Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have grand ambitions for their supercharged government consultancy.
But there’s comparatively less value for these two un-elected business guys to answer foundational questions about what we as a society should value. They’ve talked about balancing the budget. But doing that would require building consensus on broad tax and spending priorities — a completely separate undertaking. After all, the government does not exist to be efficient. It should seek efficiency as a means to achieve its goals.
And it’s unclear why Musk and Ramaswamy are qualified to set those goals.
In fact, President-elect Donald Trump himself seems to have a narrower view of their role, one that is focused on targeted cuts. This week he effectively promised that voters would not have to make tough sacrifices for the sake of efficiency.
“We’re looking to save maybe $2 trillion, and it’ll have no impact — actually it’ll make life better — but it’ll have no impact on people,” he told reporters about DOGE on Monday. “We will never cut Social Security.”
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