Can you actually cut government? DOGE, Milei's chainsaw and Washington's wall

The Short Version

Yes, you can cut government, but these five conversations show that how deep the cuts go depends less on finding waste than on who holds the legal power to act. Elon Musk describes DOGE finding untraceable Treasury payments, millions of dead people marked as alive in Social Security records and a web of government-funded NGOs, and says the bureaucracy has finally met a threat it can't swallow [1]. Saagar Enjeti replies that DOGE is a commission with no funding and no power to compel, facing a Congress and a Senate designed to resist pressure, and that most spending sits in entitlements and defense, which are politically untouchable [2]. Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster accept that the West is living beyond its means but warn that fast cuts will hit vulnerable people and that governments must own their mistakes [3]. Vivek Ramaswamy argues for a 75% cut to the federal workforce, on the view that cutting too much is a smaller risk than cutting too little [4]. Javier Milei, the only one who has actually done it as head of state, describes halving Argentina's ministries, dismissing about 50,000 public employees and balancing the budget in his first month, with measured poverty jumping to 57% before, by his account, falling to 46% [5].

Table of contents

What They Said

Elon Musk: what DOGE says it found, and why the machine fights back

Musk speaks as the insider, about a month into leading the Department of Government Efficiency [1]. He describes the federal government as "a whole series of big dumb machines" running on ancient software, and describes DOGE as, in effect, tech support for it [1]. His central political claim is about power, not money: "the reality is that our elected officials have very little power relative to the bureaucracy" [1]. Critics who call DOGE a threat to democracy should, he says, swap in another word: "if you just replace threat to democracy with threat to bureaucracy, it makes total sense" [1]. He presents this as something new: "Normally the bureaucracy eats revolutionists with breakfast. This is the first time that they're not, that the revolution might actually succeed" [1].

His examples of what DOGE found fall into a few groups.

Untraceable payments. At the Treasury, the main payments system sends out almost $5 trillion a year and, Musk says, allowed payments with no categorization code and no description, "Like basically untraceable blank checks" [1]. DOGE recommended making both fields mandatory, a change he estimates could save about $100 billion a year [1]. He also describes payments that keep flowing after the official who approved them leaves, like a forgotten gym membership worth billions [1].

The Social Security database. "We found just with a basic search of the social security database that there were 20 million dead people mocked as alive," he says [1]. Pressed by Rogan on whether they were being paid, he is careful: "Some of them were getting money," and on the share, "It isn't clear" [1]. His theory is that the fraud mostly works indirectly: "What it looks like is that most of the fraud is not coming from social security payments directly," but because these people are marked as alive, fraudsters can use them to claim "disability, unemployment, sort of fake medical payments and other things" [1]. The summary describes this as a "bank shot" across databases that don't talk to each other [1].

Government-funded NGOs. "The whole NGO thing is a nightmare," Musk says, and calls a government-funded non-governmental organization "an oxymoron" [1]. His argument is that such groups are "a way to do things that would be illegal if they were the government, but are somehow made legal if it's sent to a so-called non-profit" [1]. He cites one person who got "$1.9 billion dollars sent to their NGO," a group with "no prior, really, no prior activity," and Senator Susan Collins's account of the Navy getting $12 billion for submarines that never materialized [1]. He calls the NGO system possibly "the biggest scam ever" [1].

Why it matters. Musk borrows Milton Friedman's line that money is most poorly spent when you're spending someone else's money on people you don't know [1]. He adds a longer-term fiscal warning: because of Social Security's future obligations, "the actual national debt is like double what people think it is," as people live longer and fewer babies are born [1].

