How to make Elon Musk's budget-slashing dreams come true

Any serious fiscal policies must go through Congress. That may end up being the key test of DOGE and Trump

- 

Elon musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are keen to whip the American government into shape. On November 14th their newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced it wants to hire "super-high-IQ small-government revolutionaries" to get to work on cost-cutting. It is easy to ridicule the enterprise. Mr Musk has talked of ripping $2trn out ofthe federal budget; a cut of that magnitude, done swiftly, would leave public offices incapable of per-forming many basic functions and plunge the economy into a recession. Moreover, Donald Trump has given DOGE less than two years to get the job done. And the entity is a small advisory body, not an actual department, with a name inspired by aj oke cryptocurrency. But it would be a mistake to make light of DOGE's mission, because it does get at two essential truths. First, America's fiscal trajectory is unsustainable. The national debt is approaching 100% of GDP, up from 35% in 2007. With the federal deficit running at 6% of GDP-a level once associated with wars and economic downturns- debts are bound only to climb higher, raising the risk of an eventual crisis. Second, the situation is not actually hopeless. There are plenty of ways that American officials can, in theory, put the country on a sounder fiscal footing (though getting budget cuts through Congress is another matter). None ofthe small- government revolutionaries at The Economist has applied for aj ob at DOGE, as far as we know. But we do have a few suggestions. The key thing for the DOGE duo to realise is that they are not starting from scratch. There are already plenty of well-researchedblueprints for sorting out America's finances. Itis useful to break them into four categories: conventional spending cuts; tweaks to entitlement eligibility; changes to health-care spending; andtaxreform. Across-the-board spending cuts appear to be what Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy have mainly in mind when they rail against government waste. Yet there is an obvious problem. Con