By Joe Light

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is planning to step back next month from DOGE, the federal cost-cutting operation that he leads for President Donald Trump. But the Department of Government Efficiency's narrative is too important to Trump's legislative agenda for it to fall apart completely.

Musk, on Tesla's earnings call on Tuesday, said his "time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly" and that he viewed the work of setting up DOGE as finished.

The billionaire also faces a practical deadline. As a "special government employee," Musk serve only 130 days in a 365-day period, a limit he could reach this summer depending on how many days he did federal work.

Losing Musk would be a big blow to DOGE, whose team has tried to cut tens of thousands of federal employees through buyouts , deferred resignations, layoffs, and the attempted dismantling of agencies such as U.S. Agency for International Development. The allure of working with Musk was a major reason some DOGE employees signed up in the first place.

Musk's status as the world's richest man with direct access to Trump also allowed him to drive cuts even over the objections of cabinet secretaries. Some federal judges had pushed back on DOGE's cuts, describing them as probably illegal.

Without Musk at the helm, DOGE's mission could move over to Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said Raymond James policy analyst Ed Mills.

If that happens, Mills said, it's possible that efforts to layoff employees are more successful.

"Usually the way of getting lasting change in D.C. is through more methodical approaches than the approach that was taken by Elon Musk," said Mills.

The White House didn't respond to a request for comment.

Another reason DOGE probably won't fall by the wayside is because of how slashing the budget f its into Trump's broader legislative agenda.

By year's end, Republicans in Congress plan to pass a bill to extend -- and possibly expand -- the 2017 tax cuts that Trump signed into law during his first term. To proceed on a party-line vote, the president would need to keep practically all GOP lawmakers on board, including deficit hawks such as those in the House Freedom Caucus.

As a practical matter, the contracts and federal employees have saved little in the context of the nearly $7 trillion federal budget.

Musk, at a cabinet meeting this month, projected that the effort would save $150 billion in the fiscal year that ends next September, compared with the $1 trillion he had targeted earlier this year. Most of the federal government's expenses come from entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security -- not from the federal workforce.

But as a political matter, DOGE gave at least some Republicans cover to point to its cost cutting as reason to justify their votes for of more tax cuts; official budget scorers show that the tax cuts could balloon deficits further.

"In DOGE we trust," said budget hawk Rep. Tom McClintock (R., Calif.) on the House floor earlier this month before voting for a resolution to move the tax-bill process forward.

"This is all interconnected," said Mills, the analyst. "You can't separate DOGE from other parts of the DOGE agenda."

Write to Joe Light at joe.light@barrons.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

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April 23, 2025 13:05 ET (17:05 GMT)

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