Elon Musk's DOGE Takes Control Of Federal Spending

Summary

The NPR Politics Podcast: "Elon Musk's DOGE Takes Control Of Federal Spending"

Release Date: February 4, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of The NPR Politics Podcast, host Tamara Keith delves into the controversial involvement of Elon Musk in federal spending through a newly established entity within the White House known as DOGE. Joined by political analysts Shannon Bond and Bobby Allen, the discussion navigates the complexities of Musk's role, the operational strategies of DOGE, ethical concerns, and the broader implications for federal governance.

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DOGE's Role and Actions

Understanding DOGE's Function

Elon Musk's DOGE is positioned as a special government employee within the White House, aiming to fulfill Musk’s campaign promise to slash $2 trillion in federal spending. Shannon Bond explains:

"DOGE is turning into a unit inside of the federal government... deputies of Musk, who are being dubbed the Doge kids, are going into agencies and ripping out cords and denying civil servants access and sometimes saying they're gonna dismantle entire agencies."
(Shannon Bond, [02:30])

Scope of Influence

DOGE's reach extends across multiple federal agencies, including:

• USAID Shutdown: DOGE is in the process of eliminating the United States Agency for International Development, consolidating it into the State Department. This move has resulted in layoffs and uncertainty within the agency.

• Treasury Department Access: DOGE representatives have gained control over the Treasury Department's payment systems, overseeing trillions in federal expenditures, from Social Security and Medicare benefits to federal contracts and tax returns.

• Office of Personnel Management (OPM): DOGE has taken control of the OPM, giving them access to sensitive personnel files of federal employees.

• General Services Administration (GSA): Focused on government real estate and technology, DOGE aims to implement AI-driven strategies to streamline government operations and reduce spending.

Christy highlights the aggressive expansion of DOGE:

"It's just at this point, it feels like there is very little that Doge is sort of not touching or expressing interest in touching as they pursue this goal that Musk has laid out of drastically cutting federal spending."
(Christy, [06:07])

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Conflict of Interest and Ethics

Special Government Employee Status

Musk holds the title of a special government employee, a designation that imposes limitations such as a maximum of 130 working days per year and adherence to federal ethics rules. Shannon Bond elaborates on the potential conflicts:

"Elon is in a tricky situation as a special government employee because he controls six major companies... there are so many ways in which his private company interest could run headlong into a federal government investigation."
(Shannon Bond, [02:42])

Ethical Quagmires

The overlap between Musk's vast business interests and his federal role raises significant ethical questions. Bond notes:

"This is a potential ethical quagmire. And it's really unlike anything we've ever seen before."
(Shannon Bond, [03:37])

President Trump's response to these concerns has been dismissive, as he stated:

"If there's a conflict, then we won't let him get near it. But he does have a good natural instinct."
(Shannon Bond, [03:47])

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Musk's Philosophy on Government Spending and Regulations

Cutting Federal Spending

Musk's approach to federal spending mirrors his business strategies, focusing on efficiency and reducing waste. Shannon Bond explains Musk's long-standing opposition to government interference:

"He has been complaining about investigations, government lawsuits, fines. He sees regulations as just kind of getting in the way of growing his businesses."
(Shannon Bond, [08:39])

Regulatory Overhaul

During a chat with Senators Joni Ernst and Mike Lee, Musk outlined his vision for federal regulations:

"Regulations... should be default Gone. Not default there. Default gone. And if it turns out that we missed the mark on a regulation, always add it back in."
(Shannon Bond & Christy, [07:41-07:58])

Tamara Keith underscores the impracticality of Musk's regulatory dismantling:

"Regulations are such a convoluted and complicated process... and to get rid of them is similarly convoluted and challenging. It's basically just not possible to wipe it out to zero."
(Tamara Keith, [07:58-08:05])

Christy further contrasts Musk's business-driven approach with the mission-driven nature of federal agencies:

"The end goals of the government are not the same thing as the end goals of a business... agencies are very much bound by laws."
(Christy, [09:34-10:10])

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Legal Challenges and Political Implications

Legality of DOGE's Actions

Shannon Bond raises concerns about the legality of DOGE's maneuvers, predicting significant judicial scrutiny:

"There are already a number of lawsuits that are challenging the legality of some of Musk's Doge moves... courts are going to decide that."
(Shannon Bond, [12:43])

Congressional Oversight

There is debate over whether DOGE's actions require congressional approval, with Democrats asserting that shutting down agencies necessitates legislative action:

"What he's trying to do is testing whether he can shut down a government agency without congressional action."
(Christy, [13:34])

The episode also touches on the political alliance between Musk and President Trump, questioning the longevity and strength of their partnership:

"These are two people who both love to be in the spotlight and love to claim credit."
(Christy, [12:34])

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Conclusion

Elon Musk's involvement through DOGE represents an unprecedented intersection of private enterprise and federal governance, raising profound questions about ethics, legality, and the future of federal agencies. As DOGE continues to exert influence across various departments, the potential for significant overhaul in federal spending practices remains a contentious and evolving issue.

