Musk wants $2 trillion of spending cuts. Here’s why that’s hard.
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The U.S. federal government spent $6.75 trillion in the most recent fiscal year ended Sept.
30, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Walk around town handing $20,000 to everyone you see. Now do that for the entire U.S.
population, all 337 million of us. That is about how much the U.S. spent.
Elon Musk has been tasked alongside biotech company founder Vivek Ramaswamy with leading President-elect Donald Trump’s effort to reduce this government spending through the new Department of Government Efficiency. Musk has suggested he could cut at least $2 trillion, though he didn’t specify whether he meant annually or over time. DOGE, as the organization is known, will sit outside the government and won’t have decision-making power.
Congress generally controls the government’s purse strings, not the president, though Trump has signaled he would like to change that. A lot of U.S. government spending is considered mandatory—benefits that are paid without any annual vote by Congress.
The government’s big-ticket items provide healthcare for Americans and money for retirees. Social Security benefits cost the government $1.45 trillion in the most recent fiscal year, according to CBO estimates published this month. Medicare and Medicaid were a combined $1.49 trillion.
Trump has promised to protect Social Security and Medicare benefits. Medicaid could be a target for cuts, but the politics of doing so could prove difficult. In June, the CBO estimated that 56% of Medicaid benefits in fiscal 2024 would go toward the aged, blind and disabled.
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