Elon Musk: DOGE Aims to Finish $1 Trillion in Cuts by End of May

Musk is a special government employee, a classification for temporary federal workers that means they’re only supposed to work 130 days out of the year in their roles.

He was asked during the interview whether or not he’ll stay longer, to which he indicated for the first time that he wouldn’t; “I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by $1 trillion within that timeframe,” he said.

Among DOGE’s “greatest hits” includes identifying $20 billion in taxpayer funds that the Biden administration knew was being wasted to give to political appointees, which they rushed to distribute before Inauguration Day - discovering that federal employee retirements are processed manually in a limestone mine in Pennsylvania, employing over 700 workers underground to handle about 10,000 applications per month, stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes, with delays exacerbated by a slow elevator - and uncovering USAID spent $20 million to create a version of "Sesame Street" in Iraq, among thousands of others. 

In addition to heading DOGE, Musk is also the CEO of Tesla, owner and CTO of X (Twitter), owner of the Boring Company, founder of Neuralink, and co-founder of OpenAI. At their peak valuations, the combined values of these companies exceeded $2 trillion.