Will Trump and Musk unleash a small government revolution?

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Donald Trump and Elon Musk made for an odd couple on the campaign trail, but after Trump’s resounding victory over Kamala Harris in Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election, it’s their next act that has everyone talking.

While many believe that Musk’s companies, most prominently Tesla Inc. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX), will reap some benefits from his support for Trump, the idea that Musk could play a direct role in the incoming administration as a cost-cutting czar is also fuelling speculation.

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During the campaign, Musk was floated as the potential head of a Department of Government Efficiency — the acronym, DOGE, is a nod to the cryptocurrency Musk once championed. At a November Trump rally, Musk boasted that he could cut “at least” US$2 trillion from the US$6.5 trillion budget.

He’s a character, he’s a special guy, he’s a super genius

Donald Trump on Elon Musk

The prospect of one the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, known to have a ruthless streak when it comes to cost controls, taking a hatchet to U.S. government spending is enthralling to fiscal conservatives even if it doesn’t accomplish everything they want, according to Vincent Geloso, a senior economist at the Montreal Economics Institute, a conservative think–tank.

“They’re reading what their heart’s desire is … and so they’re excited over this,” Geloso said. “(As they see it) this is going to be massive deregulation, plus in whatever we can touch politically, in terms of spending, we’re going to be able to cut some spending at the same time.”

While fiscal conservatives often tout cost-cutting and efficiencies, trimming popular government programs can spark a backlash: spending on the military and social security, for example, are often seen as sacred cows resistent to deep cuts and reform. Even Trump has pledged not to touch social security.

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“Without touching Medicare, Medicaid, social security or military spending, there is very little of the federal budget left to cut,” said Matthew Lebo, a visiting professor at McGill University’s department of political science. “Cutting those programs would be very unpopular.”

But the appointment of a political outsider like Musk could help Trump tackle his agenda, particularly in the areas of regulation and reining in government bureaucracy.

“He’s positioned himself as a maverick that (believes) you have to break the rules in order to move forward,” said Don Abelson, academic director of Wilson College of Leadership and Civic Engagement at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont. “That’s music to Trump’s ears. And I could see someone like Musk going into particular departments and cleaning house.”

Musk is likely to be an ally of Trump’s when it comes to lightening the regulatory burden on companies, having already crossed swords with regulators from Europe to South America on behalf of his companies. He has also proven to be unafraid of taking on unions to justify deep cuts at his companies.

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At a September summit in California, Musk touched on some of these themes when asked about the United States government, calling a potential Trump victory a once-in-a lifetime opportunity for deregulation and reducing Washington’s excesses.

“Besides the regulations, America is also going bankrupt extremely quickly and everyone seems to be whistling past the graveyard,” he said, adding that interest payments on the national debt now exceed the US$1-trillion defense budget.

A certain amount of what Musk might recommend could be accomplished through executive orders that sidestep Congress, something Trump used freely during his first term in office from 2016 to 2020, Abelson said. But there are other avenues as well that might be eased if the Republicans end up with both control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

“You could see Musk advising Trump on these different issues — competitiveness, entrepreneurship, government waste — and then making sure that the Congressional Budget Office is populated with people who’d be prepared (to carry out the) recommendations,” said Abelson.

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Musk has already given hints about how far he’s willing to go and where he might start.

At the September conference in Los Angeles, Musk scoffed at the suggestion that a government overhaul could involve cuts of two or three per cent at certain departments.

“I think we need to do more than that,” he said.

As for what departments he might tackle, he has made public comments about the Internal Revenue Service.

According to reports on a telephone town hall meeting last month, Musk said it makes “no sense at all” that the United States has vast numbers of people to “audit and chase after Americans for taxes while failing to secure (the southern) border.”

For his part, Trump has expressed a desire to go further than even one Washington-based think-tank with a libertarian agenda. The Cato Institute says the federal government should stop sending states funds for students in kindergarten to grade 12 and cut college aid by 50 per cent, but Trump wants to eliminate the federal Department of Education entirely.

He’s also pledged to move 100,000 federal jobs out of Washington and replace many others with loyalists. To back up his plan as more than a threat, he pointed to his move of The Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters to Colorado in 2020, during his first term in office. The Biden administration reversed that decision, which had led to an “exodus of leadership,” according to a report in ProPublica last month.

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While such wholesale shakeups might not be easy, there are methods a U.S. president can use to get around Congress other than executive orders, if need be, such as refusing to spend money that has been committed to certain purposes or departments, said Abelson, the McMaster professor.

“This really goes back to the Nixon years, but there were ways that presidents were able to impound funds that had been authorized by Congress to be spent, but the president refused to spend the money,” he said. “So there’s been a long debate over the years about whether or not that was constitutional or not … but again, they’re always ways to obstruct the flow of money in government.”

But there are also likely to be some epic challenges.

It’s easy to envision clashes with organized labour. The United Auto Workers union has already filed a federal unfair labour practice charge against Trump after he praised Musk for firing workers who went on strike. Trump made the comments during a live chat with Musk in August on his social media platform X (formerly Twitter).

Under U.S. federal law, firing workers who threaten to strike is illegal. Trump didn’t name the company, but it is widely understood that he was talking about Twitter, which Musk took over 2022, installing himself as CEO. He then dumped some 6,000 of the platform’s workers, or around 80 per cent of staff, after his policies led scores of advertisers (and millions in revenue) to bail. Musk is also co-founder and CEO of satellite company SpaceX, which has defense contracts with the U.S. government, and CEO of electric car maker Tesla.

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Musk’s affinity for Trump and other largely right-wing politicians and commentators who fell afoul of Twitter’s community standards policies — and were booted from the platform — was seen as a key reason he found financial backers to purchase, then purge, the social media giant.

In Trump’s 2024 presidential election run, Musk backed him with his words and his finances, contributing more than US$100 million to a super PAC dedicated to getting Trump re-elected.

In September, Trump said if he won re-election he would “create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government,” a plan first floated by Musk during their livestreamed conversation on X in August, and said the world’s richest person had agreed to head the task force.

During the livestream, Musk said such a commission that could ensure “taxpayer’s money … is spent in a good way.”

Musk responded to tweet about a Washington Post report that Trump was considering him for a role in auditing U.S. agencies and identifying government programs to cut by saying he “can’t wait” and that there is “a lot of waste and needless regulation in government that needs to go.”

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And if Musk spent much of the campaign singing Trump’s virtues, it seems clear the feeling is mutual.

After securing enough electoral college votes this week to return to the White House, Trump responded to an audience member calling out Musk’s name by saying, “Let me tell you we have a new star … a star is born, Elon.”

“He’s a character, he’s a special guy, he’s a super genius,” Trump said. “We have to protect our geniuses, we don’t have that many of them.”

• Email: bshecter@postmedia.com

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