Summary

Elon Musk, co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency under Donald Trump’s advisory team, revised his claim of finding $2 trillion in federal budget cuts to a “best-case outcome” of $1 trillion.

Musk’s earlier target, dismissed as unrealistic by experts, had included the entire discretionary budget of $1.7 trillion.

While Musk and co-lead Vivek Ramaswamy plan to recommend cuts, specifics remain unclear.

Experts warn savings may require targeting mandatory programs like Medicaid, potentially causing hardships.

  • @[email protected]
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    22 minutes ago

    $2 Trillion was more than the discretionary budget of the US. It literally couldn’t be done.

    Which is why it was a stupid promise and literally anyone with any expertise could tell you that. Which shows you how unserious Musk is about this.

    Now that he cut the promise in half and it’s still politically impossible but not literally impossible, I reiterate my request…say how you plan to do it. Give us a rough idea what programs are being cut, even the easiest 20%.

    By having the conversation about the number alone, we’re buying his political premise. The money is not there for no reason, these are democratically popular government programs, that’s why they exist. So which popular programs are you getting rid of to save this money?

  • @[email protected]
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    18 minutes ago

    of course you can’t you stupid fuck.

    fucking troglodyte pretends he’s iron man when he can’t do basic arithmetic.

  • @[email protected]
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    124 hours ago

    Can we take a moment to acknowledge a few billionaires made their own government department, and people are just rolling with it?

    They’re a random private company. Why are we just letting that fact slide???

    • tb_
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      140 minutes ago

      Because the media is owned by that same billionaire class

  • @[email protected]
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    65 hours ago

    Seriously what an unexpected outcome…

    The one trillion difference needs to be paid back from his salary and a potential salary claw back for this underperformance.

    • @[email protected]
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      34 hours ago

      I think he isn’t getting a salary, apart from whatever gains he reaps by removing roadblocks for his companies.

  • @[email protected]
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    66 hours ago

    And Trump won’t bring down grocery prices. I really wish Americans were smarter. It’s going to be a rough ride. At least I’m not going to have to subscribe to the NYT to see the obituary that I want to.

  • @[email protected]
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    37 hours ago

    It’ll be 2 million, and way less than the amount the DOGE department manages to embezzle itself.

  • @[email protected]
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    2614 hours ago

    Wherever he cut, you can safely assume it will only hit the people at the bottom, not those at the top.

    • @[email protected]
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      34 hours ago

      It will hit whatever annoys him, his companies and that extends to everybody who kisses his ring sufficiently.

      But yes, social and worker protections probably match that criteria.

  • @[email protected]
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    2616 hours ago

    i’m actually kind of shocked he admitted this. isn’t his usual strategy to promise super unrealistic things, not deliver, and then make the same promise the next year?

    • @[email protected]
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      26 hours ago

      Indeed, but I bet he isn’t used to hide things in the public. This is a federal budget, not yet another of his corporations. I bet he knows the very best accountants but that’s just different.

  • @[email protected]
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    2418 hours ago

    If he cuts anything it’ll be support for middle class and poor people and itll be jack shit, it will fuck everything up and it will be touted by clowns as a success.

  • @[email protected]
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    1661 day ago

    Anyone who actually believed they would find $2 trillion was an idiot, the rest of us knew they’d just cut the things they hate, bump the subsidies that favor them and their friends, and call it a day.

    • @[email protected]
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      311 hours ago

      I expect them to privatize and then somehow claim they cut the budget because they are paying a private company instead of running whole departments themselves (govt)

    • @[email protected]
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      4724 hours ago

      Your comment will age poorly when Trump’s tarrifs lead to a collapsing economy and he prints money like mad to solve it, resulting in hyper-inflation letting President Musk keep his election promise.

    • @[email protected]
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      2923 hours ago

      The funny thing is…it’s not like their voters would care if they lied. They could literally say “We cut the budget by $17 trillion by making sure the trans kids don’t get surgeries!” And their voters would fucking cheer.

      They wouldn’t look deep enough to actually care what they cut.

      So the question is why even make this announcement? I’m guessing it’s a distraction from something else.

      • @[email protected]
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        414 hours ago

        Not even there. DoD is ~$840B and DHS another sixty. Not even one trillion in the entire US security apparatus, but they were going to so easily find twice that. It was always pure nonsense.