Elon, Vivek and Milton Friedman on how to ‘Drain the Swamp’

by WorldTribune Staff, November 20, 2024 Real World News

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramswamy said President-elect Donald Trump chose them to head up the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which will “Drain the Swamp” by cutting the federal behemoth “down to size.”

And they plan to do it by July 4, 2026, the nation’s 250th anniversary.

Elon Musk, left, and Vivek Ramaswamy will head up DOGE.

Musk also gave a shout out to Milton Friedman (see below), who detailed decades ago how bloated the U.S. government had become.

“Milton Friedman was the best,” Musk wrote in a post on X, sharing an interview the Nobel laureate gave during which he went through a list of federal agencies he felt could be abolished as well as those he felt were important.

In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Musk and Ramaswamy wrote:

“The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic, and politicians have abetted it for too long. That’s why we’re doing things differently. We are entrepreneurs, not politicians. We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees. Unlike government commissions or advisory committees, we won’t just write reports or cut ribbons. We’ll cut costs.”

The DOGE duo pointed to three major areas of reform they will focus on:

  • Regulatory rescissions,
  • Administrative reductions, and
  • Cost savings

“We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws. Our North Star for reform will be the U.S. Constitution, with a focus on two critical Supreme Court rulings issued during President Biden’s tenure.”

Those rulings are West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022) and Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024).

In the EPA ruling, the Supreme Court held that agencies can’t impose regulations dealing with major economic or policy questions unless Congress specifically authorizes them to do so.

In the Loper Bright ruling, the court overturned the Chevron doctrine and held that federal courts should no longer defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of the law or their own rule-making authority.

“Together, these cases suggest that a plethora of current federal regulations exceed the authority Congress has granted under the law,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote.

DOGE will identify a list of regulations that it will present to Trump, “who can, by executive action, immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission. This would liberate individuals and businesses from illicit regulations never passed by Congress and stimulate the U.S. economy,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote.

Timely: Defund Fake News

DOGE also will work with federal agencies to “identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions. The number of federal employees to cut should be at least proportionate to the number of federal regulations that are nullified: Not only are fewer employees required to enforce fewer regulations, but the agency would produce fewer regulations once its scope of authority is properly limited.”

As for cost savings, Musk and Ramaswamy aid DOGE will “aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood.”

Musk and Ramaswamy concluded:

“With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government. We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington. We expect to prevail. Now is the moment for decisive action. Our top goal for DOGE is to eliminate the need for its existence by July 4, 2026 — the expiration date we have set for our project. There is no better birthday gift to our nation on its 250th anniversary than to deliver a federal government that would make our Founders proud.”


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