Business Insider (BI) commented that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy could be more successful than previous similar efforts under President Ronald Reagan and President Bill Clinton.
This assessment is based on two main factors: the advantage of information gathering and the support of the Republican Party in Congress.
Agreeing, CEO Cathie Woods of ARK Invest believes that Elon Musk will do well in his new role thanks to the businesses that the billionaire himself has launched.
When businessman becomes "Minister"
“I think Elon Musk would bring efficiency to government,” CEO Woods admitted to Fortune.
According to Ms. Woods, Elon Musk's deep understanding of technology and his ability to gather information and support from companies like Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI will give him a huge advantage in reforming the government apparatus.
"Artificial intelligence (AI) will be at the center of everything and information resources are now the main trend. Therefore, collecting more data from his companies than other CEOs is giving Elon Musk an advantage," Ms. Woods emphasized.
Previously, the Tesla boss emphasized that data is an asset more valuable than gold, and this is why Tesla, SpaceX and xAi pay so much attention to user and customer data.
It should be recalled that Elon Musk's SpaceX is deploying the Starlink satellite internet system that can provide internet to the whole world while Tesla, a famous electric car company, is developing a self-driving service, thereby collecting customer information to personalize features. Not to mention xAI including Twitter-X with hundreds of millions of social network users sharing information.
It is these technological advantages and information resources that can help Elon Musk become a more successful "Minister" than others in the field of streamlining the government apparatus.
In addition, CEO Woods also believes that Elon Musk's entrepreneurial spirit and ability to build a series of "unimaginable" companies will help this "Minister" complete a goal that many people consider difficult.
"We were skeptical of Elon Musk for many years and with many projects, but then he built one successful business after another," Ms. Woods admired.
According to CEO Woods, billionaire Elon Musk and Mr. Vivek Ramaswamy will use advanced technology and entrepreneurial thinking to influence government spending, something no politician has done before, thereby creating positive changes.
Of course, in addition to the advantages of technology, information and entrepreneurial spirit, the support from the Republican Party is also an indispensable factor that makes Elon Musk more successful than his predecessors.
More successful
The BI newspaper said that the Republican Party's dominance in both the Senate and the House of Representatives in this election is a big advantage that can help Elon Musk be more successful than his predecessors who want to streamline the apparatus and cut the budget deficit.
In theory, any ambitious spending cuts, including Elon Musk’s $2 trillion pledge, would require 51 votes in the Senate. Republicans hold 52 seats, making it easier for Musk to push through many policies.
This is a huge advantage because the US government is not a business. The decision on which agencies receive how much money for what purposes is usually discussed in Congress, not in the hands of the President.
This is what made Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton struggle to cut the budget deficit but failed.
In 1982, then-US President Ronald Reagan tasked J. Peter Grace, a chemical company executive, with creating a group similar to Elon Musk's DOGE Ministry today to clean up the government, cut waste and improve efficiency.
Two years later, a group of about 160 CEOs gathered under the name "Grace Commission" published more than 2,000 recommendations that the group said would save more than $424 billion in budgets over three years.
However, this project was not highly appreciated by the Parliament when reforms such as increasing public debt collection and reducing staffing were opposed.
The nonprofit Citizens Against Government Waste, which continues the Grace Commission's mission, later said the U.S. government has cut spending by a total of $2.4 trillion since the 1980s by implementing some of the Grace Commission's and the nonprofit's own recommendations.
Under President Bill Clinton, the White House also attempted to cut federal spending through a performance review program. The initiative succeeded in cutting more than 300,000 government employees.
However, only a quarter of the initiative's proposals were passed by the US Congress, making the effort to reduce the budget deficit and streamline the government not entirely successful.
By 1999, the Clinton administration claimed it had saved $137 billion.
According to BI, Elon Musk's efforts under Donald Trump could go further with a much more ambitious plan thanks to the Republican Party's victory in Congress.
Donald Trump said DOGE has until July 4, 2026 to come up with a plan, but Elon Musk said in a Twitter-X post that the plan “will be done much faster.”
