“I am certainly an advisor. I don’t have formal power, and that’s it. The president can choose to accept my advice or not. And that’s how it goes,” he said.
Musk claimed Tuesday DOGE had only limited power, and he emphasized the $170 billion DOGE has claimed to have cut thus far is good progress given the time it has operated. The advisory department is set to sunset on July 4, 2026.
“We’re not the dictators of the government. We are the advisors. And so we can advise, and the progress we’ve made thus far, I think, is incredible,” Musk said. “The DOGE team has done incredible work, but the magnitude of the savings is proportionate to the support we get from Congress and from the executive branch of the government in general.”
On the amended $2 trillion original DOGE cost-cutting goal, Musk was noncommittal, instead placing the blame on the other branches of government “that are, to some degree, opposed to that level of cost savings.”
Still, he said so far, DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts have been going well.
“I don’t think any advisory group has done better in the history of advisory groups for the government,” he said.
