The NPR Politics Podcast - Elon Musk's DOGE Takes Control Of Federal Spending

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

Elon Musk is keeping his campaign promise of trying to cut $2 trillion of federal spending through his unit, DOGE. After some questions about his role, the White House announced that he is now a "special government employee." What has Musk been able to accomplish thus far? This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, power and influence reporter Shannon Bond, and tech reporter Bobby Allyn.The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger, and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Christy and this is Indigo Lily and this is Josh Boop and we're enjoying s'mores around the campfire at our first ever family camping trip. This podcast was recorded at 1 0 8 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, February 4th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will probably still be cleaning marshmallow out of everyone's hair and clothes, and it will have been worth it. Okay. Enjoy the show. Enjoy the show. ["Jazz March"]

Indigo Lily. Aw, Jasper. Okay, these kids are too cute, and now I want s'mores. That would be the pick-me-up we all need right now. Exactly. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

And today we are joined by our friend Shannon Bond, who covers power and influence, and Bobby Allen, who covers tech. Thank you both for joining us. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here, Tam. Yeah, and you have been reporting on Elon Musk. As a reminder, on the campaign trail, he promised that if Trump won, he would slash $2 trillion of federal spending.

Now he's trying to keep that promise with an entity within the White House called DOGE. After some questions about his role, the White House said yesterday that Musk is a special government employee. So Bobby, let's start with the basics. What does that title mean and what is he doing? Right. So a special government employee is a temporary federal worker who can't work more than 130 days in a year.

Elon's not being paid for this. Not that he needs money. He's the richest man in a year. Elon's not being paid for this. Not that he needs money, he's the richest man in the world. But you know, he is subject to certain ethics rules. But what is he doing? So I think taking a step back from that, I think we should just sort of reimagine how we think of Doge.

Because when we first started talking about Doge, everyone thought it was gonna be kind of like this blue ribbon committee that was gonna make recommendation to Congress. And Congress would be like, oh yeah, maybe we could cut spending there, cut spending here. Instead, it is turning into a unit inside of the federal government. These deputies of Musk who are being dubbed the Doge Kids are going into agencies and ripping out cords and

denying civil servants access and sometimes saying they're gonna dismantle entire agencies. It's creating all sorts of mayhem and confusion and just raising all sorts of legal and ethical questions. Let's just quickly address this question of conflict of interest because the special government employee status does not get them out of the rules of being a federal employee. Yeah that that's right and so I talked to a couple former top ethics lawyers in the White House under different administrations, and they said, you know, Elon is in a tricky situation as a special government employee because he controls six major companies, including SpaceX, the rocket

company, Tesla, the electric vehicle company. There are just so many ways in which his private company interests could run headlong into a federal government investigation or you know maybe he's getting subsidies from some part of the federal government and it's by law and it's very clear he cannot be involved in any matter that could have a predictable effect on his financial interests and that means one of his six companies. So government watchdog types are looking at Elon and saying he's a special government employee. He runs six companies. I mean, what a potential ethical quagmire. And it's really unlike anything

we've ever seen before. President Trump was asked about that yesterday in the Oval Office, and he was somewhat dismissive of the idea that Musk could run afoul of ethics problems. And I'm impressed because he's running obviously a big company, has nothing to do with this. There's a conflict that we won't let him get near it. But he does have a good natural instinct. He's got a team of very talented people. We're trying to shrink government and he can probably shrink it as well as anybody else, if not better. Yeah. So, Shannon, let's get into the nitty-gritty detail a little bit about what DOGE is doing,

what they've done so far, where they are. This is a team that has moved incredibly quickly. And despite the name, it is not its own department. It is basically an office within the White House, but it is very rapidly moving out across agencies, like across the federal government. Elon Musk says that DOGE is currently in the process of shutting down the US Agency for International Development, USAID. You know, that agency has had tons of people who have been, you know, kind of put on leave. And now there's threats that they're just going to shut it down entirely, fold it into the State Department. DOJ representatives have also gained access to the Treasury Department's payment system, which is basically the government's checkbook. This is a

