Elon Musk rode into Washington, D.C., with a chainsaw and a big promise: He would cut "at least $2 trillion" in government spending.
Less than four months after President Donald Trump's second inauguration, Musk is now reportedly scaling back his work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the meme-inspired project that Trump authorized to implement Musk's vision for a leaner, more affordable federal government. Officially, DOGE claims to have cut $170 billion in government spending—though there are some doubts about the validity of that figure—mostly by firing bureaucrats and canceling some pretty silly contracts.
Libertarians and other advocates for limited government have plenty of reasons to applaud those cuts. Given the incentives of federal workers and the tendency of government to only ever get bigger, it's possible to regard DOGE's work as a "smashing success"—as Reason's Christian Britchgi termed it last month. And even though Musk is on his way out, DOGE's efforts will continue (reportedly, the new boss plans to target some of the staggering levels of waste in the Pentagon, which would be a very worthwhile project).
