congress. In 2024, federal spending reached $6.75 trillion, with a combined 45% of it going to health insurance programs, like Medicare, and Social Security.

Musk has a history of overcoming steep odds in the private sector. Both Tesla and SpaceX have survived near-financial ruin to become wildly successful, partly because Musk has bet on industries others deem too risky to touch.

The co-heads face the critiques head on, writing that any claims of executive overreach are unfounded. Instead, they say they will "be correcting the executive overreach of thousands of regulations promulgated by administrative fiat" by applying their Supreme Court interpretations. According to their stated logic, a future president would need to pass a law to reinstate any regulations that Trump scraps.

Critics have also pointed to the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 as a potential roadblock for the agency; the statute requires the president to spend funds that Congress has appropriated. Musk and Ramaswamy note that Trump has implied that the statute is unconstitutional and predict that the Supreme Court would agree. Regardless of the statute's future, DOGE plans to move forward with its mission.

Musk and Ramaswamy argue that questions about entitlement programs like Medicare "deflects attention from the sheer magnitude of waste, fraud and abuse," but don't specifically address that critique otherwise.

DOGE will end by July 4, 2026.

Musk and Ramaswamy wrote that they expect to "prevail" in their fight to enact sweeping governmental reforms.

And they emphasized that it's their objective for DOGE to be phased out by July 4, 2026.

"There is no better birthday gift to our nation on its 250th anniversary than to deliver a federal government that would make our Founders proud," the DOGE co-heads wrote.

Representatives for Musk and Trump did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment; a representative for Ramaswamy declined the request.

• Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy offered more details on their government efficiency commission.
• They said their plans to cut government spending would include layoffs across federal agencies.
• Impacted workers would be offered early retirement and severance payments.

The leaders of President-elect Donald Trump's government efficiency commission provided more details on how they plan to reduce head count across government agencies.

In an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal Wednesday, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, a former GOP presidential candidate, laid out their vision for a new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

Musk and Ramaswamy said DOGE, working with the Office of Management and Budget and other agencies, would advise Trump on rescinding regulations and cutting administrative costs, which would result in layoffs across federal agencies.

"DOGE intends to work with embedded appointees in agencies to identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions," Musk and Ramaswamy wrote, adding that the number of employees cut should be proportionate to the number of federal regulations that Trump rescinds.

"Employees whose positions are eliminated deserve to be treated with respect, and DOGE's goal is to help support their transition into the private sector," they wrote. "The president can use existing laws to give them incentives for early retirement and to make voluntary severance payments to facilitate a graceful exit."

The two also floated the idea of requiring federal employees to come into the office five days a week, which they argued could lead to "a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don't want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn't pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home."

Musk suggested at a town hall in October that he would consider giving laid-off workers "very long severances" that could amount to two years' pay, saying at the time that "the point is not to be cruel or to have people not be able to pay their mortgage or anything."

Data from the Treasury Department showed that the US spent $6.75 trillion in fiscal year 2024, with the Department of Health and Human Services, the Social Security Administration, and the Department of Defense topping the spending lists. The federal government is the largest employer in the US, with a workforce of over 2 million Americans, so the DOGE commission's suggestions could have wide-ranging implications.

DOGE would target "$500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress," Musk and Ramaswamy wrote, which they said could include nearly $300 million to "progressive groups like Planned Parenthood."

The commission would not have the power to cut spending independently. Changes to many programs, including mandatory ones such as Social Security and Medicare, would have to be made through legislation with congressional approval.

Are you a federal worker with thoughts on DOGE? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected].