How much can DOGE do?

Elon Musk and Donald Trump aim to cut as much as $2 trillion in federal spending. It'll be even harder than it sounds.

- GEOFF COLVIN

ELON MUSK has a new job doing something he knows a great deal about: firing people. Lots of people. Now he's about to test his axing skills on the greatest downsizing challenge in American history.

Musk is co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a nongovernmental group formed in November by then-President-elect Trump to cut back government regulations, dismiss unneeded workers, and save money.

Musk has said DOGE could cut “at least $2 trillion” from the $6.75 trillion federal budget. Musk’s partner is Vivek Ramaswamy, a former biotech entrepreneur and candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Together they have rallied tech-industry luminaries to pitch ideas for rooting out cumbersome rules and eliminating waste: Venture capital titan Marc Andreessen described himself on a recent podcast as an “unpaid intern” for DOGE.

DOGE’s overall ambition is staggering; its leaders’ most specific rhetoric, however, has focused on slashing jobs. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Musk and Ramaswamy wrote that they anticipate “mass headcount reductions across the federal bureaucracy,” which they said would be a primary tool for cutting costs. Ramaswamy has suggested firing 75% of federal employees.

If that’s the goal, Musk looks like the ideal man for the job. He has sacked significant numbers of workers at SpaceX and Tesla—he’s CEO of both. For sheer exuberant terminating, nothing can match his performance at Twitter, since renamed X. When he bought the company in 2022 he began mass layoffs almost immediately, firing thousands of Twitter’s 8,000 workers overnight. Some got the news by email. Others could only infer they were dismissed when they couldn’t log into the internal computer system. A few were even fired by accident and had to be brought back. Musk later said he had reduced staff by about 80%.