Summary
Elon Musk, co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency under Donald Trump’s advisory team, revised his claim of finding $2 trillion in federal budget cuts to a “best-case outcome” of $1 trillion.
Musk’s earlier target, dismissed as unrealistic by experts, had included the entire discretionary budget of $1.7 trillion.
While Musk and co-lead Vivek Ramaswamy plan to recommend cuts, specifics remain unclear.
Experts warn savings may require targeting mandatory programs like Medicaid, potentially causing hardships.
If they go after Medicaid or Medicare it might bring more attention to how fucked up insurance is for Americans. I don’t want them to be empowered to make any suggestions, but this might just bring a tense situation to a head.
$2 Trillion was more than the discretionary budget of the US. It literally couldn’t be done.
Which is why it was a stupid promise and literally anyone with any expertise could tell you that. Which shows you how unserious Musk is about this.
Now that he cut the promise in half and it’s still politically impossible but not literally impossible, I reiterate my request…say how you plan to do it. Give us a rough idea what programs are being cut, even the easiest 20%.
By having the conversation about the number alone, we’re buying his political premise. The money is not there for no reason, these are democratically popular government programs, that’s why they exist. So which popular programs are you getting rid of to save this money?
of course you can’t you stupid fuck.
fucking troglodyte pretends he’s iron man when he can’t do basic arithmetic.
Likely because he refuses to put his own stuff under that microscope
Can we take a moment to acknowledge a few billionaires made their own government department, and people are just rolling with it?
They’re a random private company. Why are we just letting that fact slide???
Because the media is owned by that same billionaire class
Man who lies endlessly caught lying again. More at 7.
Seriously what an unexpected outcome…
The one trillion difference needs to be paid back from his salary and a potential salary claw back for this underperformance.
I think he isn’t getting a salary, apart from whatever gains he reaps by removing roadblocks for his companies.
Elon is such a dumbass.
Edit: I’m sorry, *President Elon is such a dumbass.
People made a big deal about Michelle Obama missing Jimmy Carter’s funeral. Why wasn’t President Elon there? Hmmm. Why isn’t that being covered?
I want to join truth social just to call out “president Elon”
And Trump won’t bring down grocery prices. I really wish Americans were smarter. It’s going to be a rough ride. At least I’m not going to have to subscribe to the NYT to see the obituary that I want to.
It’ll be 2 million, and way less than the amount the DOGE department manages to embezzle itself.
Wherever he cut, you can safely assume it will only hit the people at the bottom, not those at the top.
It will hit whatever annoys him, his companies and that extends to everybody who kisses his ring sufficiently.
But yes, social and worker protections probably match that criteria.
i’m actually kind of shocked he admitted this. isn’t his usual strategy to promise super unrealistic things, not deliver, and then make the same promise the next year?
Indeed, but I bet he isn’t used to hide things in the public. This is a federal budget, not yet another of his corporations. I bet he knows the very best accountants but that’s just different.
If he cuts anything it’ll be support for middle class and poor people and itll be jack shit, it will fuck everything up and it will be touted by clowns as a success.
Anyone who actually believed they would find $2 trillion was an idiot, the rest of us knew they’d just cut the things they hate, bump the subsidies that favor them and their friends, and call it a day.
I expect them to privatize and then somehow claim they cut the budget because they are paying a private company instead of running whole departments themselves (govt)
Your comment will age poorly when Trump’s tarrifs lead to a collapsing economy and he prints money like mad to solve it, resulting in hyper-inflation letting President Musk keep his election promise.
Wondering how that connects as I didn’t mention tarrifs?
After hyperinflation, Musk will easily cut $100T from the budget, making your claim that only an idiot would believe he could find $2T in cuts laughable.
Aha, well played!
Makes me glad I don’t hold dollars.
Yeah maybe it’s time to buy some gold
Gold is a good option, and I have some, but I also have some Monero.
Starts thinking of all his old pc equipment How much gold is in this stuff
Not much
The funny thing is…it’s not like their voters would care if they lied. They could literally say “We cut the budget by $17 trillion by making sure the trans kids don’t get surgeries!” And their voters would fucking cheer.
They wouldn’t look deep enough to actually care what they cut.
So the question is why even make this announcement? I’m guessing it’s a distraction from something else.
Surely it’s essy to find $2tr in the Homeland Security/ military budget?
Not even there. DoD is ~$840B and DHS another sixty. Not even one trillion in the entire US security apparatus, but they were going to so easily find twice that. It was always pure nonsense.
Remember when he landed people on Mars in 2022?
Remember when Tesla released fully autonomous self driving cars?
That was way back in 2014, hard to imagine a world without them now! It’s how I take my cybercab to the hyperloop to get to work!
Monorail!
Mono… d’oh!
Were you sent here by the devil?
Can I get a video of the before and after claims? Gotta make the presentation super simple in this day and age.
