How to make Elon Musk’s budget-slashing dreams come true

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy plan to whip the American state into shape. On November 14th their newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced that it wants to hire “super-high-IQ small-government revolutionaries" to work on cost-cutting.

It is easy to ridicule the enterprise. Mr Musk has talked of ripping $2trn from the federal budget, an amount that, if done in a year, would exceed the government’s entire discretionary spending. His focus on deregulation, job cuts and fraud is unlikely to provide the requisite savings.

Donald Trump has given DOGE less than two years. The entity is an advisory body. And its name is inspired by a joke cryptocurrency.

But it would be a mistake to make light of DOGE’s mission, because it does get at two essential truths. First, America’s fiscal trajectory is unsustainable. The national debt is approaching 100% of GDP, up from 35% in 2007.

With the federal deficit running at 6% of GDP—a level once associated with wars and economic downturns—debts are bound to climb higher still, raising the risk of a crisis. Second, the situation is not actually hopeless. There are plenty of ways that American officials can, in theory, put the country on a sounder fiscal footing, even if getting budget cuts through Congress is another matter.

None of the small-government revolutionaries at The Economist has applied for a job at DOGE, as far as we know. We do, though, have a few suggestions. One point is that time matters.