Elon Musk to step down from DOGE after $1 trillion deficit reduction. Here’s what he said

Tech billionaire Elon Musk on Thursday announced that he plans to step down from his role in the Donald Trump administration at the end of May after overseeing a massive $1 trillion reduction in the US deficit. Musk, who was brought in as a “special government employee” for a 130-day term, has been spearheading government cost-cutting efforts as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Musk: ‘A revolution in Government’

Elon Musk in an interview with Fox News, described his tenure as a historic overhaul of federal spending.

“This is a revolution. And I think it might be the biggest revolution in government since the original revolution,” he said. “At the end of the day, America’s going to be in much better shape. It’s going to be a fantastic future.”

Musk, 53, who also leads Tesla and SpaceX, and owns social media platform X, has been both praised and criticised for his aggressive approach to cutting government spending. DOGE, an agency staffed by engineers and entrepreneurs, has already laid off tens of thousands of federal workers and slashed funding for various programmes.

Musk confirms 130-day tenure

When asked if he would stay beyond his 130-day term, Musk said he believes his work will be largely complete by then.

“I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by $1 trillion within that time frame,” he said.

DOGE claims on its website that, as of March 27, it has saved Americans $130 billion, or approximately $807 per taxpayer.

Cutting waste and fraud: ‘A 15% reduction is achievable’

Musk and his team of seven DOGE members—Steve Davis, Joe Gebbia, Aram Moghaddassi, Brad Smith, Anthony Armstrong, Tom Krause, and Tyler Hassen—detailed their efforts to slash waste, fraud, and abuse in various government agencies.

“We want to reduce spending by eliminating waste and fraud and reduce spending by 15 per cent, which seems really quite achievable,” Musk told Special Report executive editor Bret Baier.

“The government is not efficient, and there’s a lot of waste and fraud. So we feel confident that a 15 per cent reduction can be done without affecting any of the critical government services.”

Federal credit cards: ‘Clearly, this doesn’t make sense’

One key area DOGE has focused on is federal credit card usage. According to DOGE member Steve Davis, there are approximately 4.6 million federal government credit cards for around 2.3 to 2.4 million employees.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Davis said. “So one of the things all of the teams have worked on is we’ve worked for the agencies and said, ‘Do you need all of these credit cards? Are they being used? Can you tell us physically where they are?’”

Musk agreed, calling the situation absurd.

“Clearly there should not be more credit cards than there are people,” he said.

Critics call for oversight

Despite the administration’s claims of efficiency, critics argue DOGE has been given too much power and lacks proper oversight. Opponents claim Musk’s team has cancelled federal contracts and made cuts without congressional approval.

Musk, however, dismissed the criticism, saying his team takes a careful approach to every decision.

“They may characterise it as shooting from the hip, but it is anything but that,” Musk said. “We measure twice, if not thrice, and cut once.”

He also acknowledged the possibility of errors.

“Which is not to say that we don’t make mistakes. If we were to approach this with the standard of making no mistakes at all, that would be like saying someone in baseball has got to bat a thousand. That’s impossible. So when we do make mistakes, we correct them quickly and we move on.”