Business
DOGE on the job: How Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy caused the looming government shutdown
Legislators had 24 hours to read through 1,547 pages. Ramaswamy read them. Musk presented an alternative. The process collapsed.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are flexing their muscles even before President Elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, spiking a bipartisan spending bill. The bill was introduced on Tuesday with voting scheduled for Wednesday. Legislators were under massive pressure to approve of the spending bill or risk a government shut down. Problem is, the bill was over 1,500 pages long!
Chances are, the bill would have passed and in the ensuing weeks as details became known the public would have been outraged by all the extra plans to spend / waste taxpayer dollars. Legislators would have apologized by saying they simply had no time to read everything and they were desperate to avoid a shut down.
That’s where the new DOGE comes in. First Ramaswamy somehow read the bill and posted a video to TikTok and X to inform voters what they were going to be paying for in this new bill.
@vivekramaswamy Congress wants to waste your money without telling you, make sure that doesn’t happen
From MXMNews
The newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, successfully campaigned to halt the bipartisan continuing resolution (CR) in Congress. Musk and Ramaswamy took to X, rallying conservatives against the 1,547-page stopgap funding measure they argue is riddled with wasteful spending and unnecessary policy provisions.
Musk, a billionaire entrepreneur and vocal advocate for government reform, characterized the bill as a “pork-barrel” monstrosity. “Unless @DOGE ends the careers of deceitful, pork-barrel politicians, the waste and corruption will never stop,” Musk posted on X, adding that lawmakers who support the bill should be “voted out in two years.”
Meanwhile, Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate and DOGE co-chair, proposed an alternative to the bulky spending bill. Sharing a draft of his one-page resolution, he described it as a minimalist approach that avoids exacerbating historical spending excesses. “This is what a clean CR looks like,” he wrote, emphasizing the need for fiscal restraint.
Musk and Ramaswamy posted this to X.
Shorter = better. This bill is only 116 pages, instead of 1,500+ pages. Took a LOT less time to read. Glad to see the following garbage from yesterday’s bill removed in the current version: – Congressional pay raise/health benefits – 17 miscellaneous commerce bills – Random new pandemic policies, like funding for “biocontainment research laboratories” – Renewal of the “Global Engagement Center,” a key player in the federal censorship state
In record time, the public was informed, politicians were influenced by outraged taxpayers, and politicians blamed each other for a faulty bill and were forced to go back to the drawing board.
It’s all explained very well in this video presentation from Kaizen Asiedu, a Harvard graduate in philosophy who makes videos informing Americans about complicated political matters.
Friday’s deadline to avoid a government shutdown looms. Musk posted on X that a shutdown would be “infinitely better than passing a horrible bill.” His DOGE partner Vivek Ramaswamy urged Americans to contact their representatives to “stop the steal of your tax dollars.”
And President-elect Donald Trump posted this: “If Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, then CALL THEIR BLUFF,”.
Should the spending bill fail, it will mark a significant victory for DOGE and a potential turning point in efforts to reform Washington’s spending habits.
From the Fraser Institute
By Matthew Lau
From 2015 to 2024, headcount at Natural Resources Canada increased 39 per cent even though employment in Canada’s natural resources sector actually fell one per cent. Similarly, there was 382 per cent headcount growth at the federal department for Women and Gender Equality—obviously far higher than the actual growth in Canada’s female population.
According to a recent poll, there’s widespread support among Canadians for reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy. The support extends across the political spectrum. Among the political right, 82.8 per cent agree to reduce the federal bureaucracy compared to only 5.8 per cent who disagree (with the balance neither agreeing nor disagreeing); among political moderates 68.4 per cent agree and only 10.0 per cent disagree; and among the political left 44.8 per cent agree and 26.3 per cent disagree.
Taken together, “67 per cent agreed the federal bureaucracy should be significantly reduced. Only 12 per cent disagreed.” These results shouldn’t be surprising. The federal bureaucracy is ripe for cuts. From 2015 to 2024, the federal government added more than 110,000 new bureaucrats, a 43 per cent increase, which was nearly triple the rate of population growth.
This bureaucratic expansion was totally unjustified. From 2015 to 2024, headcount at Natural Resources Canada increased 39 per cent even though employment in Canada’s natural resources sector actually fell one per cent. Similarly, there was 382 per cent headcount growth at the federal department for Women and Gender Equality—obviously far higher than the actual growth in Canada’s female population. And there are many similar examples.
