The wealthiest man on the planet strode through the marble corridors of the Senate carrying someone small aloft on his shoulders. A huge press gaggle craned necks and adjusted camera scopes wondering if he was carrying Vivek Ramaswamy or speaker Mike Johnson himself. The two symbols of capitalism uncontained spent their day on Capitol Hill meeting lawmakers to explain their plans for Doge, their smart-boy Department of Government Efficiency dream that will cut a swathe through decades of Washingtonian sloth and inefficiency and needless paperwork.
As it turned out, Elon Musk had brought his four-year old son, X Ӕ A-12, along to the Capitol for his Doge caucus get-together, followed by a grand meeting with senators and House members. Hardly a four-year-olds’ dream of a perfect day out with Dad but young X looked pretty content up there, gazing with idle curiosity out at the power centre of a planet he might well own, more or less, in 50 years’ time.
Musk senior didn’t speak but looked pleased as punch at the attention his presence was generating. And the South African entrepreneur could be forgiven for wearing a perpetual smile these days in recognition of the smartest investment of his career. The estimated $130 million he threw into Trump’s campaign has indirectly increased his personal wealth by about $70 billion since election night, with Tesla’s value enjoying a 39 per cent surge in value.
The Capitol building is a stunning place, filled with shining stone-cut corridors, imperious statues of the political titans of their day – Samuel Adams here, Andrew Jackson there – lavish offices behind closed doors, obscure corridors, underground tunnels and, of course, a million secrets. It has seen its share of big days. This was different. The Christmas decorations are up but Musk and Ramaswamy arrived bearing no gifts but the promise of thrift and leanness.
“What really stood out to me was how collaborative the tone was,” said Dusty Johnson, South Dakota’s only member of Congress and a Republican.
“I know there were some in Congress concerned – oh my gosh, what are these guys’ job gonna be? This is our job. Congress hasn’t done a very good job at driving efficiency for the past few decades. So, I am excited to have some partners who are going to enforce it. They are deferential, they said all the right things – we want to work with you. I feel even more optimistic now than when I walked into the room. It is a fun collaborative atmosphere in there. Because Elon and Vivek are not telling people how it’s going to be: It’s ‘we don’t need to reinvent the wheel, what we need to do is integrate your good ideas with our plans.’”
The billionaires may have struck a conciliatory tone through Thursday’s meetings, but they’ve been more chilling in their public pronouncements – or boasts – about what lies in wait for Washington’s careerist federal workers. Musk has claimed he can trim some $2 trillion from the federal government spend of $6.8 trillion a year.
“Our nation was founded on the basic idea that the people we elect run the government,” Musk and Ramaswamy noted in a recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that they cosigned.
“That isn’t how America functions today. Most legal edicts aren’t laws enacted by Congress but ‘rules and regulations’ promulgated by unelected bureaucrats – tens of thousands of them each year.
“We are entrepreneurs, not politicians. We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials, or employees. Unlike government commissions or advisory committees, we won’t just write reports or cut ribbons. We’ll cut costs.”
During his campaign, Donald Trump predicted on his website that up to 100,000 federal workers could be moved out of Washington DC – immediately. The Musk/Ramaswamy opinion piece moved smoothly into a paragraph pre-empting that upheaval, noting that “employees whose positions are eliminated deserve to be treated with respect” and vowed that Doge would help to support their transition into the private sector and that the president “can use existing laws” to offer early retirements and financial severances “to facilitate a graceful exit”.
Which is nice, and considerate. But the immediate goal, as a positively giddy Mike Johnson noted, was to end the permanent pyjama-day culture he believes has settled over Washington’s bureaucratic class.
“Someone did a little survey of how many federal employees are working in the office,” Johnson said as Musk, Elon and X settled into a meeting room adjacent to the Auditorium.
“By one estimate it is about 1 per cent – if you don’t count the security personnel who are running the buildings,” speaker Johnson continued outside.
