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.
Wherever he cut, you can safely assume it will only hit the people at the bottom, not those at the top.
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?
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.
I’m shocked, SHOCKED by this revelation!
It’s all going to be healthcare / social safety nets, and it’s going to be dwarfed by the tax cuts Trump gives people.
Those two clowns couldn’t find their own asses in a dark room with both hands and a flashlight.
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.
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)
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.
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
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.
Musk’s earlier target, dismissed as unrealistic by experts, had included the entire discretionary budget of $1.7 trillion.
FFS! There’s probably TODDLERS who know more about how the government works than Musk! 🤦
I’ve always said there were 4 types of people (besides average)
- Genius that knows they are a genius
- The Genius that doesn’t know they are a genius
- The idiot that knows they are an idiot
- The idiot that thinks they are a genius
The most dangerous one, and the one you don’t ever want to work for is #4. That’s where Musk is.
Oh please, you’re not even going to get $100 billion without stepping on some toes in the Military-Industrial complex, and that’s going to make you some lifelong political enemies.
Oh that’s not what he meant at all.
He meant slashing social security and Medicare. Obviously rich people aren’t going to feel the pinch.
It’s because they were told they can’t cut VA, SSI or Medicare, I promise.
The rich assholes always think they can just cut healthcare and retirement payouts but politicians know they will never get re-elected if it happens on their watch. The old people who rely on this shit are the only ones voting anyway.
The second trillion will be found when DOGE Block 3 rolls out, and Elon’s gonna need … $5 billion dollars for DOGE Block 2 and 3.
(DOGE Block 2 will find the first trillion, after DOGE Block 1 is later revised down to 750 billion)
We did this exercise as a civic learning experience in 9th year government/social studies classes. The teacher had us go through a mock (simplified) Federal budget and decide which line items to cut to achieve a “balanced budget” with debt reduction.
The problem is largely intractable for reasons that become obvious even to middleschool kids. Do you completely cut popular things like the space program? Gut entitlement spending? Massively increase taxes across all brackets? Reduce the military or infrastructure spending to laughable levels? All of those things are very unpopular but that is what it would really take to tackle the problem.
You tax the 1% until they’re the 10% then shove that money into infrastructure and welfare. Then you sit back and watch the American Exceptionalism machine go brrrr again just like the 50’s
Problem is, if the goal is to greatly reduce or eliminate the debt, you could confiscate 100% of the 1%s wealth and it would barely make a dent.
This is absolutely false. The top 1% in the US control 50 TRILLION dollars. More than enough to go around with plenty to spare for a rainy day.
Never fear rich people and corporations - Trump is still going to do another $2T tax cut regardless.
This doesn’t look good for Elon. Lucky for him that he’s the president.
Doesn’t matter his fan base will eat it up
He has a fan base?
Yes he does. Right now they are all virtually MAGA as well. They believe Leon can do no wrong and believe that all the MAGAs are going to buy Tesla now.
Yup. It keeps him from falling over from all of the blowing.
Who’s blowing whom?
Yes. Leon often prices merch at $69.
Exactly.
First day on the Internet?
Yes I’m just learning about this guy. Doesn’t seem like the type of bloke who would have fans.
I wish I could have lived in your world these past 10 years. I mean that (mostly) sincerely.
I kind of wish he could have lived out his life in that world.
