After months of scuttlebutt about Elon Musk possibly working with Donald Trump after the election, the former president confirmed the chatter in early September. The conspiratorial billionaire, the Republican declared, would help lead a “government efficiency commission” that would, among other things, cut federal spending.
The panel, the GOP candidate boasted, would save taxpayers “trillions of dollars.”
Nearly two months later, Trump is still talking about this as if it were a serious idea. The Washington Post reported:
Donald Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Tuesday that billionaire Elon Musk, a prominent ally and megadonor to Trump, is a ‘great cost cutter’ who could help the federal government dramatically reduce spending. ‘Nobody’s going to feel it,’ Trump claimed, noting that Musk has given a goal of cutting $2 trillion from the budget.
At this point, we could talk at length about the fact that Musk has no meaningful experience in auditing. We could also note that the billionaire has no background in federal budgeting or appropriations (except for receiving taxpayer money to give one of his businesses a boost).
We could even spend some time asking why, if there’s such vast waste and abuse in government spending, Trump, during his four years in the White House, made no meaningful effort to address the issue. (Somehow, we’re also supposed to believe that Musk will succeed where GOP-led congressional budget committees failed.)
But for now, let’s instead focus on the idea that Americans wouldn’t even notice after Musk and Trump cut $2 trillion from the budget.
The world’s wealthiest man has said largely the opposite. In fact, as my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones noted, Musk appears to have conceded that the budget cuts would impose real “hardship” on much of the country.
But his preferred candidate apparently doesn’t see it that way. “Nobody’s going to feel it,” Trump told Hannity.
I’m mindful of the fact that the former president has never familiarized himself with the basics of federal budgetary policy, and he’s never even been especially good at arithmetic, but it’s worth reviewing some easy-to-understand details. The Washington Post had a good report on this, published before Trump sat down with Hannity:
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In the 2024 fiscal year, the U.S. government spent more than $6.75 trillion, according to the Treasury Department. For Musk to reach his target, particularly in a single year, his review would need to find a way to eliminate about one-third of all federal spending.
The article added that slashing the budget that steeply would require “decimating an array of government services, including food, health care and housing aid — and it could erode funding for programs that lawmakers in both parties say they want to protect, from defense to Social Security.”
Trump has been categorical in saying that he wouldn’t touch social insurance programs such as Medicare and Social Security, while also vowing not to cut spending on national defense or veterans’ benefits.
If one is inclined to believe those assurances, the result is unambiguous: Take all of the money the federal government spends, subtract Social Security, Medicare, the military, veterans’ benefits and interest on the national debt, and you’re left with roughly $2 trillion.
According to Trump, Musk intends to cut … roughly $2 trillion.
As Kevin Drum summarized, “So Elon is claiming we should literally zero out the entire rest of the federal budget. Everything. The FBI, national parks, food stamps, Medicaid, education, NASA, the EPA, farm support, the NIH, all federal R&D grants, embassies worldwide, the FAA, the Department of Justice, the VA, the weather service, the border patrol, etc. etc. Everything.”
If Trump genuinely believes this could happen and no one would “feel it,” he shouldn’t even be a candidate for public office.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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