X CEO Elon Musk has been tasked by President-elect Donald Trump to identify and eliminate government waste, but Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein has already identified a major problem with that plan.
Writing on Bluesky, Stein noted that a recent Musk post outlining government waste consisted mostly of interest on America's national debt, which is something that the United States cannot simply eliminate without going into default.
"Objectively kind of hilarious [in my opinion] that ~75 percent of the 'waste' identified in this post touted by Elon Musk is interest payments on the debt," Stein commented. "Do they understand that you can't eliminate interest payments on the debt unless you *do something about the reason those interest payments exist*?"
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Other examples of waste identified by Musk -- such as the United States Defense Department spending $8,395 on a lobster tank and $6 million on a USAID fund to boost Egyptian tourism -- amount to rounding errors in the total federal budget.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Musk said that he believed he could cut $2 trillion out of the federal budget, which he acknowledged would create "temporary hardship" for a lot of Americans.
Jeff Stein (@jeffstein.bsky.social)
Jeff Stein (@jeffstein.bsky.social) bsky.app
Objectively kind of hilarious imo that ~75% of the "waste" identified in this post touted by Elon Musk is interest payments on the debt Do they understand that you can't eliminate interest payments on the debt unless you *do something about the reason those interest payments exist*?
