"Slash and Burn": Elon's Plan to Gut Government Regulations and Jobs

Tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy said Wednesday that their brand-new government efficiency panel will identify “thousands” of regulations for President-elect Trump to eliminate, which they argue will justify “mass head-count reductions” across government.

The pair, who were named co-chairs of the panel last week, laid out their plans for the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

“The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings,” they wrote. “We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws.”

Musk and Ramaswamy pointed to several recent Supreme Court decisions that have taken aim at the power of the administrative state, arguing that a “plethora of current federal regulations” exceed agency authority and could be on the chopping block.

Slashing regulations should allow for “at least” proportional cuts to the government workforce, they argue.

“A drastic reduction in federal regulations provides sound industrial logic for mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy,” the pair wrote in the op-ed.

“Not only are fewer employees required to enforce fewer regulations, but the agency would produce fewer regulations once its scope of authority is properly limited,” they added.

Musk and Ramaswamy preemptively addressed arguments…  Read more about civil service protections that could potentially block Trump from firing federal workers.