Elon Musk And Vivek Ramaswamy Want To 'delete' Parts Of The Us Government. It Won't Be Easy.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are set to co-lead the Department of Department of Government Efficiency once President-elect Donald Trump takes office.Taylor Hill/Getty Images; Roy Rochlin/Getty Images; Chelsea Jia Feng/BIElon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are set to co-lead the DOGE in President-elect Trump's second term.Republicans have long pledged to eliminate vast waste from the federal government.But it is unclear what agencies the DOGE will target and if their goals will be realized.In their roles as co-leaders of the forthcoming Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have vowed to "delete" government agencies, much like a line of code.However, their goal of cutting out entire departments faces significant bureaucratic, congressional, and political headwinds, making it a difficult task.The DOGE will likely function as an outside advisory group, which could make recommendations about how to shrink federal spending but not enact any changes itself under current law."It would have no formal powers to raise or lower the spending on a department, no formal powers to shrink or abolish any existing government agency," Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, told Business Insider.Experts previously told BI that the DOGE's stated goal of cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget is unrealistic, and it seems the hope to eliminate agencies whole cloth is similarly far-fetched.A close examination of government agenciesRamaswamy during a Sunday appearance on Fox News said he expects "certain agencies to be deleted outright," but did not specify which particular departments he'd like to eliminate."We expect mass reductions in force in areas of the federal government that are bloated," he said.When running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, Ramaswamy flirted with cutting the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco, among others.President-elect Donald Trump, for his part, has expressed interest in doing away with the Department of Education.But such efforts would be extremely difficult to achieve politically, and it would also present a new dilemma: What agency would take on the roles of another if it were to be axed?"The obvious question becomes, if the IRS were abolished, does that mean that they're abolishing the income tax?" Mordecai Lee, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, told BI.