While in 2025 the number of federal public service jobs fell by three per cent, the cost of the federal bureaucracy actually increased as the number of fulltime equivalents, which accounts for whether those jobs were fulltime or part-time, went up. With the tax burden created by the federal bureaucracy rising so significantly in the past decade, it’s no wonder Canadians overwhelmingly support its reduction.
Another interesting poll result: “While 42 per cent of those surveyed supported the government using artificial intelligence tools to resolve bottlenecks in service delivery, 32 per cent opposed it, with 25 per cent on the fence.” The authors of the poll say the “plurality in favour is surprising, given the novelty of the technology.”
Yet if 67 per cent of Canadians agree with significantly shrinking the federal bureaucracy, then solid support for using AI to increasing efficiency should not be too surprising, even if the technology is relatively new. Separate research finds 58 per cent of Canadian workers say they use AI tools provided by their workplace, and although many of them do not necessarily use AI regularly, of those who report using AI the majority say it improves their productivity.
In fact, there’s massive potential for the government to leverage AI to increase efficiency and control labour expenses. According to a recent study by a think-tank at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly known as Ryerson), while the federal public service and the overall Canadian workforce are similar in terms of the percentage of roles that could be made more productive by AI, federal employees were twice as likely (58 per cent versus 29 per cent) to have jobs “comprised of tasks that are more likely to be substituted or replaced” by AI.
The opportunity to improve public service efficiency and deliver massive savings to taxpayers is clearly there. However, whether the Carney government will take advantage of this opportunity is questionable. Unlike private businesses, which must continuously innovate and improve operational efficiency to compete in a free market, federal bureaucracies face no competition. As a result, there’s little pressure or incentive to reduce costs and increase efficiency, whether through AI or other process or organizational improvements.
In its upcoming budget and beyond, it would be a shame if the federal government does not, through AI or other changes, restrain the cost of its workforce. Taxpayers deserve, and clearly demand, a break from this ever-increasing burden.
Matthew Lau
Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
Later this week the United Nations will hold a vote on a multi-billion climate-change tax targeted squarely at American industry. Without quick and decisive action by the White House, this U.N. tax on fossil fuels will become international law.
This resolution before the International Maritime Organization will impose a carbon tax on cargo and cruise ships that carry $20 trillion of merchandise over international waters. Roughly 80% of the bulkage of world trade is transported by ship.
The resolution is intended to advance the very “net zero” carbon emissions standard that has knee-capped the European economies for years and that American voters have rejected.
This tax is clearly an unnecessary restraint on world trade, thus making all citizens of the world poorer.
It is also an international tax that would be applied to American vessels and, as such, is a dangerous precedent-setting assault on U.S. sovereignty. Since when are American businesses subject to international taxes imposed by the United Nations?
The U.S maritime industry believes the global tax would cost American shippers more than $100 billion over the next seven years if enacted.
Worst of all, if the resolution passes, it will require the retirement of older ships and enable a multi-billion-dollar wealth transfer to China, which has come to dominate shipbuilding in recent years. China STRONGLY supports the tax scheme, even though, ironically, no nation has emitted more pollutants into the atmosphere than they have. Yet WE are getting socked with a tax that indirectly pays for THEIR pollution.
Despite the fact that we pay a disproportionate share of the tax, the U.S. has almost no say on how the revenues are spent. This is the ultimate form of taxation without representation.
Even if the United States chooses not to implement the tax on domestic shipping, it will still be enforced by foreign ports of origin or destination as well as by flag states. As a result, American importers and exporters will be required to pay the tax regardless of domestic policy decisions.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy have jointly stated that America “will not accept any international environmental agreement that unduly or unfairly burdens the United States or our businesses.” They call the financial impact on the U.S. of this global carbon tax “disastrous, with some estimates forecasting global shipping costs increasing as much as 10% or more.”
The U.S. maritime industry complains that although American vessels carry only about 12% of the globally shipped merchandise, U.S. flag vessels would bear almost 20% of this tax. No wonder China and Europe are for it. The EU nations get 17 yes votes to swamp the one no vote out of Washington.
Unfortunately, right now without White House pressure, we could lose this vote because of defections by our allies.
To prevent this tax, the White House should announce a set of retaliation measures. This could include a dollar-for-dollar reduction in U.S. payments to NATO, the U.N., IMF and World Bank.
At a time when financial markets are dealing with trade disputes, the last thing the world — least of all the United States — needs is a United Nations excise tax on trade.
Stephen Moore is co-founder of Unleash Prosperity and a former Trump senior economic advisor.
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