1159
The new US administration plans to significantly “optimize” Pentagon spending at the same time that Donald Trump is pressuring Europe to sharply increase their defense spending, the Financial Times reports.
According to Trump, the US Department of Defense, whose annual budget is about $800 billion, will soon be under the watchful eye of the “Department of Efficiency,” headed by eccentric billionaire Elon Musk.
“Let’s audit the military. We’ll find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. You know, the people elected me on this,” Trump said.
Musk’s potential involvement in the Pentagon’s cost-cutting drive has already raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest. His companies, SpaceX and Starlink, have government contracts. But Mike Walz, Trump’s national security adviser, dismissed those concerns. He said “all the appropriate safeguards” would be in place.
“The American people said enough is enough, enough of the bloat, the waste and the debt. We really need great minds, and we need business leaders to come in there and completely reform the Pentagon’s procurement processes,” he said.
The second Trump administration, with Musk’s participation, has already made aggressive attempts to stop some federal programs. However, some of these efforts have been blocked in the courts. Democrats generally speak of the greatest constitutional crisis in half a century.
Republican Mike Turner agrees that budget spending policies need to be critically evaluated, but he also said that Musk and his department could have acted more thoughtfully.
“He needs to communicate more professionally with the American public,” Turner said.
Policies of the new administration in the USA
As reported by , Trump is trying to eliminate the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which funds international humanitarian aid programs. According to the new US president, corruption is rampant in the agency.
We also reported that Elon Musk wants to close Radio Liberty and Voice of America, which primarily serve audiences in countries with problematic democracies or dictatorships. The billionaire considers these media outlets to be “a relic of the past.”
