Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, both recently selected by president-elect Donald Trump to run the newly-introduced Department of Government Efficiency, are planning on starting a podcast named “Dogecast” to keep federal workers and the public up to date on their cost-cutting plans.
The new department, which is named after the DOGE cryptocurrency, is an advisory body meant to significantly reduce spending in government. Since the announcement of DOGE, the Tesla CEO and entrepreneur have used X as a platform to recruit other small government enthusiasts, with Musk floating an online leaderboard of “the most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars.”
Ramaswamy said the podcast will provide regular updates on their mission to slash government spending by as much as $2 trillion, in a YouTube video posted Wednesday. He said the show would “explain exactly what we’re doing to the public” and “provide transparency in what is a once-in-a-generation project.”
On X, Musk added that they would host guests, along with previously suggesting it would be live-streamed weekly.
In a recently published Wall Street Journal op-ed, Musk and Ramaswamy wrote that DOGE would recommend RTO and early retirement policies to minimize the number of federal workers, saying they supported requiring federal employees to work from the office five days a week as part of a broad overhaul of the civil service. They also discussed plans of “taking aim at” funding for public media and Planned Parenthood.
“If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home,” they wrote.
“You don’t even have to talk about you’re in a mass firing, a mass exodus,” Ramaswamy said on “The Tucker Carlson Show.” “Just tell them they have to come back five days a week from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.”
In order to accomplish the reductions in government, Musk and Ramaswamy have been advising Trump’s transition team to hire what they said were “small-government crusaders” to work with the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, The New York Times reported.
Yet, many political scientists and advocates have questioned whether “deleting” whole government departments and mass layoffs of federal workers is actually achievable, as DOGE is supposed to function as an advisory department and would have to work through legislation, agencies, and other governmental bodies before getting rid of anything.
“It would have no formal powers to raise or lower the spending on a department, no formal powers to shrink or abolish any existing government agency,” Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Business Insider. He added that presidents can get rid of administrative units in an agency that aren’t enshrined in legislation, but not much else.
