Vivek Ramaswamy wants to shut the FBI with Elon Musk. Here’s what they’ll need to succeed
The FBI should be closed down and 1.5 million government workers sacked under Donald Trump’s new cost-cutting department.
That is the view of Vivek Ramaswamy, who has been appointed to lead it alongside the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.
Mr Ramaswamy – whose catchphrase has become “shut it down!” – said on the campaign trail that he also wants a crusade against big government at the Department of Education, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and foreign aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
His views, expressed as a loyal surrogate for Mr Trump in the run up to the election, may be at the extreme end of what is possible at the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Indeed, shutting down an entire federal agency would likely require congressional approval.
But Mr Ramaswamy will at least now have the power to shape the priorities of the new department, which has been built from scratch to cut red tape and bureaucracy in as little as two years.
The new agency will operate outside of government and provide recommendations to the White House on how to slash regulation and cut huge chunks from the almost $7 trillion federal budget.
It was the brainchild of Mr Musk, the tech billionaire who has become one of Mr Trump’s closest advisers, who had been pitching the idea of a cost-cutting commission on the campaign trail.
The president-elect has given the two men, who he described as “two formidable Americans”, until July 4 2026 – the 250th anniversary of Independence Day – to deliver a report containing their findings.
In his announcement, Mr Trump said the body would drive “drastic change” by making proposals on “large scale structural reform”. The recommendations would push the government to take a more “entrepreneurial approach” by focusing on federal bureaucracies and agencies, as well as slashing red tape and spending.
Mr Trump has already said he wants to abolish the Department of Education, and leave states in control of schooling, and to decimate what he terms the “deep state” – career federal employees he says are clandestinely pursuing their own agendas.
Generally speaking, large budgetary actions are the remit of Congress. They can take advice from outside panels like the proposed efficiency panel, or disregard it. This may clash with Mr Ramaswamy’s claims he can shut down departments using executive orders through Mr Trump.
In an effort to be transparent, Musk has said DOGE will post its “actions” for public comment:
All actions of the Department of Government Efficiency will be posted online for maximum transparency.
Anytime the public thinks we are cutting something important or not cutting something wasteful, just let us know!
We will also have a leaderboard for most insanely dumb… https://t.co/1c0bAlxmY0— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2024
He also mentioned a list of “dumb” spending, which he noted would be “extremely entertaining”.
Under the current budget, the highest-spending departments are Health and Human Services, the Social Security Administration, and the Treasury.
Social Security accounted for $1.46 trillion of the spending, health accounted for $912 billion, and Medicare made up $874 billion of government spending over the past year.
For clues on how Musk and co may go about slashing federal budgets some are looking to Ronald Reagan’s Grace Commission
It was made up of about 150 business leaders reviewing spending across the government, who produced 2,500 recommendations.
“Most of the recommendations, especially those requiring legislation from Congress, were never implemented,” the Reagan Library said.
In his first term in office Mr Trump signed an executive order to “eliminate or reorganise unnecessary federal agencies” but failed to close some 19 he had his eyes on.
Shrinking big government
The full scope and mechanics of DOGE is still being decided, and it is also not known how the commission will be funded, raising further questions. The Federal Advisory Committee Act does not require advisory bodies to pay their members.
Some have already suggested there is irony in an efficiency department having two people – Musk and Mr Ramaswamy – doing one job.
Mr Ramaswamy, a billionaire pharmaceutical entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate, campaigned on a platform to shrink the size of the American government.
He said he would use executive orders to shut agencies, and in the case of the FBI he wanted to re-allocate part of its $11.4 billion budget to the Secret Service and Defence Intelligence Agency.
“Shut it down!” became a key campaign slogan for the businessman-turned-conservative influencer, who dropped out of the Republican primaries to endorse Mr Trump.
Woke Inc, a 2021 book by Mr Ramaswamy, denounced business strategies being dictated by climate change and social justice concerns in a hint of other targets for savings.
Mr Ramaswamy’s proposal to shut down the FBI is likely to find favour with his boss.
The investigators raided the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort in August 2022 as part of a probe into withheld classified documents. It has been reported that Melania Trump turned down a traditional post-election meeting with the first lady, Jill Biden, because of her anger over seeing their South Florida home ransacked during the search.
And like the raid on the 1920s palace, Mr Ramaswamy has said “we will not go gently” in an indication of how the financier and Mr Musk will approach their new task.
On Mr Musk’s agenda are $2 trillion in budget cuts – just under a third of the US government’s $6.75 trillion spend.
“Your money is being wasted, and the Department of Government Efficiency is going to fix that,” he told the Madison Square Garden rally for Mr Trump in New York.
“We’re going to get the government off your back and out of your pocketbook.”
The Tesla founder’s fingerprints are all over the project, down to its abbreviation, DOGE, the same name as the meme-themed crypto currency he promotes.
The low-cost crypto has jumped in price by 150 per cent in response to the news.
Mr Musk’s involvement will, however, spook some people given his lucrative government contracts, including for rockets, satellites and other space operations.
He became incredibly close to Mr Trump ahead of the Republican’s election victory, hosting him on X, using the social media platform as a campaign mouthpiece and running the ground campaign in the swing state of Pennsylvania.
The tech mogul has a history of slash and burn, having sacked about 3,700 of Twitter’s 7,500 staff when he took over the website in 2022, saying it was the most effective way to cut costs after his $44 billion acquisition.
Under Mr Musk’s plan, the US government would cut the numbers of some 400 agencies and bureaucracies to 99.
He has also claimed the interest bill on government debt, which was $950 billion last year, was “not sustainable”.
But critics have cast doubt on whether the Trump-supporting duo will be able to get close to the $2 trillion in budget cuts promised.
Scope for savings limited
Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary, told the Economic Club of New York that they would be lucky to find just a tenth of that in savings because the scope of government waste is limited.
Cutting aid to Ukraine would save roughly $175 billion, the figure approved by Congress since the start of Russia’s invasion almost three years ago.
Washington has provided Israel with about $310 billion since the state’s founding in 1948.
Agencies that face the chop, including the Department of Education ($238 billion) and IRS ($12 billion), would also fail to make a serious dent in the budget.
Any major savings would also likely have to be funnelled into other government agencies or departments taking over the work.
“It’s just mathematically impossible to find $2 trillion,” Glenn Hubbard, a former chairman of the US Council of Economic Advisers, also told the club.
Marc Goldwein, a senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told CNN that DOGE would have to target key spending areas, such as social security, Medicare and defence, if it was to prove successful.
He said schemes like this one were “often an excuse to do nothing” by Republicans promising to save money on the campaign trail.
Mr Trump made similar promises ahead of his first term but did little to deliver on the campaign pledge.
The talents of Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy will be tested to the maximum if they are to finally make a difference.