Musk also sets out some safeguards and limits. He stresses that DOGE recommends and departments decide: "those are cuts that Doge recommends to the department. And usually these recommendations are followed" [1]. Every action goes on DOGE.gov, with "a tracker that shows how much money has been saved" and each line item listed, and his challenge to critics is simple: "point out which payments are wrong" [1]. He admits errors will happen: "if we make a mistake, we'll reverse it quickly" [1]. On data access, he says "Anyone from Doge has to go through the same vetting process that those federal employees went through" [1]. He also says DOGE funds legitimate work, such as programs that can simply send a photo of what they're doing [1], and that DOGE's fixes are mostly mundane software problems, some flagged by the Government Accountability Office years ago [1].

His account of resistance is darker. He sees the political and media hostility to DOGE as proof it is working: "we're cutting off their graph machine. So that's what they're upset about" [1]. He argues confirmations are hard because "the system doesn't want to let them through" [1]. And he admits a personal limit: he has to be careful not to push too hard on corruption, because people who lose income streams get desperate and could come after him [1]. He frames the whole project as a Kobayashi Maru, a test designed so success is impossible, and says "We're reprogramming the matrix" to change that, though they may or may not succeed [1].

Two caveats come with his account. The episode's summary warns that his claims about fraud, political motives and the media should be weighed as his perspective rather than settled fact [1]. And his biggest political claim, that DOGE threatens benefits for illegal immigrants and is therefore being attacked, is his own reading of motives [1].

Saagar Enjeti: the wall of Washington

Saagar is sympathetic to Musk and Ramaswamy, but calls DOGE "a non statutory blue ribbon commission" with no funding and no power to compel anyone [2]. His argument is structural, and it has four parts.

Where the money is. Most federal spending is entitlements, which Trump has ruled out cutting, and defense; the controversial discretionary programs that draw headlines are a tiny slice [2]. So even perfect waste-hunting in the visible programs can't change the totals much.

Who has to act. DOGE's recommendations, due by July 2026, matter only if Republican appropriators in the House choose to act on them [2]. The Senate, he says, is designed to resist public pressure. His evidence: Musk and others endorsed Rick Scott for Senate majority leader, and Scott got the fewest votes [2]. He tells the story from Robert Caro's Master of the Senate of Washington telling Jefferson the Senate is the saucer that cools the tea [2].

How decisions really get made. Drawing on Graham Allison's Essence of Decision, Saagar argues that 99% of decisions never reach the president [2]. The national security advisor runs the process that writes the "three options" the president picks from, so whoever writes the options holds the power [2]. His examples: H.R. McMaster steering Trump into a 2017 Afghanistan troop increase despite his wish to withdraw, generals and leaks narrowing Obama's choices in Bob Woodward's Obama's Wars, the Pentagon slow-walking a Syria withdrawal, and the pre-Pearl Harbor oil embargo on Japan, which emerged largely from inside the State Department [2]. The lesson for a cost-cutter is that a determined president can still be boxed in by the people who manage the paperwork, which is why he worries about some appointments [2].

The law. When Lex Fridman points out that people laughed when Musk cut 90% of Twitter's staff, Saagar's answer is short: Musk owned Twitter, while government is bound by law [2].

He does not think the effort is hopeless. The most successful DOGE, he argues, would redesign systems rather than chase cuts [2]. His top target: "the entire pentagon procurement thing it needs to be burned to the ground," because cheap drone swarms now threaten hugely expensive weapons [2]. It would also rewrite the statutes that cause inefficiency, such as rules barring the military from helping at the border, fragmented payroll software, and security-clearance requirements that leave tiny pools of contractors [2]. His historical warning is sobering: only war, he laments, has ever cleared away bureaucracy [2]. He also flags a conflict inside the administration's own plans: DOGE-style spending cuts and costly mass-deportation operations pull in opposite directions [2].

Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster: cut, but carefully

Kisin and Foster, with Joe Rogan, come at DOGE from a centrist, cautious angle [3]. Rogan praises the search for waste, from billions in grants with no receipts to retirement paperwork stored in a converted limestone mine [3]. Kisin accepts the premise: everyone spends other people's money more carelessly than their own, and Western countries are running debt over 100% of GDP, with the US at about 126% and the UK around 110% [3]. In the conversation, the point comes through sharply: "Do you know what's bigger than your defense budget? Your interest" [3].

