Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Thursday officially announced his exit from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) of the Donald Trump administration. Taking to X, the world’s richest man thanked US President Trump for the “opportunity to reduce wasteful spending.”
The South African-born tech tycoon announced his departure from the Trump administration after helping the latter in leading a major drive to shrink the size of US government that led to shortening of the federal workforce. In a post on his social media platform X, Musk, a “Special Government Employee” thanked Trump for the opportunity to help run the Department of Government Efficiency, known as Doge.
Musk posted on X, “As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending. The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”
Musk exists a day after publicly criticising Trump’s legislative proposal
As per insiders, the White House began “offboarding” Musk as a special government employee on Wednesday night. His role was temporary and his exit is not unexpected, but it comes a day after Musk publicly criticising the president’s key legislative proposal known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”.
A day before leaving the Trump administration, Musk had voiced strong disappointment in the Republican President’s signature legislation, calling it a “massive spending bill.”
Musk said the bill would increase the federal deficit and undo DOGE’s work. He called the measure contradictory to the mission he was assigned.
“It’s a massive spending bill. It undermines the work we’ve done at DOGE to reduce the size of government and control unnecessary costs. I think a bill can be big or it could be beautiful. But I don’t know if it could be both,” Musk said in a CBS interview.
Talking to The Washington Post, the Tesla CEO admitted that his hopes for trimming the bureaucracy had run into far greater resistance than expected. “The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realised. It sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least,” he said.
What is DOGE?
The Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE is a body responsible for reducing US government spending and cutting jobs. The Department has faced legal challenges over the scope of its work, and Musk and his team have been criticised for a lack of transparency.
However, Doge is not an official government department, which can only be established by an act of Congress in the United States. The advisory body was created by an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump in his second tenure.
According to the executive order, DOGE’s responsibility also includes work related to IT upgrades aimed at boosting efficiency and it must finish its work by July 2026. As per media reports, a lot of DOGE staff are young people with tech backgrounds having limited or no government experience.
