Elon Musk's budget crusade could cause a constitutional clash in Trump's second term

WASHINGTON — When Elon Musk first suggested a new effort to cut the size of government, Donald Trump didn't seem to take it seriously. His eventual name for the idea sounded like a joke too. It would be called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a reference to an online meme featuring a surprised-looking dog from Japan.

But now that Trump has won the election, Musk's fantasy is becoming reality, with the potential to spark a constitutional clash over the balance of power in Washington.

Trump put Musk, the world's richest man, and Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate, in charge of the new department, which is really an outside advisory committee that will work with people inside the government to reduce spending and regulations.

This week, Musk and Ramaswamy said they would encourage Trump to make cuts by refusing to spend money allocated by Congress, a process known as impounding. The proposal goes against a 1974 law intended to prevent future presidents from following in the footsteps of Richard Nixon, who held back funding that he didn't like.

''We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington," Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal. ''We expect to prevail. Now is the moment for decisive action."

Trump has already suggested taking such a big step, saying last year that he would ''use the president's long-recognized impoundment power to squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings.''

It would be a dramatic attempt to expand his powers, when he already will have the benefit of a sympathetic Republican-controlled Congress and a conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court, and it could swiftly become one of the most closely watched legal fights of his second administration.

''He might get away with it," said William Galston, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. ''Congress' power of the purse will turn into an advisory opinion.''

Musk and Ramaswamy have started laying out their plans

Right now, plans for the Department of Government Efficiency are still coming into focus. The nascent organization has put out a call for ''super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.'' Applicants are encouraged to submit their resumes through X, the social media company that Musk owns.

In the Wall Street Journal, Musk and Ramaswamy provided the most detailed look yet at how they would operate and where they could cut. Some are longtime Republican targets, such as $535 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Other plans are more ambitious and could reshape the federal government. The two wrote that they would ''identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions,'' leading to ''mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy.''

Civil service protections wouldn't apply, they argue, because they wouldn't be targeting specific people for political purposes.

Some employees could choose ''voluntary severance payments to facilitate a graceful exit.'' But others would be encouraged to quit by mandating that they show up at the office five days a week, ending pandemic-era flexibility about remote work. The requirement ''would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome.''

Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said such cutbacks would harm services for Americans who rely on the federal government, and he suggested that Musk and Ramaswamy were in over their heads.

''I don't think they're even remotely qualified to perform those duties," he said. "That's my main concern.''

Kelley said his union, which represents 750,000 employees for the federal government and the city of Washington, D.C., was ready to fight attempts to slash the workforce.

''We've been here, we've heard this kind of rhetoric before," he said. "And we are prepared.''

Federal regulations would be targeted for elimination

There was no mention in the Wall Street Journal of Musk's previously stated goal of cutting $2 trillion from the budget, which is nearly a third of total annual spending. Nor did they write about ''Schedule F,'' a potential plan to reclassify federal employees to make them easier to fire. Ramaswamy once described the idea as the ''mass deportation of federal bureaucrats out of Washington, D.C.''

However, Musk and Ramaswamy said they would reduce regulations that they describe as excessive. They wrote that their department ''will work with legal experts embedded in government agencies, aided by advanced technology," to review regulations that run counter to two recent Supreme Court decisions that were intended to limit federal rulemaking authority.

Musk and Ramaswamy said Trump could ''immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission.''

Chris Edwards, an expert on budget issues at the Cato Institute, said many Republicans have promised to reduce the size and role of government over the years, often to little effect. Sometimes it feels like every budget item and tax provision, no matter how obscure, has people dedicated to its preservation, turning attempts at cuts into political battles of attrition.

''Presidents always seem to have higher priorities," he said. ''A lot of it falls to the wayside.''

Although DOGE is scheduled to finish its work by July 4, 2026, Edwards said Musk and Ramaswamy should move faster to capitalize on momentum from Trump's election victory.

''Will it just collect dust on a shelf, or will it be put into effect?" Edwards said. "That all depends on Trump and where he is at that point in time.''

Ramaswamy said in an online video that they're planning regular ''Dogecasts'' to keep the public updated on their work, which he described as ''a once-in-a-generation project'' to eliminate ''waste, fraud and abuse.''

''However bad you think it is, it's probably worse,'' he said.

Musk and Ramaswamy will have allies in Congress

House Republicans are expected to put Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Trump ally from Georgia, in charge of a subcommittee to work with DOGE, according to two people with knowledge of the plans who were not authorized to discuss them publicly. Greene and Rep. James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee, have already met with Ramaswamy, the two people said.

Musk brought up the idea for DOGE while broadcasting a conversation with Trump on X during the campaign.

''I think we need a government efficiency commission to say like, ‘Hey, where are we spending money that's sensible. Where is it not sensible?''' Musk said.

Musk returned to the topic twice, volunteering his services by saying ''I'd be happy to help out on such a commission.''

''I'd love it,'' Trump replied, describing Musk as ''the greatest cutter.''

Musk has his own incentives to push this initiative forward. His companies, including SpaceX and Tesla, have billions of dollars in government contracts and face oversight from government regulators.

After spending an estimated $200 million to support Trump's candidacy, he's poised to have expansive influence over the next administration. Trump even went to Texas earlier this week to watch SpaceX test its largest rocket.

DOGE will have an ally in Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who has railed against federal spending for years. He recently told Fox News that he sent ''2,000 pages of waste that can be cut'' to Musk and Ramaswamy.

''I'm all in and will do anything I can to help them," Paul said.