Tamara Keith wraps up with updates on other political developments, underscoring the dynamic nature of Washington’s political landscape.

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Notable Quotes

• Shannon Bond (02:30): "It's creating all sorts of mayhem and confusion and just raising all sorts of legal and ethical questions."

• Shannon Bond (02:42): "Elon is in a tricky situation as a special government employee because he controls six major companies... so government watchdog types are looking at Elon and saying, he's a special government employee. He runs six companies. I mean, what a potential ethical quagmire."

• Shannon Bond (07:43): "Basically should be default Gone. Not default there. Default gone."

• Shannon Bond (11:10): "Many are pointing to Musk's Twitter takeover and his slash and burn strategies... he's trying to take that exact strategy and apply it to the federal government."

• Shannon Bond (12:43): "There are already a number of lawsuits that are challenging the legality of some of Musk's Doge moves... courts are going to decide that."

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This comprehensive summary captures the essence of the podcast episode, providing insights into Elon Musk's DOGE entity, its impact on federal spending, ethical dilemmas, and the broader political ramifications. It serves as a valuable resource for listeners seeking to understand the multifaceted issues surrounding Musk's unprecedented role in government operations.

Transcript

[Christy]

Hi. This is Christy, and this is Indigo Lily. This is Joshua, and we're enjoying s'mores around the campfire at our first ever family camping trip.

[Tamara Keith]

This podcast was recorded at 1:08pm Eastern Time on Tuesday, February 4th.

[Christy]

Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will probably still be cleaning marshmallow out of everyone's hair and clothes, and it will have been worth it. Okay, Enjoy the show. Enjoy the show.

[Tamara Keith]

Indigo Lily. Oh, Jasper. Okay, these kids are too cute. And now I want s'mores.

[Christy]

That would be the pick me up we all need right now.

[Tamara Keith]

Exactly. Hey, there. It's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And today we are joined by our friend Shannon Bond, who covers power and influence, and Bobby Allen, who covers tech. Thank you both for joining us.

[Shannon Bond]

Thanks for having me.

[Christy]

Glad to be here, Tam.

[Tamara Keith]

Yeah. And you have been reporting on Elon Musk. As a reminder, on the campaign trail, he promised that if Trump won, he would slash $2 trillion of federal spending. Now he's trying to keep that promise with an entity within the White House called doge. After some questions about his role, the White House said yesterday that Musk is a spot special government employee. So, Bobby, let's start with the basics. What does that title mean, and what is he doing?

[Shannon Bond]

Right, So a special government employee is a temporary federal worker who can't work more than 130 days in a year. Elon's not being paid for this. Not that he needs money. He's the richest man in the world. But, you know, he is subject to certain ethics rules. But what is he doing? So I think taking a step back from that, I think we should just sort of reimagine how we think of Doge, because when we first started talking about doge, everyone thought it was gonna be kind of like this blue ribbon committee that was gonna make recommendation to Congress, and Congress would be like, oh, yeah, maybe we could cut spending there. Cut spending here. Instead, it is turning into a unit inside of the federal government. These deputies of Musk, who are being dubbed the Doge kids, are going into agencies and ripping out cords and denying civil servants access and sometimes saying they're gonna dismantle entire agencies. It's creating all sorts of mayhem and confusion and just raising all sorts of legal and ethical questions.

[Tamara Keith]

Let's just quickly address this question of conflict of interest, because the special government employee status does not get them out of the rules of being a federal employee.

[Shannon Bond]

Yeah, that. That's right. And so I Talked to a couple former top ethics lawyers in the White House under different administrations, and they said, you know, Elon is in a tricky situation as a special government employee because he controls six major companies, including SpaceX, the rocket company, Tesla, the electric vehicle company. There are just so many ways in which his private company interest could run headlong into a federal government investigation. Or maybe he's getting subsidies from some part of the federal government, and it's by law, and it's very clear he cannot be involved in any matter that could have a predictable effect on his financial interests, and that means one of his six companies. So government watchdog types are looking at Elon and saying, he's a special government employee. He runs six companies. I mean, what a potential ethical quagmire. And it's really unlike anything we've ever seen before.

[Tamara Keith]

President Trump was asked about that yesterday in the Oval Office, and he was somewhat dismissive of the idea that Musk could run afoul of ethics problems.