But the Triggernometry hosts don't think fraud-hunting will be enough. As one of them puts it, "you're not only going to deal with this by dealing with fraud and waste"; "We're actually going to have to not do some shit that we really want to do Because we have been spending like crazy everywhere" [3]. The bluntest line of the whole discussion is theirs: "We have been living beyond our means for decades" [3]. They see the need for DOGE-style scrutiny in Britain too, "I think we need that in the UK 100%," while warning that speed will bring overreach: "Then you pull it back, you've got to make sure it's done properly" [3]. Kisin warns there will be mistakes when moving fast [3].

Their principle about oversight runs in both directions. "Well, you can't have no oversight of government spending," one says, adding that it's something he'd say "no matter who the fuck is in charge" [3]. The reasoning: "You can't let people have that much control over your money Because they'll just decide they need more" [3].

Francis adds the strongest note of caution in any of the sources. From his years teaching in deprived London schools, he recalls that UK austerity cut Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, which had supported traumatized children from poor backgrounds, and he believes that investment had paid off in healthier adults [3]. The lesson is that a cut that looks like savings on a spreadsheet can remove something that was working. Rogan agrees that the most vulnerable, such as people who depend on Social Security, must not face disruptions, and suggests separating genuine aid, like feeding children, from an agency's other activities; USAID, he says, mixed useful programs with "a lot of crazy shit" [3]. During the episode, a search puts USAID's 2024 budget at about $21.7 billion [3], which the hosts note is small next to other lines ("Still, it's our patents," as the transcript renders it) [3].

The same conversation adds a wider warning about the state itself. Rogan draws a lesson from Francis's story about Dutch census records being used by the Nazis: You have to be very, very, very careful when you give power to people in order to keep you safe [3]. And on the Signal chat blunder, Kisin says the right response to a government mistake is to admit it and investigate, a point the episode makes into a general rule that critics should "hold power accountable" whoever holds it [3]. Applied to DOGE, that means cutting with oversight, owning errors, and not letting loyalty to a side stop you from criticizing it.

Vivek Ramaswamy: the case for 75%

Ramaswamy is the most radical of the American voices [4]. He argues that a managerial or committee class, in government and in companies, nonprofits and universities, now wields more power than creators and ordinary citizens, and he calls this anti-American, since the founders were inventors and doers [4]. He traces the modern administrative state from Woodrow Wilson through FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society, aided by Republicans like Richard Nixon [4].

His plan is a 75% headcount reduction across the federal bureaucracy, shutting agencies that should not exist and rescinding regulations Congress never passed [4]. His reasoning about risk is the key to it: he would rather accept the risk of cutting too much than the risk of cutting too little, because trimming carefully is like cutting a head off a hydra [4]. As a thought experiment, which he stresses is not a policy prescription, he describes firing everyone whose Social Security number ends in an odd digit, then everyone whose remaining number starts with an odd digit: "you didn't bring the chisel you brought a chainsaw," and ordinary Americans, he predicts, would notice nothing but a smaller government [4].

He supports this with a claim about organizations: about 25% of people in any large organization do most of the useful work, and clearing out bureaucracy would attract talented people who currently fear being swallowed by the machine [4]. From hiring at his company Roivant, he says the top reason people left jobs was not pay but feeling unable to reach their potential [4].

He also names the obstacle Saagar describes, in his own terms. Presidents cannot control about four million federal employees they are unable to fire, which he illustrates with a Japanese pharmaceutical CEO who could not stop unwanted projects because he could not fire anyone [4]. Bureaucracies protect themselves, he argues, through "the practice of blowing woke smoke to deflect accountability" [4]. Where he differs from Saagar is on the legal outlook: he is optimistic that recent Supreme Court rulings, West Virginia v. EPA, Loper Bright ending Chevron deference, and SEC v. Jarkesy, give a president unprecedented room to shrink the regulatory state [4]. And he says DOGE only works if a president makes it the top priority [4].

