Elon Musk, who U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has tapped to oversee a government cost-cutting effort, acknowledged that his declared goal of cutting $2 trillion in spending from the $6.8 trillion federal budget would be a long shot.
“I think if we try for 2 trillion, we’ve got a good shot at getting 1,” Musk, the world’s richest person, said in a discussion on Wednesday with Mark Penn, a political strategist and former pollster. He described the $2 trillion target as a “best-case outcome.”
Trump named Tesla CEO Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to lead an outside task force called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to focus on cutting federal spending and regulations to improve government efficiency.
Achieving Musk’s goal will be challenging given that about two-thirds of existing federal spending goes to programs that Trump has either promised not to cut or would be unable to cut — including the Social Security and Medicare programs for retirees, defense and veterans’ benefits and interest payments on the nation’s growing $36 trillion debt pile.
Trump has begun meeting with congressional Republicans to try to plot a course for his legislative agenda, including tax cuts and a crackdown on illegal immigration, though so far lawmakers have failed to agree on how to move forward.
Source : Reuters
Experts say $200bln bond-buying effort unlikely to significantly lower housing costs. There's scant evidence so…
That has helped at least to put a floor under euro zone bond prices. Euro…
Bank profitability will remain strong this year despite lower interest rates, says S&P. Saudi banks…
The 2026 review of the EU ETS must be anchored in facts and focus on…
Federal Open Market Committee statements typically sound unanimous, but the Committee’s internal debates rarely are.…
Local responses to gender-based violence, with femicide as its most extreme form, remain uneven across…