Musk admits $2 trillion in federal spending cuts unlikely, lowers target to $1 trillion

According to the Washington Post, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, co-leaders of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), will join forces with several Silicon Valley bigwigs to solve the "technical challenges of collecting data on federal employees and programs," a major problem the program aims to solve. Multiple people familiar with the matter said that these consultants include Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman. Last November, Musk and Ramaswamy traveled to Washington, D.C. and Mar-a-Lago to meet with "experienced Washingtonians, legal experts and top tech leaders" to develop plans for the agency. However, the two leaders expressed different views on how much the U.S. federal government should cut spending. Musk previously suggested cutting federal spending by $2 trillion, which accounts for one-third of the total U.S. federal government budget. At the same time, Ramaswamy said he wanted to cut up to 75% of the U.S. federal workforce, and the impact of such a cut on the budget was unclear. However, Musk later walked back his exaggerated remarks, saying in January that a $2 trillion budget cut for the federal government was actually unlikely to be achieved. He called it a "best-case scenario" in a video interview with X, but also said that $1 trillion in budget cuts were "very likely" to be achieved. Despite these differences, based on recent public comments from the two, both parties appear to be in agreement on cutting a large number of federal government employees and several US agencies, including the Department of Education and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), to cut costs. (Decrypt)