Musk Admits Cutting Spending By $2T Won’t Happen

Reuters reports:

Elon Musk, who U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has tapped to oversee a government cost-cutting effort, acknowledged that his declared goal of cutting $2 trillion in spending from the $6.8 trillion federal budget would be a long shot.

“I think if we try for $2 trillion, we’ve got a good shot at getting $1 trillion,” Musk, the world’s richest person, said in a discussion on Wednesday with Mark Penn, a political strategist and former pollster. He described the $2 trillion target as a “best-case outcome.”

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Elon Musk says his budget-cutting effort on behalf of President-elect Donald Trump would likely not find $2 trillion in savings, backtracking on a goal he set earlier as co-head of DOGE. https://t.co/KB26bWlkR0

— NBC News (@NBCNews) January 9, 2025

We all said that Musk’s claim that he would be able to cut “at least” $2 trillion in annual spending was absurd. But he did the Trump thing: Pay no attention to reality, make an outrageously false claim that MAGA will lap up, and then walk it back later.https://t.co/Hn95RIp4wZ

— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) January 9, 2025