Over the past few months, Elon Musk has worked his way back into the inner circle of Donald Trump — a circle he once left over climate change concerns, back in a different time. Now, despite Trump’s apparent personal dislike of Musk, it seems the former President has big plans for the world’s richest man in a future administration: Setting Musk in charge of massive cuts to government spending, totaling in the trillions of dollars.
Earlier this week, Trump came out in favor of a commission to audit government spending, with the goal of offsetting trillions in tax cuts by simply spending trillions less. The math sort of almost works out, if you don’t look at it too hard, but it would mean leaving Elon Musk in charge of deciding which government programs stay and which go. From the Washington Post:
Trump’s advisers have discussed the commission for months, and Musk has publicly expressed interest in it on X, the social media platform he owns. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, formally expressed his support during a speech here.
“This commission will develop an action plan to totally eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months,” Trump said, adding that the new commission would save “trillions of dollars.” Budget experts have said it is possible a commission could identify tens of billions or possibly hundreds of billions of dollars in government spending cuts but that it is not credible to imagine the commission cutting trillions of dollars without severely affecting federal services.
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Now, the growing ties between Musk and Trump are set to be cemented through a governing body that would probably put Musk at the center of U.S. policymaking, if Trump wins a second term. Despite potential conflicts of interest with his sprawling business empire, Musk would either chair or help lead an independent commission that would comb through thousands of federal programs and formally recommend which ones to cut, according to the plan long discussed by Trump and many of his top advisers. Cuts to government spending would probably need congressional approval, but cuts to government regulations could often be at least attempted by Trump unilaterally, should he win the 2024 election.
This would be a move that fits right in Musk’s wheelhouse, after he purchased Twitter and immediately cut 80 percent of the site’s staff. This has led to widespread technical problems on the site, a series of outages, and a surge in hate speech thanks to cuts to content moderation, as well as the platform’s unilateral ban in Brazil. Users have run from Twitter in droves following the changes, but what happens when those changes are made to something that can’t be fled?
Musk’s general plan to cost-cutting appears to be simply working fewer people harder, without concern for burnout or even the basic functionality of the service he’s having them make. The possibility of this approach being taken to the very function of our government systems — things like roads — is harrowing to say the least. Our infrastructure is garbage enough as it is.