Elon Musk is not right-sizing the government; he’s bleeding it to death.
By Cliff Montgomery – Apr. 29th, 2025
After assuming the presidency for the second time, Donald Trump brought on Elon Musk to slash the federal government to nothing but its bare bones. And Musk has happily used his position as de facto head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in order to do it.
But the duo has failed to realize that without adequate flesh, muscle and sinew to perform even basic activities, bare bones are useless.
The essential problem? Elon Musk has never before served a day in any kind of public office. He is therefore trying to right-size federal business, without knowing a single thing about that business.
And federal business is simply a very different beast than a private concern.
Federal business works to serve the essential needs of millions of stakeholders – which calls for a robust maintenance of the country’s massive infrastructure, waterworks, schools and libraries, public health and a plethora of other matters, and treating every stakeholder as having the same essential worth. Private concerns aim only to satisfy the profit motive driving a handful of top shareholders.
Besides the immediate needs of the people, federal officials must also maintain the environment upon which the very lives of their citizens depend.
All of this demands a long-term approach and engagement, routinely spanning decades.
By comparison, private business puts its emphasis on comparatively short-term concerns. U.S businesses usually consider the fiscal year as their primary period of consideration.
But even when Musk stays in the private sphere, his proven tendency is to cut too deeply into both an entity’s workforce and its essential business costs, ultimately depriving it of the very lifeblood it needs to remain competitive. He doesn’t right-size it; he bleeds it to death.
If one wants to see what happens when Musk gets involved in a business about which he knows nothing, one only has to look at the mess he made of X (formerly Twitter).
Of course, with the inevitable comparison between his actions at X and his activities at DOGE, one can see what a mess he’s sure to make of the U.S. federal government.
The moment any thinking person knew Elon Musk was out of his depth was when he fired numerous inspectors general. Musk claims they were fired to make the federal government more efficient.
But what tasks are performed by the Inspectors General (IGs)? The IGs oversee the agencies at which they work, as separate and independent investigators. They make sure that that their agencies follow essential government laws, adhere to efficient practices and that the money bestowed on their agencies by Congress is well-spent.
In short, they make sure that the government agencies they oversee is run efficiently, day in and day out, year after year.
Now, if Musk is serious about creating an efficient government, why would he get rid of the people who make sure that each government agency follows legal and efficient practices, day after day?
Some think the reason for this apparently bizarre action is to curtail investigations into Musk’s companies, as numerous attorneys general who were sacked were looking into his often questionable business practices.
But its just as possible that the billionaire didn’t want to share his new-found authority with people who have the same authority – and who also have a superior understanding of government business. Specifically, they know that practices which may conceivably be “efficient” for a private business routinely create inefficiency when they’re applied to government concerns.
The bottom line? Musk isn’t creating a stream-lined, orderly government – he’s simply creating a glaring, spectacular mess.
Think of the massive lay-offs at the U.S. Forestry Service – and the equally massive increase in forest fires burning out of control, in great part, because of them. The number of fires the U.S. has experienced so far in 2025 is, on average, much higher than in previous years.
This obvious “cause and effect” has elegantly exposed the level of inefficiency created by these personnel cuts.
The numbers are stunningly clear:
- In 2025, a full 21,194 fires have burned 973,830 acres. How do those numbers compare to recent years?
- in 2020, only 11,052 fires materialized, burning 216,699 acres.
- In 2019, 9,557 fires materialized, burning 220,465 acres.
- In 2018, there were 16,708 fires burning 993,147 acres.
- In 2017, there were 18,017 fires, which burned 2,350,965 acres.
And, thanks to Musk’s wild-eyed cutting of necessary personnel across U.S. government agencies, a new concern will soon be upon us: “DOGE cuts will ‘in all probability’ increase the U.S. deficit — by a lot,” for a very straightforward reason: “Among the most massive costs will be the huge reduction in workers at the Internal Revenue Service,” stated an article published last month by the Independent, a British online news source, “who are worth their weight in gold because of the taxes they collect, the key source of income for the country.”
“Treasury Department and IRS officials are predicting a decrease of more than 10 percent in tax receipts by the April 15 deadline” if compared to the same activity performed in 2024, according to the Washington Post, quoting “three people with knowledge of tax projections.”
The under-collection of tax dollars is projected to “amount to more than $500 billion in lost federal revenue; the IRS collected $5.1 trillion last year,” the Post added.
“For context, the U.S. government spent $825 billion on the Defense Department in fiscal 2024,” continued the Post.
Such “losses would swamp any DOGE savings to date,” pointed out the Independent.
“Musk is also carving critical holes in the government that will have to be filled at some point before implosion by private companies,” continued the Independent,” adding that if those private companies weren’t Musk’s they would just belong to some other wealthy concern, “with personnel likely paid far more than government workers.”
How do they know this? Because “some of Musk’s team of DOGE are reportedly making six-figure salaries, while veteran workers are getting the ax,” pointed out the U.K. news source.
“Musk’s SpaceX is already taking over key tasks in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA),” added the Independent, “and FAA staffers have been told if they stand in the way, they risk being fired.”
On Feb. 27, 1,000 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) employees were given layoff notices, House Natural Resources Committee member Jared Huffman (D-CA) told ABC News in February. The NOAA analyzes weather and climate data, and tracks such extreme weather events as tornadoes and hurricanes.
The bottom line is that Musk has done little more than to mimic the disaster he created at Twitter: He takes control of something he can’t begin to understand, smashes it with no real answer as to how – or even, if – he can ever put it back together again, and almost certainly has engaged in activities that will only make the government’s fiscal standing worse, not better.
In a few days, we’ll take a look at what Musk claims is a spectacular financial turnaround at X (formerly Twitter). Short note? A good amount of evidence suggests that the “turnaround” may be due more to a burst of creative accounting. Musk used earnings figures that at least one source has said were “wildly adjusted” – for examp!e, he engaged in an aggressive restructuring of debt that allowed X to claim $12 billon of losses as assets. Stay tuned.
