MAGA entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, tasked with running a government efficiency body alongside Elon Musk by president-elect by Donald Trump, said Wednesday that he’s ready to “slash and burn” America’s bureaucracy.
Trump announced Tuesday that Ramaswamy and Musk will lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DoGE). Despite its name, the body will operate outside government, providing counsel to the Office of Management and Budget.
Appearing on Fox News’ Hannity, the former Republican presidential candidate—who dropped out and endorsed Trump—forcefully argued that he and MAGA billionaire Musk will take a chainsaw to what he implied was a sprawling deep state of “unelected bureaucrats.”
ADVERTISEMENT
“It’s no secret that there is a fourth branch of government: the administrative state that makes most of the rules, that creates a federal bureaucracy that’s hampering most of our economy,” he told the show’s host, Sean Hannity. “So what do we want to do? We want to go and slash and burn that bureaucracy to help Americans, stimulate the economy and to restore self governance.”
During the campaign, Musk floated the idea of cutting $2 trillion in federal spending while stumping for Trump.
When Hannity mistakenly cited the figure as “$2 billion.” Ramaswamy corrected him stepped in to affirm that ambitious and demented goal: “I want to be clear about the scale. We’re not thinking small, we’re thinking big.”
Experts have argued that Musk’s vision is practically unworkable and could have catastrophic consequences for the U.S. economy.
“The idea that one can cut $2 trillion in wasteful and unnecessary programs is absolutely absurd,” Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the center-right Manhattan Institute, told the Washington Post. “There’s a long history of the fantasy that one smart businessman will just identify trillions in waste, but that’s just not how it works.”
Paul Mortimer-Lee, an economist and research fellow at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research called the plan “crazy nuts.”
“The proposed cuts are $2 trillion, or 8 percent of GDP,” he added, in a tweet. “Cutting that amount from spending would send the economy into a tailspin and send unemployment soaring.”
The U.S. federal government spent $6.75 trillion in the latest fiscal year, which ended in September 2024. Of that, $882 billion went towards paying down debt, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget—not servicing the debt would result in a government default that would derail markets.
That leaves big ticket items like Social Security and Medicare, which accounted for $1.4 billion and $874 billion in spending in the last fiscal year, for the chopping block.
Ramaswamy and Musk have been tasked with finishing their mission, which Trump called “potentially ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time,” by July 4, 2026, in advance of that year’s midterm elections when the Republican Party’s control of Congress will be subject to vote.
Hannity’s thoughts on Ramaswamy and Musk’s plan: “I agree.”
