‘I think so,’ the Tesla CEO said in response to a question about DOGE being extended. ‘It’s up to the president.’
Tech billionaire Elon Musk said that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has not been as effective as he would like but noted it may continue for the remainder of the Trump administration.
In an interview with Axios on Wednesday, the Tesla CEO said that DOGE was going to end on July 4, 2026, but that it may go until the end of 2028, which would line up with the end of President Donald Trump’s term. An order issued by Trump on Jan. 20 said that the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization “shall terminate” on July 4 of next year.
“I think so,” he said in response to a question about DOGE being extended. “It’s up to the president.”
Musk said that DOGE has so far cut about $160 billion in federal spending, noting that the cuts are not as effective as he would have liked.
“In the grand scheme of things, I think we’ve been effective. Not as effective as I like … but we’ve made progress,” he told the outlet.
“There’s a long way to go. It’s pretty difficult. … It’s like: How much pain is the Cabinet and Congress willing to take? It can be done. But it requires dealing with a lot of complaints.”
Due to his status as a special government employee, Musk has to leave the government within 130 days of taking up his post. House Democrats last month sent a letter to Musk reminding him that he has to leave the administration by May 30, while Musk himself has said his time with DOGE will be dropping this month.
More details emerged about Musk’s time in the administration after White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told the New York Post earlier this week that the Tesla chief executive isn’t physically working at the White House as much as he was before.
“He’s not out of it altogether. He’s just not physically present as much as he was,” Wiles said of Musk. “The people that are doing this work are here doing good things and paying attention to the details. He’ll be stepping back a little, but he’s certainly not abandoning it. And his people are definitely not.”
When speaking in a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Musk said that he would likely scale down his work with DOGE to one or two days per week.
“I’m willing to continue on average, one to two days a week, which probably means coming to D.C. every other week for three days, type of thing,” he said.
Earlier this month, Musk told Tesla investors that in May, he will be allocating “far more” of his time to Tesla, “now that the major work of establishing the Department of Government Efficiency is done.” The comment came as Tesla posted lower-than-expected net income and revenue for the first quarter of 2025.
However, he stipulated that he’ll continue to back DOGE “to make sure that the waste and fraud that we stop does not come roaring back.”
In early April, Musk told a crowd in Wisconsin that due to his work in the government, Tesla’s stock had declined significantly. He also said that his “Tesla stock and the stock of everyone who holds Tesla has gone … roughly in half,” noting, “It’s a big deal.”
Since the start of this year, Tesla’s shares have declined by roughly 23 percent, although the company’s stock is up about 60 percent year-over-year and stands at $289 as of Thursday morning’s trading.