this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
413 points (97.3% liked)

News

25141 readers
5383 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Summary

Elon Musk, co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency under Donald Trump’s advisory team, revised his claim of finding $2 trillion in federal budget cuts to a “best-case outcome” of $1 trillion.

Musk’s earlier target, dismissed as unrealistic by experts, had included the entire discretionary budget of $1.7 trillion.

While Musk and co-lead Vivek Ramaswamy plan to recommend cuts, specifics remain unclear.

Experts warn savings may require targeting mandatory programs like Medicaid, potentially causing hardships.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 181 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Anyone who actually believed they would find $2 trillion was an idiot, the rest of us knew they'd just cut the things they hate, bump the subsidies that favor them and their friends, and call it a day.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 month ago (8 children)

Your comment will age poorly when Trump’s tarrifs lead to a collapsing economy and he prints money like mad to solve it, resulting in hyper-inflation letting President Musk keep his election promise.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Wondering how that connects as I didn't mention tarrifs?

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 month ago (1 children)

After hyperinflation, Musk will easily cut $100T from the budget, making your claim that only an idiot would believe he could find $2T in cuts laughable.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago

Aha, well played!

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 month ago

The funny thing is....it's not like their voters would care if they lied. They could literally say "We cut the budget by $17 trillion by making sure the trans kids don't get surgeries!" And their voters would fucking cheer.

They wouldn't look deep enough to actually care what they cut.

So the question is why even make this announcement? I'm guessing it's a distraction from something else.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 117 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This doesn't look good for Elon. Lucky for him that he's the president.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (12 children)

Doesn't matter his fan base will eat it up

load more comments (12 replies)
[–] [email protected] 84 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Gasp. Lying cunt lied cuntily.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago

While having no fucking clue what he was talking about. More news at ten.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] atzanteol 79 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Remember when he landed people on Mars in 2022?

[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Remember when Tesla released fully autonomous self driving cars?

[–] atzanteol 27 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That was way back in 2014, hard to imagine a world without them now! It's how I take my cybercab to the hyperloop to get to work!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

Can I get a video of the before and after claims? Gotta make the presentation super simple in this day and age.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Man, it’s almost like he has no idea what he’s talking about or something. Definitely a good candidate to be making policy decisions affecting millions of people.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 month ago

Sounds like they’re not an efficient use of government resources and should be cut

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Oh? The places he's looking at actually work fairly efficiently already? Or the inefficiencies are outside their control? The inefficient sections are the places he can't go, like the DOD?

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Any inefficiency likely comes from private industry bending the government over and stealing our wallet. I've been paid obscenely better as a contractor than my government counterparts, and I'm probably only seeing half of what my company charges. Entire departments are twenty contractors at a cost of $5 million per year and two actual government employees making a grand total of $60k each. Maybe double that at most by the time you include all the benefits.

But if you try to trim that, you're cutting into the profits of private industry, and we sure as fuck can't have that, can we?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago

Or they've already had their budgets slashed so much that there's nothing left to slash. Which is pretty common unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

But those things actually help poor people. Can't have that, can we?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago (1 children)

i’m actually kind of shocked he admitted this. isn’t his usual strategy to promise super unrealistic things, not deliver, and then make the same promise the next year?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Wherever he cut, you can safely assume it will only hit the people at the bottom, not those at the top.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Oh please, you're not even going to get $100 billion without stepping on some toes in the Military-Industrial complex, and that's going to make you some lifelong political enemies.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

If allowed, Elon will find trillions to funnel to himself and Trump's cronies however.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

Oh make no mistake, his goal is to be the world's first trillionaire within the next 4-years. Why else would he so publicly be going full fascist unless he was ready to fully embrace the concept of "fuck everyone and everything ever to be" money.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago

If he cuts anything it’ll be support for middle class and poor people and itll be jack shit, it will fuck everything up and it will be touted by clowns as a success.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Can we take a moment to acknowledge a few billionaires made their own government department, and people are just rolling with it?

They're a random private company. Why are we just letting that fact slide???

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

$2 Trillion was more than the discretionary budget of the US. It literally couldn't be done.

Which is why it was a stupid promise and literally anyone with any expertise could tell you that. Which shows you how unserious Musk is about this.

Now that he cut the promise in half and it's still politically impossible but not literally impossible, I reiterate my request...say how you plan to do it. Give us a rough idea what programs are being cut, even the easiest 20%.

By having the conversation about the number alone, we're buying his political premise. The money is not there for no reason, these are democratically popular government programs, that's why they exist. So which popular programs are you getting rid of to save this money?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

As an Ontarian I feel we are actually more than a few years from America in terms of this bullshit.

You can go back to when Rob Ford won the mayorship of Toronto talking about "stopping the gravy train". He found no gravy.

Fast forward to Doug Ford becoming premier to "stop the gravy train" of which he found no gravy. In fact he unlawfully terminated numerous contracts costing Ontarians even more money.

Short story, people who try to reduce complex economic issues into simple solutions are snake oil salesmen not to be trusted.

Unfortunately in today's media landscape it works.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago

Ya, so, we're not going to do any of the things we promised. We're just going to try to punish our political enemies and fuck shit up while looting every last penny that we can and running away while the country burns.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Never fear rich people and corporations - Trump is still going to do another $2T tax cut regardless.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

"Savings" they will find:

  • any agencies that monitor, counteract or release reports on Putin and Russian activity

  • agencies that regulate electric vehicle production or road safety

  • Agencies that regulate space flight and aerial pollution

  • The NLRB, OSHA and whichever agencies work to oppose child labor

  • agencies that regulate pharmaceutical pump and dump schemes

  • agencies that regulate emerald mines

  • The CFPB

  • agencies that monitor ethics among government employees

  • agencies that regulate recreational ketamine, ritalin and cocaine use

  • child protective services and agencies that intervene in spousal abuse

  • anecdotes that certify or otherwise support divorce attorneys

  • agencies that originate, maintain and enforce restraining orders

  • agencies that track and publish flight information to enable safer travel between all of the aircraft simultaneously in the sky.

  • agencies that allow for the creation, distribution and use of rape kits (yes, even though there's a backlog. You're very clever)

  • Agencies that keep a database of all people with small, odd shaped penises that no longer get hard....

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If RFK is crazy because a worm ate part of his brain, it seems like Enron Musk may have had drugs that are the equivalent of 2 worms.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (2 children)

He's been known to, shall we say, "macrodose" ketamine at parties.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

I have macro dosed ketamine and I know that there are no 2 trillion to cut in the government of the US.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

Yes, but how often have you done it and were you stupid to begin with?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

Yeah a lot of people who know nothing about ketamine love to blame it for Musk's idiocy.

Dude is just a moron no matter what drugs he takes.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Musk’s earlier target, dismissed as unrealistic by experts, had included the entire discretionary budget of $1.7 trillion.

FFS! There's probably TODDLERS who know more about how the government works than Musk! 🤦

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Lucidlethargy 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Elon is such a dumbass.

Edit: I'm sorry, *President Elon is such a dumbass.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

next year they'll raise the deficit by $2T and start saying that they saved $2T off of a $4T raise to the budget

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

Those two clowns couldn't find their own asses in a dark room with both hands and a flashlight.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It's all going to be healthcare / social safety nets, and it's going to be dwarfed by the tax cuts Trump gives people.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Seriously what an unexpected outcome....

The one trillion difference needs to be paid back from his salary and a potential salary claw back for this underperformance.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

I'm shocked, SHOCKED by this revelation!

load more comments
view more: next ›