Public transport, health, schools… How Elon Musk plans to tackle US federal spending

Elon Musk has been thinking at least since August about ways to reduce federal spending while making government more efficient. Last month, he told an enthusiastic crowd at an election rally that he expected to find $2 trillion in savings. However, he did not specify whether it was an annual amount or a sum spread over several budgetary years… The “detail” is important because 2000 billion represents almost 30% of Uncle's annual expenditure. Sat. The sum exceeds the combined budgets of Defense, Education and Homeland Security.

A scenario of such strong reductions in a few months is not credible. Neither from an arithmetic point of view, nor from a political point of view. Elected representatives of Congress, of all persuasions, always make the federal money that they bring to their constituency a central argument of their campaigns. Only Congress can vote or eliminate appropriations…