[Shannon Bond]

And I'm impressed because he's running, obviously a big company, has nothing to do. If there's a conflict, then we won't let him get near it. But he does have a good natural instinct. He's got a team of very talented people. We're trying to shrink government, and he can probably shrink it as well as anybody else else, if not better.

[Tamara Keith]

Yeah. So, Shannon, let's get into the nitty gritty detail a little bit about what DOGE is doing, what they've done so far, where they are.

[Christy]

You know, this is a team that has moved incredibly quickly. And, you know, despite the name, it is not its own department. It is basically an office within the White House. But it is very rapidly moving out across agencies like, across the federal government. Elon Musk says that Doge is currently in the process of shutting down the U.S. agency for International Development, USAID. You know, that agency has had tons of people who have been kind of put on leave, and now there's threats that they're just going to shut it down entirely, fold it into the State Department. DOGE representatives have also gained access to the Treasury Department's payment system, which, you know, is basically the government's checkbook. This is a system that processes trillions of dollars in spending every year. It's everything from Social Security benefits and Medicare benefits to, you know, payments to federal contractors, to people's tax returns. DOGE has also essentially kind of taken control of the Office of Personnel Management, which is effectively the federal government's HR department. And there they have, you know, access to, you know, highly sensitive information about, you know, personnel files of, you know, federal workers. He's. Musk and Doge have taken a lot of interest in the General Services Administration, which is the government agency that basically handles, like, real estate and, again, office space. Office space, but also handles kind of technology throughout the government. And that's an area where Musk has really focused this idea that, you know, government technology could be run better. There's been floated these ideas. They could be using AI to sort of look at activity and spending across the government and. And, you know, rein it in. So it's. It's just at this point, it feels like there is very little that Doge is sort of not touching or expressing interest in touching as they pursue this goal that Musk has has laid out of drastically cutting federal spending.

[Tamara Keith]

Is this essentially a technology takeover? Is this. I guess I'm trying to wrap my. My head around what it is that they are trying to do with all of this access.

[Christy]

I mean, that. That is kind of the big question, and that is the question that is raising a lot of these concerns, right? Like, there's all kinds of questions about what the purpose of this access is going to be. And there's such a lack of transparency around what Doge is doing, which is ironic because Musk has also described sort of the need for this as. That there's not enough transparency in terms of where government spending is going. But, you know, we just don't really have a sense, besides his public statements, about what it is they're trying to do.

[Tamara Keith]

And he is making a lot of public statements.

[Christy]

He has made a lot of public statements. He held a long audio chat on his X platform late Sunday night with Senators Joni Ernst and Mike Lee, two Republicans, sort of talking about Doge's accomplishments so far, specifically talking about these plans to shut down usaid and generally just sort of framing this as being about really feeling there's government overreach. It's very ideological, the framing that Musk is putting on this. He feels that. That these agencies, again, these congressionally mandated agencies who are doing the business of government, are unelected bureaucrats who are not accountable to the people. And he thinks there's too much regulation and he wants to get rid of it. Regulations, in particular, the rules that agencies put in place. That is something that Musk has long bristled at. Here is how he described his vision for federal regulations during this chat on Sunday.

[Shannon Bond]

I think we need to go and.

[Christy]

Do wholesale removal of regulations, like regulations.

[Shannon Bond]

Basically should be default Gone. Default gone. Not default there. Default gone. And if it turns out that we.

[Christy]

Missed the mark on a regulation, always.

[Shannon Bond]

Add it back in. These regulations are added willy nilly all the time.

[Tamara Keith]

Regulations are such a convoluted and complicated process that involve months of public comment and rounds and rounds. And to get rid of them is similarly convoluted and challenging. And you it's basically just not possible to wipe it out to zero. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, more on if Musk can actually do the things he's trying to do. And we're back. And Bobby, I wanted to ask you, why is Elon Musk so passionate about cutting federal spending?

[Shannon Bond]

It's something that's been a passion of his for a very long time because he has so many companies that are often going toe to toe with the federal government. I mean, he has for years been complaining about investigations, government lawsuits, fines. He sees regulations as just kind of getting in the way of growing his businesses. And this really came to a head during the COVID 19 pandemic when shutdown orders forced his Tesla plants to close. And it's something that he was defying for a while and went to with government officials over. And his sort of philosophy that government regulations are by default wrong. That belief has just been growing from there.

[Tamara Keith]

Yeah. And Shannon, he is, as we talked about before, trying to run the government like a business, but the government just isn't a business. There are so many rules that exist in law.

