The Musk effect

WASHINGTON—When critics attack the Department of Government Efficiency for its chainsaw approach, its supporters respond with a familiar refrain: Just focus on the savings.

When asked by WORLD if DOGE should slow down its recommendations for mass firings, Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., said, “They’re saving money, so keep going.”

DOGE claims to have saved the government $105 billion in its first two months of operation, amounting to roughly $650 per taxpayer. While conservatives in Washington welcome the savings, they are increasingly disagreeing over DOGE’s slash-and-burn tactics and the office’s polarizing leader, billionaire Elon Musk.

Five weeks into Musk’s job at DOGE, his title and authority are not entirely clear. On Feb. 3, the White House said that Musk was a special governmental employee tasked with leading DOGE, formerly known as the U.S. Digital Service. Last month, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Amy Gleason, a health data analyst already with the former Digital Service, is the acting administrator of DOGE. The clarification came the same week that federal Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington asked to hear testimony from whoever runs DOGE pursuant in a case about access to Treasury Department payment systems. Justice Department attorneys said in hearings they were unable to define Musk’s role other than “close adviser to the president.” Gleason was on vacation in Mexico at the time of the announcement.

A special government employee is a legal designation that allows a president to appoint someone to lead or advise on a specific issue. But it is not part of the permanent White House staff, who must disclose their finances and take an oath to the Constitution, even if they do not hold a role requiring Senate confirmation. Historically, presidents have used the position to appoint experts to lead temporary task forces. The designation also comes with a ticking clock. Musk may not work for the administration more than 180 days in a calendar year.

Musk has not defined his role with DOGE except to say on Joe Rogan Experience, a talk show, that he has “an all-access pass, from a security clearance standpoint.” He is the leader in practice if not on paper. Musk opened the first Cabinet meeting with a report on DOGE’s latest actions.

At DOGE’s recommendation, agencies have conducted large-scale firings, especially of probationary employees, federal workers who have been in their roles for less than a year. The Defense Department removed 5,400 probationary employees last week. The Department of Veterans Affairs dismissed more than 1,000 employees, including medical researchers. The National Park Service axed 1,000 new hires but then said it would reinstate roughly 5,000 seasonal jobs that had been rescinded. DOGE has had to backtrack some firings. It recommended purging roughly 2,000 employees from the Energy Department, but then administration officials halted the firing for hundreds of National Nuclear Security Administration researchers.

DOGE has also had to adjust some of its cost-savings estimates. The office’s website listed an $8 million Immigration and Customs Enforcement contract as $8 billion. Another line item claimed to have saved $1.8 billion from a United States Agency for International Development contract, but it triple-counted separate bids on a $655 million contract that had not started yet. During the first Cabinet meeting, Musk said DOGE accidentally canceled an Ebola prevention program but quickly brought it back online. Even many of the canceled contracts are listed as saving $0 on the organization’s website.

“We need to act fast,” Musk said on a recent appearance on Rogan’s show. “If we make a mistake, we’ll reverse it.”

George Washington University professor Casey Burgat says Musk’s public appearances so far make it seem like he is exceeding the bounds of his staff category.

“Every other cabinet secretary in that room had to go through the Senate confirmation process, which includes a lot of disclosures. Elon didn’t go that route, which puts him in this weird gray area of leading a quasi-agency without being a Senate-approved nominee,” Burgat told WORLD.

The speed with which DOGE is acting is also raising concerns among some conservatives. Lucas Saltus is a Department of the Navy employee living in Arlington, Va. He said that return to office orders have made his department less efficient. As a software engineer, he never had a desk at the nearest base to begin with but now must find space every weekday, after sitting in traffic for hours. Saltus said he support’s DOGE’s mission but wishes Musk would confer with command leaders before requiring changes.

“He is a very good businessman, but the government isn’t a business and it doesn’t financially work anything like a business,” Saltus told WORLD at CPAC. “For Tesla or SpaceX, they’re trying to generate profit and can always pivot their position to do that as best as possible. As the government, we have a mission that doesn’t change, especially in the defense of the country. So you have to be careful with prioritization.”

Rick Tyler, a Republican strategist, said Musk might have conflicts of interests because of the large contracts his businesses have with the federal government.

“He could cancel contracts of his competitors,” Tyler told WORLD. “He could cancel regulation that is necessary for his particular businesses. We should have full disclosure, and people should not be able to regulate their own industries.”

While Tyler supports efforts to trim the government, he said Musk is not being transparent. As a special government employee, Musk is not subject to freedom of information requests. When asked about conflicts of interest, President Donald Trump said that Musk will self-report if one arises. Musk said that he does not personally submit contract bids for Tesla or SpaceX and therefore his position as CEO does not conflict with his work on DOGE. Several federal agencies were already investigating Musk’s companies for labor complaints and alleged legal violations. Many of the same agencies have had workforces cut, or the Trump administration has removed inspectors general overseeing the complaints.

Musk’s supporters say that his wealth could insulate him from corruption.

“As rich as he is, I actually don’t think he cares about money because he’s more focused on the results,” said Aaron Gawronsky, an attendee at last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference. “He’s more focused on making his vision of reality, and I trust him with the vision of the United States.”

Others hail Musk as the one who can finally accomplish what lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have promised for decades: reducing the size of the government.

“If someone had told me even six months ago that Elon Musk was going to be the hero to go into the federal government and start trimming some of that bloat, it would have been shocking,” Preston Brashers, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told WORLD. “Elon Musk has founded and run many extremely successful businesses. It seems very likely that he’s going to get us to Mars based off of that engineering mind and that eye for inefficiency. He actually has a lot of skills that you want if you’re going to fix something like the federal government.”

Brashers said that it’s not the first time the government has made a concerted effort to downsize itself. During the Clinton administration, the Republican-majority Congress published the “Contract with America,” which used similar bullet points to DOGE. Then-Speaker Newt Gingrich advocated for federal workforce cuts and budget trimming, but the first main attempt to do so partially contributed to a 21-day government shutdown in 1995. Brashers noted that taxpayers protested cuts back then as well, but then the rest of the decade saw economic growth. He said that while cuts will likely hurt for the next couple of months, fired workers and the government at large will be better off for it.

“Every penny the government spends is ultimately a tax on people,” Brashers said. “There may be a bit of upheaval for now, and people getting laid off will not have new jobs overnight. But in six or nine months from now, most will have new jobs in the private sector, and they’re going to be doing something more productive to their fellow citizens than what they were doing in federal roles.”