His test for any agency is its original mission: when a body accomplishes its purpose, celebrate and close it [4]. He applies this to the Department of Education, which he says was created to stop states from diverting funds from predominantly Black districts, a purpose he considers no longer relevant, and which now uses its roughly 10% share of school funding to impose conditions, such as a school denied funds over archery [4]. He sees government's proper role as about 80 to 90% focused on protecting borders and security and protecting property rights [4]. His summary of the program is to end the nanny state in all three forms, entitlement, regulatory and foreign-policy: "shut it down" [4]. He adds that he does not want to replace a left-wing nanny state with a right-wing one [4].

He is not purely a cutter. He wants spending on homeland defense to rise, citing hypersonic missiles, super EMP attacks and cyber threats, even as foreign interventionism shrinks, and he wants allies to pay more, pointing to the roughly $34 trillion US debt and NATO members who miss the 2% of GDP commitment [4].

Javier Milei: what the chainsaw actually did

Milei is the only source who has run a government while cutting it, and he campaigned with a chainsaw as a symbol of cutting the state [5]. His description of the crisis he inherited is the context for everything else: inflation running at about 1% a day in early December, which he annualizes to 7,500%; GDP per capita down about 15% over ten years; nearly half the population in poverty; and a fiscal deficit he puts at 15% of GDP, five points in the Treasury and ten in the central bank [5]. He adds negative net reserves of minus $12 billion, $50 billion in commercial debts and $10 billion in withheld corporate dividends [5].

What he cut. The government cut ministries to less than half (nine at first, eight now), dismissed about 50,000 public employees, stopped public works, ended discretionary transfers to the provinces, let public wages fall in real terms and removed utility subsidies [5]. He says the Treasury reached fiscal balance in January, his first month, in a country that had run deficits in 113 of the previous 123 years [5]. Moving central bank debt to the Treasury added what he describes as an adjustment of about 10% of GDP, which he calls the largest fiscal adjustment in the history of humanity [5].

What he protected, by his account. He removed the "poverty middlemen," the piquetero groups that verified welfare recipients' work and allegedly kept half their money, so recipients received double with the same spending [5]. This is a notable answer to the Kisin and Foster worry: Milei claims that cutting intermediaries let him help recipients more without spending more [5].

How he sequenced it. Milei is an anarcho-capitalist in his ideals but calls himself a minarchist in practice, working within constraints he cannot yet lift [5]. Opening everything on day one, as some anarchists wanted, would in his view have caused hyperinflation, poverty near 95% and the return of the Peronists: "We are liberal libertarians. We are not liberal fools" [5]. He criticizes libertarians who attack those trying to govern as committing the Nirvana fallacy: "If you compare yourself against paradise everything is horrible and miserable but you don't live in paradise" [5]. He uses the rectangular interview table as his image: you may want a round one, but you adapt or cancel the interview [5].

Deregulation as a machine. A deregulation ministry led by Federico Sturzenegger eliminates between one and five regulations a day [5]. Milei says this structural reform is eight times larger than Carlos Menem's reforms, achieved with 15% of the lower house and 10% of the senators, with 3,200 more reforms pending [5]. He describes a counter in Sturzenegger's office showing the days left on the delegated decree powers [5], a detail that shows how much depended on a time-limited grant of legal authority.

The results he claims. Wholesale inflation fell from 54% to 2% a month and consumer inflation to 2.7%, achieved, he stresses, without price controls, expropriation or a fixed exchange rate [5]. Country risk fell from 3,000 to 770 basis points, Fitch upgraded Argentina to CCC, and real wages and pensions have risen, with informal wages rising fastest [5]. He cites a projection by economist Juan Pablo Nicolini that fiscal changes alone could double GDP per capita in ten years, and says his popularity is higher now than when he took office [5].

