Since the inception of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk has been asserting his intention to leverage the entity to challenge and deconstruct substantial segments of the federal administration. Nevertheless, Musk has started to retract his commitments, stating that his earlier aspiration—to reduce $2 trillion from the national budget—might not come to fruition.

“I think if we aim for $2 trillion, there’s a decent chance we’ll achieve one,” Musk mentioned during a live discussion on his platform, X. He further added that removing $2 trillion was “like, the ideal scenario.”

Those familiar with the federal budget processes had already indicated that Musk’s ambition seemed futile, if not unfeasible. In truth, the federal budget’s largest segments—Social Security, Medicare, and defense allocations—are untouchable politically, making them tough to diminish. “Looking at the federal budget broadly, it essentially comprises two elements—a military, with an attached health and social insurance scheme,” the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler noted earlier.

Perhaps trimming beloved social welfare schemes is the intention—though it would be a political misstep if so. It’s apparent that the right-wing libertarian groups aligned with Trump prioritize reducing government aid to citizens, labeling it as governmental “excess.” Alex Nowrasteh, the Cato Institute’s vice president for economic and social policy studies, recently shared with a Utah publication that DOGE serves as “a valuable chance to at the very least highlight some regions where the federal government should be trimmed and where its intrusion in our lives can be reduced.”

For Nowrasteh, governmental “interference” appears to be when the Social Security Administration sends you a monthly payment. Cato recently issued a report recommending “increasing the age for Social Security eligibility by three years, reducing the scale of Social Security inflation adjustments, cutting back Medicare spending by one-third, and permitting beneficiaries to utilize Medicare finances themselves,” as stated by Desert News. Musk has similarly alluded to the possibility of trimming essential services like Social Security and Medicare, despite their vast appeal among Trump’s supporters. Trump has likewise proposed reducing taxes on Social Security disbursements, potentially accelerating the program’s fiscal decline.

Musk has also stated a desire for DOGE to “remove” numerous regulatory agencies, though skeptics have pointed out this will be challenging, if not implausible. Overall, Musk’s selected targets for elimination could be entities that have scrutinized his firms. Musk’s companies have been examined by several bodies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Justice Department, the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration, among others.

That regulatory oversight seems justified, given that Musk’s corporations are known for sparking disagreements. A recent example being, Tesla’s board members agreed to expend nearly a billion dollars to settle allegations that they had been excessively compensated through stock options valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. The lawsuit originated from a 2020 filing by the Police and Fire Retirement System of the City of Detroit, which contended that Tesla’s board compensation was disconnected from standard pay practices. According to Reuters, for instance, the board’s chair, Robyn Denholm, gained as much as $280 million through her compensation package.