“That is absurd. And it is not something that the American people will stand for. So, one of the first things I think you will see is a demand from the new administration and from all of us in Congress that federal workers return to their desks and get back to the work they are supposed to be doing. I think the overriding theme and what you are going to see here is a return to common sense. A return to accountability and efficiency in government.”
This may be bad news for the president-elect if the two boys decide to monitor in-hours office attendance all the way to the very highest office.
The plan is for Doge to achieve its mission in less than two years and to be formally wound down on Independence Day 2026. The crudest reduction of the Musk/Vivek redesign of Washington looks suspiciously similar to Musk’s reimagining of Twitter, which he purchased two years ago and promptly slashed the work force by 80 per cent, instructed the remaining staff to work from the office and made cutbacks on rent and other overheads.
He bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022. Its current iteration, X, is worth an about $12 billion, which is not the conventional approach to growing a business. But the social media tool’s use as an instrument of disruption may be worth inestimably more to Musk than its current monetary value.
And the sight of Musk and Ramaswamy arriving on the Hill with their own version of a new deal is at least symbolic of Trump’s famous vow to “drain the swamp”.
In fact, it hearkens back to the origin of that phrase: Ronald Reagan’s speech in January 1982. “Dutch” lamented the state of the Washington setup on that frigid day: “In growing too big and greedy for power, the federal government in the recent past lost sight of this vital point. It’s up to us to redress the balance. We’re here to cut back on waste and mismanagement; to eliminate unnecessary, restrictive regulations that make it harder for the American economy to compete and harder for American workers to find jobs; to drain the swamp of over-taxation, overregulation, and runaway inflation that has dangerously eroded our free way of life.”
That was 42 years ago. The general idea of making the federal machine run more efficiently is not without bipartisan appeal: Bernie Sanders has made encouraging noises and Florida Democrat Jared Moskowitz was the first Democrat to join the Doge caucus.
Others, however, have been scathing. New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez offered this curt post on Musk’s platform on Thursday: ‘Doesn’t get lower than gutting some of the only lifelines left for veterans, seniors, widows, and the disabled.”
For the big fear, beyond those in fear of losing their jobs, is that the Doge programme will erode spending on the most vulnerable, particularly if Doge leaves intact the so-called entitlement spending programmes of social welfare, Medicare and education.
Economic analyses have poured cold water on Musk’s breezy two trillion promise, pointing out that those big welfare programmes eat up half the total budget, interest repayments gobble up another 12 per cent, farming supports about 10 per cent, the defence budget about 12 per cent, leaving about 15 per cent of the total spend up for grabs. And those discretionary cuts would have to come from programmes like food stamps, heating assistance and housing aid: the wealthy of America must be trembling.
Plus, Doge is more of a dream department than a real entity: without the co-operation of the lawmakers on the Hill, it’s an advisory board led by two extremely rich men and, for one day anyhow, a four-year-old.
And by the sounds of it, young X may have had a significant input into the language of the meetings.
“Elon and Vivek talked about having a naughty list and a nice list for members of Congress and senators and how we vote,” reported Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene who offered a beaming smile that suggested she knew which list she’d be making. “And how we’re spending American people’s money. I think that would be fantastic.”
One wonders what Ted Kennedy or Henry Clay or Lyndon Johnson, during their Senate years, would have made of two billionaires with zero political experience or authority, breezing into the Capitol and explaining to them they had a chance to make the nice list.
Speaker Johnson promised that Thursday’s meetings will be the first of many visits by Musk and Ramaswamy. “We believe it’s a historic moment for the country and these two gentlemen are going to help us navigate through this exciting day. Elon and Vivek don’t need much of an introduction here in Congress for certain and I think most of the public know what they are capable of and have achieved.
“They are innovators and forward thinkers and that’s what we need right now. We are laying the new ground rules for the new Congress in the new year, and we are going to see a lot of change here in Washington of the way things are run. That is what this whole Doge effort is about.”
That remains to be seen. Rich children tire easily of their playthings.
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