Musk eyes US$1 trillion US spending cut, walking back earlier goal

Elon Musk, who US president-elect Donald Trump has tapped to oversee a government cost-cutting effort, acknowledged that his declared goal of cutting US$2 trillion in spending from the US$6.8 trillion federal budget would be a long shot.

“I think if we try for 2 trillion, we’ve got a good shot at getting 1,” Musk, the world’s richest person, said in a discussion on Wednesday with Mark Penn, a political strategist and former pollster. He described the US$2 trillion target as a “best-case outcome”.

Trump named Tesla CEO Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to lead an outside task force called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to focus on cutting federal spending and regulations to improve government efficiency.

Achieving Musk’s goal will be challenging given that about two-thirds of existing federal spending goes to programmes that Trump has either promised not to cut or would be unable to cut – including the Social Security and Medicare programmes for retirees, defence and veterans’ benefits and interest payments on the nation’s growing US$36 trillion debt pile.

Trump has begun meeting with congressional Republicans to try to plot a course for his legislative agenda, including tax cuts and a crackdown on illegal immigration, though so far lawmakers have failed to agree on how to move forward.