MW Why Elon Musk had to drop his 'DOGE' pledge to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget

By Brett Arends

We told you he would months ago, when he made the promise

Two months ago here at MarketWatch, we told you that Elon Musk was talking out of his MAGA hat when he promised to cut "at least $2 trillion" from the $6.75 trillion federal budget.

Now Musk has admitted we were right all along.

In an interview streamed on his social-media platform X, Musk admitted that he won't be cutting $2 trillion from the budget - and that even cutting half as much, or $1 trillion, would be a tall order, or an "epic result."

Never mind that the $2 trillion figure was bandied about widely during the final week of the presidential election campaign and doubtless influenced votes.

Or that, according to Factiva (the news-archive service owned by MarketWatch parent company News Corp $(NWSA)$), the figure has been reported in nearly 3,000 news articles since Musk first made the vow during the Trump rally at Madison Square Garden.

Or that, embarrassingly, Musk has abandoned this target before Donald Trump has even been sworn in as president.

Or that Musk's climbdown is in stark contrast with the big game he was talking during the campaign. Describing government spending as "a room full of targets," he told supporters: "Like, you can't miss. Fire in any direction, and you're going to hit a target."

Some voters may have figured that Musk knew what he was talking about when he made the pledge. After all, he is apparently a business and engineering genius and the world's richest man, with a fortune now exceeding $400 billion. So if he says he can cut $2 trillion, that means something, right?

Seemingly not.

All this was easily verified even at the time. As we reported, two thirds of the $6.75 trillion federal budget, or $4.4 trillion, goes on just five things: Debt interest, defense, Social Security, Medicare and veterans. When you put those aside, everything else in the federal budget - from highways to Medicaid - totaled just $2.35 trillion.

No one was ever cutting $2 trillion from a $2.35 trillion budget.

We reached out to Musk for comment but did not immediately hear back.

It is little surprise that so many in the U.S. remain convinced that the federal government is riddled with trillions of dollars in "waste" and "fraud" and "fat," even though generations of conservative presidents - from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump himself in his first term - have failed to find it.

Total foreign aid, the usual campaign target, totals 0.5% of federal spending.

Illegal immigrants, despite the rhetoric, do not receive Social Security or Medicare, although many pay into both.

Meanwhile, there is already a department of government efficiency, known as the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, whose job is to find waste. While the GAO's estimate of total fraud - $233 billion to $521 billion - is clearly enormous in dollar terms, it represents just 3% to 7% of federal spending. And the GAO's director of forensic audits and investigative services tells MarketWatch that this fraud level is pretty much in line with the private sector.

The $2 trillion figure helped sell a Trump presidency that promised to slash taxes even further. No wonder the national debt, already equal to 100% of gross domestic product, is expected roughly to double again over the next 10 years.

-Brett Arends

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January 09, 2025 12:49 ET (17:49 GMT)

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