President Donald Trump pledged to dismantle the Department of Education during his election campaign, and Elon Musk’s controversial team of government cost cutters seems to be taking that literally.
Staff from the DOGE task force are making themselves at home in senior officials' offices, rearranging furniture and setting up white noise machines to muffle voices, according to CNBC.
The acting education secretary, Denise Carter, has been exiled from a leadership suite on the seventh floor of the agency’s headquarters while DOGE staffers settle in.
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Musk’s team reportedly went hunting around the office for furniture after occupying those offices, so that they could “move into their compound,” said one staffer.
Musk’s minions are also using Under Secretary James Bergeron’s office, preventing him from moving in.
The team of workers have an attitude that they “can do whatever we want,” said employees of the department.
They are “intimidating,” “secretive,” and they “didn’t make conversation,” said another official.
Staff are reportedly competing to find the largest numbers to cut from government spending, with little regard for the consequences.
The race to get the largest budget cuts is likely due to the 130-day limit on their employment status before they are subject to more detailed disclosure requirements.
“There is nothing inappropriate or nefarious going on,” said the Education department’s deputy assistant secretary for communications, Madi Biedermann.
“The DOGE employees are federal employees... and have the necessary background checks and clearances,” she added.
Trump claims that Musk’s “geniuses” have uncovered billions of fraudulent government payments.
However, a review of official data by the Economist shows that Musk and his minions' efforts have barely made a dent in government spending, and it may in fact have increased since Trump took power.
It describes Musk’s “scattershot” efforts to cut government spending as coming up “woefully short.”
Mandatory spending on social security and health insurance, plus the fact that half of the remaining discretionary spending is on defense (which the Republicans want to increase), means that DOGE’s mission could be impossible.
DOGE’s “actions are focused on barely more than a tenth of the overall federal budget,” it said.