system that processes trillions of dollars in spending every year. It's everything from Social Security benefits and Medicare benefits to payments to federal contractors to people's tax returns. Doge has also essentially taken control of the Office of Personnel Management, which is effectively the federal government's HR department. And there they have access to highly sensitive information about personnel files of federal workers. He's also, Musk and Doge have taken a lot of interest in the General Services Administration,

which is the government agency that basically handles real estate. And again, office space. Office space. Office space. But also, it handles kind of technology throughout the government. And that's an area where Musk has really focused this idea that government technology could be run better. That's an area where Musk has really focused this idea that government technology could be run better.

There's been floated these ideas they could be using AI to look at activity and spending across the government and rein it in. So at this point, it feels like there is very little that Doge is not touching or expressing interest in touching as they pursue this goal that Musk has laid out of drastically cutting federal spending. Is this essentially a technology takeover? Is this, I guess I'm trying to wrap my head around what it is that they are trying to do with all of this access.

I mean that is kind of the big question and that is the question that is raising a lot of these concerns, right? Like there's all kinds of questions about what the purpose of this access is going to be. And there's such a lack of transparency around what Doge is doing, which is ironic because Musk has also described sort of the need for this as that there's not enough transparency in terms of where government spending is going. But, you know, we just don't really have a sense besides his public statements about what it is they're trying to do. And he is making sense besides his public statements about what it is they're trying to do.

And he is making a lot of public statements. He has made a lot of public statements. He had held a long audio chat on his ex platform on late Sunday night with Senators Joni Ernst and Mike Lee, two Republicans, sort of talking about Dozier's accomplishments so far, specifically talking about these plans to shut down USAID. And generally just sort of framing this as being about really feeling there's government overreach. It's very ideological, the framing that Musk is putting on this. He feels that these agencies, again, these congressionally mandated agencies who are doing the business of government are unelected bureaucrats who are not accountable to the people and he thinks there's too much regulation and

he wants to get rid of it. Regulations in particular, the rules that agencies put in place, that is something that Musk has long bristled at. Here is how he described his vision for federal regulations during this chat on Sunday. I think we need to go and do wholesale removal of regulations. Like, regulations basically should be default gone. Default gone.

Not default there. Default gone. And if it turns out that we missed the mark on a regulation, we always add it back in. These regulations are added willy-nilly all the time. Regulations are such a convoluted and complicated process that involve months of public comment and rounds and rounds, and to get rid of them is similarly convoluted and challenging. And it's basically just not

possible to wipe it out to zero. All right, well, we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back more on if Musk can actually do the things he's trying to do. And we're back. And Bobby, I wanted to ask you, why is Elon Musk so passionate about cutting federal spending? It's something that's been a passion of his for a very long time because he has so many companies that are often going toe to toe with the federal government. I mean, he has for years been complaining about investigations, government lawsuits, fines. He sees regulations as just kind of getting in the way of growing his

businesses. And this really came to a head during the COVID-19 pandemic when, you know, shut down orders forced his Tesla plans to close. And it's something that he was defying for a while and went to war with government officials over. And his sort of philosophy that government regulations are by default wrong, that belief has just been growing from there. Yeah. And Shannon, he is, as we talked about before, trying to run the government like a business, but the government just isn't a business. There are so many rules that exist in law. Right. I think the way he's presenting this is he's coming in, there's too much red tape,

there's too much waste, right, and fraud and abuse and government spending. Now look, the government is massive. There is bloat and waste. And in government spending. Now look, like, you know, the government is massive. Like there is bloat and waste. And in some cases, you know, when we're talking about things like payments, you know, there is sort of some level of fraud. You know, there are, of course, also kind of guardrails and checks against that. But when we're talking about the kind of the volume we're talking about, that is true. And there have long been calls, right?

