New York: Now that President-elect Donald Trump has tasked Elon Musk with the responsibility of co-heading (with Vivek Ramaswamy) the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), one can expect the unexpected.
As Trump prepares to take charge in January, his trusted men are working overtime to strategise.
The world’s richest man Musk and former Presidential contender Ramaswamy have proposed a bold new concept that can lead to the firing of US federal employees who don’t come to office for five days a week for work.
The unique proposal is part of a bigger scheme to save $2 trillion from the federal budget.
According to Musk and Ramaswamy, employees in the US administration who believe in “the COVID-era privilege of staying home” should not be paid by American taxpayers.
The duo vowed “mass headcount reductions across the federal bureaucracy”, mainly targeting civil workers who are reluctant to return to office, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
“If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them,” the pair proclaimed, marking a significant shift from the remote-work options provided during the pandemic.
Civil service regulations permit “reductions in force that don’t target specific employees,” the duo said, clarifying their power to enact key reforms.
“The statute further empowers the president to prescribe rules governing the competitive service,” Musk and Ramaswamy said in the article.
The 53-year-old Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, contributed around £200 million to Trump’s election campaign. Ramaswamy, on the other hand, joined the Trump campaign after the former decided to withdraw from the race for President.