The masterminds behind the proposed government efficiency agency have provided more detail about how it would function. Their explanations only makes their enterprise seem less plausible.

DOGE could be a mechanism for a Musk shadow presidency, a nonsense job designed to keep Musk busy without giving him real power, or a curious mix of the two. In any case, Musk and Ramaswamy have proposed cutting “thousands” of federal regulations and determining the “minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions.

Elon Musk claims he can cut $2 trillion from the government budget. Simon Johnson thinks Musk needs to check his math.