Recently from the New York Times an op-ed titled:
“Musk Wants to Cut $2 Trillion in Federal Spending. Is It Possible?”
Basically the NYT’s answer is, “No!” The conclusion of the op-ed states, “This means Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy will not need to win just one political fight to cut $2 trillion, but potentially hundreds or thousands of fights.”
I may be a contrarian, but my money is on Musk and Ramaswamy, and not on the NYT.
A recent op-ed, 11/20/24 in the Wall Street Journal, by Musk and Ramaswamy is quite interesting, and explains some of the various philosophies and tactics that they will use.
I found the following paragraph especially interesting formative:
“Conventional wisdom holds that statutory civil-service protections stop the president or even his political appointees from firing federal workers. The purpose of these protections is to protect employees from political retaliation. But the statute allows for “reductions in force” that don’t target specific employees. The statute further empowers the president to “prescribe rules governing the competitive service.” That power is broad. Previous presidents have used it to amend the civil service rules by executive order, and the Supreme Court has held—in Franklin v. Massachusetts (1992) and Collins v. Yellen (2021) that they weren’t constrained by the Administrative Procedures Act when they did so. With this authority, Mr. Trump can implement any number of “rules governing the competitive service” that would curtail administrative overgrowth, from large-scale firings to relocation of federal agencies out of the Washington area. Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home.”
Again without a second thought I am going with Musk and Ramaswamy’s DOGE over the pessimistic opinion of the New York Times.
11/29/24