The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), spearheaded by President-elect Donald Trump’s picks Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, has turned Washington on its head—and even Bernie Sanders is on board. Yes, the socialist senator from Vermont who once declared billionaires shouldn’t exist is now cheering on Musk, the richest man in the world.
“Elon Musk is right,” Sanders posted on X. “The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions. Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud. That must change.”
Elon Musk is right.
The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions.
Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud.
That must change.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 1, 2024
Bernie Sanders siding with a capitalist like Musk might seem like the Twilight Zone, but it speaks to the bipartisan appeal of cracking down on wasteful government spending. Musk’s America PAC responded, “Sensible spending is not a partisan issue. The general public supports [DOGE] holding government accountable to spend taxpayer money more wisely.”
President Trump’s decision to appoint Musk and Ramaswamy to head DOGE is already paying dividends. In their Wall Street Journal op-ed, the duo ripped into the Department of Defense for failing its seventh consecutive audit, exposing how the Pentagon can’t even account for where its massive $800 billion annual budget is going.
Musk and Ramaswamy have been vocal about tackling inefficiency. Ramaswamy called for strengthening the military by focusing on effectiveness rather than reflexively bloating the budget, a move Musk backed. “In a meeting with senior military officers today, they told me that it now takes longer to renovate stairs (24 months) in the Pentagon than it took to build the WHOLE Pentagon (16 months) in the 1940s!!” Musk revealed on X.
Ramaswamy nailed it, saying, “Cutting bureaucracy will reduce the federal deficit, but the real win will be its pro-growth effect. The biggest cost of bureaucracy isn’t the headcount—it’s that bureaucrats find legally dubious ‘things to do’ that stifle freedom & depress our economy.”
Leave it to Trump to deliver the disruption Washington so desperately needs. With Musk and Ramaswamy at the helm, DOGE is poised to take on the bloated bureaucracies that have been draining taxpayer dollars for decades. While the Democrats are busy virtue-signaling and pushing for more spending, Trump’s team is focused on results: a stronger, leaner government that prioritizes the American people over bureaucratic bloat.
If even Bernie Sanders can see the value in this initiative, you know the writing is on the wall for wasteful spending. Musk, Ramaswamy, and Trump are proving that the only way to clean up the swamp is with bold, unapologetic leadership—and a little help from common sense.
