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Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) leader Elon Musk announced his goal to reduce wasteful federal spending by 15 percent throughout the next four years.
“We want to reduce spending by eliminating waste and fraud and reduce the spending by 15 percent, which seems really quite achievable,” Musk told Fox News’ Bret Baier on Thursday during an exclusive interview.
“The government is not efficient, and there’s a lot of waste and fraud,” he added. “So we feel confident that a 15 percent reduction can be done without affecting any of the critical government services.”
According to the Tesla CEO, DOGE’s daily goal would be to reduce waste and fraud by “$4 billion a day, every day, seven days a week.”
Musk was also joined by seven other members of DOGE, who spoke to the agency’s ability to reduce wasteful spending.
Aram Moghaddassi, a DOGE software engineer, noted that the agency was largely focusing on ensuring Social Security was helping people who “legitimately get benefits” and “protect them from fraud that they experience every day.”
“When you want to change your bank account, you can call Social Security. We learned 40% of the phone calls that they get are from fraudsters” attempting to steal their payments, said Moghaddassi.
Musk then added that DOGE will “help their benefits,” providing “legitimate” Social Security recipients “more money, not less money.”
“The 94-year-old grandmother is actually a result of DOGE’s work going to get her check, she’s not going to be robbed by forces like she’s getting robbed today, and the solvency of the federal government will ensure that she continues to receive those social security checks,” said Musk.
“The reason we’re doing this is because if we don’t do it, America is going to go insolvent and go bankrupt, and nobody’s going to get anything,” he explained.
As of March 24, DOGE claimed their watchdog spending agency so far has saved U.S. taxpayers $130 billion, or $807.45 per American.