The cost. Fridman asks about the pain, and Milei's answer is contested territory. Measured poverty rose to 57% in January [5]. He insists the poverty was inherited, not created: under price controls and money printing, official prices were artificially low but goods were unavailable, so the statistics looked better than reality [5]. Making prices real brought goods back but revealed the true cost of the food basket [5]. He says poverty has since fallen to 46% and that activity bottomed in April [5]. These are his figures and his interpretation; the episode summary notes that the poverty spike fell again by his account [5].

Advice for DOGE. Milei says Musk and Ramaswamy plan to replicate Argentina's model through DOGE, and his advice is to go all the way, push to the limit and never let down their guard, because the people who complain are those losing privileges and must justify them publicly [5]. He also describes corruption as something cuts can starve: after his government cut welfare middlemen and introduced an anti-blockade protocol, a protest expected to draw 100,000 people drew about 3,000, and he says the roughly 900 roadblocks a year stopped [5].

Where They Agree, and Where They Don't

Common ground

All five sources agree that the state spends carelessly, and three of them reach for the same reason. Musk cites Milton Friedman on spending someone else's money on people you don't know [1]; Kisin says everyone spends other people's money more carelessly than their own [3]; Ramaswamy's hydra and nanny-state arguments assume the same incentive problem [4]. All agree the fiscal position is serious: Musk says the true national debt is roughly double what people think [1], Kisin puts US debt at about 126% of GDP and notes interest now exceeds the defense budget [3], and Ramaswamy cites the roughly $34 trillion debt [4].

They also agree that the bureaucracy is a political actor, not a neutral tool. Musk says elected officials have "very little power relative to the bureaucracy" [1]; Saagar says whoever writes the president's options holds the power [2]; Ramaswamy says presidents cannot control four million employees they cannot fire [4]. Even Milei's account of needing delegated decree powers and a dedicated deregulation ministry suggests the same thing: cutting required new legal machinery, not just will [5].

And nearly everyone expects mistakes. Musk promises to reverse errors quickly [1]; Kisin warns of mistakes when moving fast [3]; Ramaswamy openly accepts the risk of cutting too much [4].

The real disagreements

Can cuts be deep, or only shallow? This is the main split. Ramaswamy wants 75% of the workforce gone and believes ordinary people would barely notice [4]. Milei cut ministries by more than half and about 50,000 jobs and says the economy recovered [5]. Saagar thinks DOGE, as constituted, can at most recommend, and that the real money in entitlements and defense is off limits politically [2]. Their views differ because they are describing different situations. Milei had executive authority, delegated decree powers and a crisis so severe (near-hyperinflation) that radical action looked necessary [5]. Saagar is describing an advisory commission without funding or legal power, working through a Senate designed to cool pressure [2]. Ramaswamy is betting that recent Supreme Court rulings give the US president new room [4], a point Saagar doesn't address directly in the summary but which cuts against his emphasis on law.

Is the problem waste or promises? Musk's case rests mostly on fraud and waste: blank-check payments, dead people in databases, NGOs [1]. Kisin and Foster argue that fraud and waste won't be enough, and that countries will have to stop doing things they genuinely want [3]. Saagar makes the same point with numbers: the headline programs are a small slice, and the big items are entitlements and defense [2]. Milei, notably, did cut things people wanted, from public works to utility subsidies to real public wages [5], which supports the Kisin view that real savings require real sacrifices.

Chainsaw or scalpel? Ramaswamy explicitly rejects careful trimming as hydra-cutting and prefers the chainsaw [4]. Milei's advice to DOGE is similar: go all the way and never let down your guard [5]. But Milei's own account also has a sequencing logic, since opening everything on day one would have been disastrous [5]. Foster's story about UK mental health services for children points the other way: that some cuts destroy things that were working, and the damage shows up later [3]. Saagar's scalpel is different again: not smaller cuts but targeted redesign, especially Pentagon procurement [2].