I mean, especially from Republicans about, you know, reining in spending. But what Musk is doing here, he's bringing a much different sort of way of trying to accomplish this. You know, he does seem to be seeing this very much like one of his businesses, you know, where he kind of goes in, you know, it's all hands and duck all the time, right? It's like working 24 hours a day. You know, it's like driving people as hard as they can, you know, in the pursuit of, you know, innovation and maximizing profit. But you know, I think that is a very different goal for a business than say, you know, an agency that is responsible for, you know, processing student loans or for, you know, making sure that people have access to like Medicare and Medicaid coverage, right? Like

the end goals of the government are not the same thing as the end goals of a business. And I think that's what seems so shocking to so many people in Musk's approach, because this is just not the type of approach that you take inside agencies. And also agencies are like very much bound by laws, right? And rules and processes around how they make decisions, You know, government moves quite slowly and it can't really move at the speed that Musk seems to want it to. And Jen, when there's a blueprint that works, Musk likes repeating it. I mean, many are pointing to Musk's Twitter takeover and his slash and burn strategies there.

I mean, within the first couple of weeks when he acquired Twitter, he got rid of like half the staff, right? He cut contracts that were really significant. He stopped paying real estate at a number of Twitter offices. So many are saying he's trying to take that exact strategy and apply it to the federal government, but he's in for a surprise, which is it's not that easy to do. So I want to go back to what Elon Musk is trying to do in the federal government. We still aren't totally clear on how far he's going to go or how much he's going to succeed. One question has been, is he going

to rub President Trump the wrong way at some point, or does he have Trump's blessing for all of this? Thus far, the answer seems to be that he has Trump's blessing. I mean, he certainly claims he does, right? So when he was talking about the shutdown of USAID, Musk said that he had asked Trump several times about it and Trump was totally on board. I think Trump has kind of indicated that he generally supports this, but it's not really clear how into the details he is.

I think there has been this question since essentially Elon threw his lot in with Trump, how long this relationship would last? These are two people who both love to be in the spotlight and love to claim credit. Well, let's close with this, which is not a small question, but is what Musk is trying to do legal? Right. I think that is going to be a major question. There's already a number of lawsuits that are challenging the legality of some of Musk's doge moves. You have some Democrats suggesting that throwing around phrases and words like coup and constitutional

crisis and this has a lot of people in Washington really, really, really on edge. And is it legal? I think courts are going to decide that. I think there's many parts of what he is doing that is just so unprecedented. Nobody really knows how he's getting away with it, but with President Trump's blessing. And Trump does seem to say, hey, I'm keeping an eye on him.

There are guardrails. But then there's other reporting that suggests that Musk is operating with a level of autonomy that nobody around Trump can seem to control. So we're in a pretty interesting situation here. And I would just add here, you know, there is this question of what he's doing. Like, you know, does it can can he actually shut down a government agency? Right. Or does it take an act of Congress to do that?

You know, Democrats in Congress are saying, like, no, this would take congressional action. But he's certainly testing that. And, you know, ultimately, Congress is controlled by Republicans, right? So, you know, the question is, are they at any point going to sort of reassert their power here, or are they going to go along with this, you know, sort of this idea that what Musk is doing is carrying out, you know, the Trump administration's goals. All right. Well, thank you both so much for joining us. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having me. And before we go, a quick update on something that we've been following here on the pod.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s nomination to be Health and Human Services Secretary made it out of committee this morning. There was some suspense up until the last minute about how at least one committee Republican would vote. But in the end, all Republicans on the committee voted for Kennedy and all Democrats voted against his nomination based on the votes today and math. We expect that he will be confirmed by the full Senate and Tulsi Gabbard has the votes to get out of committee

as well, she is the nominee for director of national intelligence. So it seems to be full steam ahead for President Trump's cabinet picks. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.