Elon Musk eyes Social Security and Medicare as key targets for cuts

By Gregory Korte

 

Billionaire presidential adviser Elon Musk called entitlement spending — benefits including Social Security and Medicare — key targets for cuts, an assertion that directly contradicts President Donald Trump’s pledge to not touch those programmes.

 

“Most of the federal spending is entitlements,” Musk told Fox Business’ Larry Kudlow on Monday. “So that’s like the big one to eliminate.”

 

During the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly promised that he would not cut Social Security payments or health coverage from Medicare, popular safety net programmes with wide swaths of voters.

 

Trump repeated that pledge to Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, saying that he wouldn’t reduce legitimate entitlement benefits but would go after improper payments.

 

“I’m not going to touch Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Now, we’re going to get fraud out of there,” he said in the interview that aired on Sunday. “We’re going to get the fraud out, and everybody wants us to get the fraud out, and, therefore, you will make it better.”

 

Musk’s comments are likely to spark controversy on Capitol Hill and within the White House, where many Republicans have been adamant that entitlement benefits will not be part of his Department of Government Efficiency cuts. 

 

Democrats, for their part, have raised concerns that DOGE’s targets for spending reductions will mean that retirement and health care programmes will be in the cross-hairs. Those worries have sparked a wave of angry constituents at town hall meetings, prompting some Republicans to cancel in-person events with voters.

 

The billionaire’s comments come at a critical moment for DOGE, the cost-cutting initiative that Trump asked him to run. 

 

Musk’s high-profile role as the public face of DOGE is taking a toll on businesses owned and run by the world’s richest man.

 

Musk told Kudlow that he has been running his six businesses with “great difficulty,” but said he would remain in his role for the foreseeable future.

 

“I can’t believe I’m here doing this. It’s kind of bizarre,” Musk said, adding that the $2 trillion deficit was “the real wake up call for me.”

 

Shares in Tesla took their biggest hit since 2020 on Monday, as analysts cut their projections for vehicle deliveries for the year. The electric vehicle brand is facing blowback from its base of climate-conscious consumers who associate it with Musk’s more conservative politics. Musk personal fortune is down $148 billion since the last trading day before the inauguration, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

 

And an apparent cyberattack Monday against X, temporarily took down the Musk-owned social media site for many users. Musk attributed the outage to a “large, coordinated group and or a country.”

 

For weeks, DOGE has shaken up the federal government by canceling contracts, backing out of leases and pushing for federal employees to quit or be fired en masse. 

 

Musk told Fox Business he has about 100 people working for DOGE, a figure he plans to expand to 200 people. He mentioned he was hiring mainly people with experience in finance, software and information technology. 

 

Musk has received criticism for deputizing people with little knowledge of government to make cuts at agencies, which then had to be reversed after critical personnel — such as the employees managing the nuclear weapons stockpile — were terminated.

 

His powers were tested after a Musk-inspired government-wide email asked 2.4 million civilian employees to recount their top five accomplishments of the previous weeks. Agencies that deal with sensitive and classified information — like the Justice, Defense and Homeland Security departments — pushed back.

 

And after Musk squared off with cabinet members in a meeting last week, Trump directed his cabinet secretaries to use a “scalpel” rather than a “hatchet” — suggesting that control over downsizing efforts was shifting from Musk’s DOGE back to the Senate-confirmed officials leading departments and agencies.