Who pays? Milei says the poverty spike reflected inherited reality being revealed, not his cuts [5]. Kisin, Foster and Rogan insist vulnerable people, including those on Social Security, must not face disruptions [3]. Musk implicitly agrees on Social Security itself, saying most of the fraud seems not to come from Social Security payments directly [1]. These positions are not fully compatible, and the sources don't resolve them: Milei's account relies on his reading of the statistics, and Foster's on his experience as a teacher.

Do the critics have a point? Musk reads the opposition to DOGE as the "graph machine" defending itself [1], and Milei says those who complain are losing privileges [5]. Kisin and Foster are more cautious: they insist that government spending must have oversight no matter who is in charge, and that governments, including this one, must admit mistakes [3]. Rogan's warning about giving people power in order to keep you safe [3] applies to a cost-cutting body with access to sensitive data, a concern Musk answers by saying DOGE staff are vetted like other federal employees [1].

Why It Works

The sources give several mechanisms for why government grows, why cuts are resisted and why cuts can still succeed.

The spending incentive. The Friedman point Musk cites [1] and Kisin's version of it [3] explain the growth: officials spend other people's money on people they don't know, so the pressure to economize is weak. Kisin's addition is that controllers of other people's money, "they'll just decide they need more" [3].

Invisible flows. Musk's Treasury example shows a mechanical source of waste: when payments need no category code or description, nobody can trace them, so they persist [1]. His gym-membership image describes payments that outlive the people who approved them [1]. And his Social Security example shows how databases that don't talk to each other let a single false record be used to claim other benefits [1]. The fix he proposes, making two fields mandatory, is a software rule, not a political fight [1].

Intermediaries. Musk argues that government-funded NGOs let the state do things through a nonprofit that it couldn't legally do itself, and let insiders pay themselves large sums [1]. Milei describes a parallel mechanism in Argentina: welfare middlemen who kept half the money and organized roadblocks [5]. In both accounts, cutting the intermediary saves money or delivers more to the intended recipient [1][5].

Institutional friction. Saagar explains resistance through Allison's bureaucratic politics model: organizations follow their own procedures and interests, and the officials who frame decisions shape outcomes [2]. The Senate is built to cool public passion [2]. Ramaswamy adds the employment mechanism, that managers who can't fire can't stop unwanted work [4], and a cultural one, that bureaucracies deflect accountability with the appearance of virtue [4].

Why deep cuts can succeed. Ramaswamy's claim is that about a quarter of people do most of the useful work in large organizations, so large cuts remove less capacity than they seem to [4]. Milei's claim is fiscal: ending the deficit and cleaning up the central bank ended the money printing that drove inflation, which let prices become real and eventually let wages and activity recover [5]. His sequencing matters: he balanced the budget first and plans to phase out the central bank gradually, through what he calls endogenous dollarization, instead of all at once [5].

Why cuts can hurt. Foster's account of mental health services for traumatized children [3] is the main mechanism on the other side: some spending is an investment whose returns show up years later in healthier adults, so cutting it saves money now and costs more later. Milei's poverty figures show the short-term shock such a program can produce, whatever its cause [5].

Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't

Where a crisis gives cover. Milei's program came in a country with near-hyperinflation, a 15% of GDP deficit and deficits in 113 of 123 years [5]. That depth of crisis made shock treatment politically possible and, by his account, necessary. The US situation is serious by Kisin's and Musk's numbers [1][3] but not the same, and Saagar's warning that only war has historically cleared away bureaucracy [2] suggests deep cuts are hardest when no emergency forces them.

Where the cutter has legal power. Musk could cut 90% of Twitter because he owned it [2]. Milei had delegated decree powers, visible on a countdown counter, plus a deregulation ministry [5]. DOGE, as Saagar describes it, had neither funding nor power to compel, and its recommendations depend on departments and House appropriators [2]; Musk himself says DOGE's cuts are recommendations that departments confirm [1]. Ramaswamy's optimism rests on new Supreme Court rulings expanding presidential room [4]. The same idea can work in one legal setting and stall in another.