[Christy]

Right. Sort of. I think the way he's presenting this is, you know, he's coming in, there's too much red tape. There's too much waste. Right. And fraud and abuse in government spending. And now look like, you know, the government is massive. Like there is bloat and waste. And in some cases, you know, when we're talking about things like payments, you know, there is sort of some level of fraud. You know, there are of course, also kind of guardrails and checks against that. But when we're talking about the kind of the volume we're talking about that. That is true. And there have long been calls, right. I mean, especially from Republicans about, you know, reining in spending. But what Musk is doing here, he's, you know, bringing a much different sort of way of trying to accomplish this. You know, he does seem to be seeing this very much like one of his businesses. You know, where he kind of goes in, you know, it's all hands and duck all the time. Right. It's like, working 24 hours a day, you know, it's like, driving people as hard as they can, you know, in the pursuit of, you know, innovation and maximizing profit. But, you know, I think that is a very different goal for a business than, say, you know, an agency that is responsible for, you know, processing student loans or for, you know, making sure that people have access to, like, Medicare and Medicaid coverage. Right. Like, the end goals of the government are not the same thing as the end goals of a business. And I think that's what seems so shocking to so many people in Musk's approach, because this is just not the type of approach that you take inside agencies. And also, agencies are, like, very much bound by laws. Right. And rules and processes around how they make decisions. You know, government moves quite slowly, and it can't really move at the speed that Musk seems to want it to.

[Shannon Bond]

And, Jen, when there's a blueprint that works, Musk likes repeating it. I mean, many are pointing to Musk's Twitter takeover and his slash and burn strategies there. I mean, within the first couple weeks when he acquired Twitter, he got rid of, like, half the staff. Right. He cut contracts that were really significant. He stopped paying real estate at a number of Twitter offices. So many are saying he's trying to take that exact strategy and apply it to the federal government. But he's in for a surprise, which is. It's not that easy to do.

[Tamara Keith]

Yeah. So I want to go back to what Elon Musk is trying to do in the federal government. We still aren't totally clear on how far he's going to go or how much he's going to succeed. One question has been, is he going to rub President Trump the wrong way at some point, or does he have Trump's blessing for all of this? Thus far, the answer seems to be that he has Trump's blessing.

[Christy]

I mean, he certainly claims he does. Right. So when he was talking about the shutdown of usaid, you know, Musk said that, you know, he had asked Trump several times about it, and, you know, Trump was totally on board. You know, I think Trump has kind of indicated that he generally supports this, but it's not really clear how into the details he is. I think there has been this question, like, you know, since essentially, you know, Elon threw his lot in with Trump, you know, how long this relationship would last. These are two people who both love to be in the spotlight and love to claim credit.

[Tamara Keith]

Well, let's close with this, which is not a small question, but Is what Musk is trying to do legal?

[Shannon Bond]

Right? I think that is going to be a major question. There's already a number of lawsuits that are challenging the legality of some of Musk's Doge moves. You have some Democrats suggesting that, throwing around phrases and words like coup and constitutional crisis. And this has a lot of people in Washington. Really, really, really. And is it legal? I think courts are going to decide that. I think there's many parts of what he is doing that is just so unprecedented. Nobody really knows how he's getting away with it, but with President Trump's blessing. And Trump does seem to say, hey, I'm keeping an eye on him. There are guardrails, but then there's other reporting that suggests that Musk is operating with a level of autonomy that nobody around Trump can seem to control. So we're in a pretty interesting situation here.

[Christy]

And I would just add here, you know, there is this question of what he's doing. Like, you know, does it. Can he actually shut down a government agency? Right. Or does it take an act of Congress to do that? You know, Democrats in Congress are saying, like, no, this would take congressional action, but he's certainly testing that. And, you know, ultimately, Congress is controlled by Republicans. Right. So, you know, the question is, are they at any point going to sort of reassert their power here or are they going to go along with this, you know, sort of this idea that what Musk is doing is carrying out, you know, the Trump administration's goals?

[Tamara Keith]

All right, well, thank you both so much for joining us.

[Christy]

Thanks for having us.

[Shannon Bond]

Thanks for having me.

[Tamara Keith]

And before we go, a quick update on something that we've been following here on the pod. Robert F. Kennedy Jr's nomination to be Health and Human Services Secretary made it out of committee this morning. There was some suspense up until the last minute about how at least one committee Republican would vote, but in the end, all Republicans on the committee voted for Kennedy and all Democrats voted against his nomination. Based on the votes today and math, we expect that he will be confirmed by the full Senate. And Tulsi Gabbard has the votes to get out of committee as well. She is the nominee for Director of National Intelligence. So it seems to be full steam ahead for President Trump's Cabinet picks. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics.