‘DOGE’ tweets illustrate an almost impossible budget-cutting agenda

DOGE, the incoming Trump administration advisory panel headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, has been posting about the federal government’s spending on X, the social media platform owned by Musk. The posts have featured a mix of facts and figures, including those drawn from a USA Facts chart and a Reader’s Digest article on “11 Bizarre Things the U.S. Government Actually Spent Money On.”

Musk has spoken of trimming $2 trillion from the federal budget. The 2024 fiscal year that ended in September had outlays of $6.8 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office, so Musk’s goals would require nearly a 30 percent reduction in spending. In fact, Musk’s target is very close to the annual budget deficit of $1.9 trillion.

Coincidentally or not, these two tweets show the impossibility of achieving DOGE’s goal of eliminating the budget deficit without significant increases in revenue — or slashing programs for the elderly. There’s also an added complication: Spending on old-age programs is only going to go up.