Where the money actually sits. Fixing untraceable payments or ending an NGO grant applies to the discretionary slice. Saagar notes that entitlements and defense are most of the budget and that Trump ruled out cutting entitlements [2]. Musk's own warning about future Social Security obligations [1] points to a problem that waste-hunting can't solve.

Where cuts touch the vulnerable. Kisin, Foster and Rogan draw a line at disrupting Social Security recipients and at cutting programs like child mental health services or feeding children [3]. Milei claims to have protected recipients by removing middlemen [5], but his own figures show poverty spiking before falling [5].

Where the system is being redesigned, not just trimmed. Saagar's view is that procurement and statutes, not headcount, are where durable savings lie [2]. Ramaswamy's mission test, closing agencies that have finished their purpose [4], and Milei's one-to-five regulations removed a day [5] are both redesigns rather than one-time cuts, and both depend on sustained political attention; Ramaswamy says DOGE works only if the president makes it the top priority [4].

Where the advice doesn't transfer. Milei's currency competition and endogenous dollarization plan [5] is specific to an economy whose central bank had been printing money to cover deficits. Nothing in the other sources suggests it applies to the US.

What To Do With It

1. Separate waste from promises before judging any cut. Following Saagar and Kisin, ask whether a proposed saving comes from fraud and untraceable spending or from dropping something people want; the first rarely closes a budget gap alone, because entitlements and defense are most of the money [2][3].

2. Check the numbers against the source's own caveats. Musk says 20 million dead people were marked as alive, but on payments he says "Some of them were getting money" and, on the share, "It isn't clear" [1]. Milei's poverty figures come with his interpretation of inherited statistics [5]. Read claims as the speaker's account unless the underlying data is shown.

3. Look for mechanical fixes first. Musk's mandatory payment codes and descriptions [1] and Milei's removal of welfare middlemen [5] are examples of changes that save money or deliver more aid without cutting what recipients get.

4. Ask who has the legal power to act. Before expecting results from any efficiency body, check whether it can compel anything or only recommend, as Saagar describes DOGE [2], and whether it has time-limited authority like Milei's delegated decree powers [5].

5. Target structures, not just headcounts. Saagar's candidates are Pentagon procurement, fragmented payroll software, clearance rules that shrink contractor pools and statutes that bar sensible cooperation [2]; Ramaswamy's is closing agencies whose original mission is done [4].

6. Build reversal into the plan. Musk promises to reverse mistakes quickly and to post every line item publicly [1]; Kisin and Foster say overreach must be pulled back and done properly [3]. A public tracker plus a fast way to restore wrongly cut items makes speed less dangerous.

7. Protect programs with long-term payoffs. Foster's warning about child mental health services [3] and Rogan's suggestion to separate genuine aid, like feeding children, from an agency's other activities [3] point to reviewing what a program achieves before cutting it by category.

8. Sequence deep cuts. Milei balanced the budget first, kept many structural changes for later and warns that doing everything on day one would have been catastrophic [5]. Pick the constraint that can change now and work on the rest over time [5].

9. Keep oversight no matter who is in charge. Kisin and Foster's rule, that government spending needs oversight and power must be held accountable whichever side holds it [3], applies to cost-cutters too, especially ones with access to sensitive data [1][3].

Sources

1. 2281 – Elon Musk · The Joe Rogan Experience
2. Saagar Enjeti: Trump, MAGA, DOGE, Obama, FDR, JFK, History & Politics · Lex Fridman Podcast
3. 2297 - Francis Foster & Konstantin Kisin · The Joe Rogan Experience
4. Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War · Lex Fridman Podcast
5. Javier Milei: President of Argentina | Freedom, Economics, and Corruption · Lex Fridman Podcast