- Elon Musk was named by Donald Trump to cut spending with his Department of Government Efficiency.
- Musk reposted on Wednesday a list of cuts from Sen. Rand Paul, a longtime critic of the federal budget.
- Paul’s annual lists — often focused on research funding and overseas aid — could point to a direction of travel for DOGE.
Elon Musk is on the hunt for federal spending to cut — and a Republican senator’s list caught his eye.
Musk late on Thursday reposted part of a long-running series by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Republican who has devoted much of his career to lamenting federal spending.
In Paul’s crosshairs were medical research projects, foreign aid, and public information projects.
“The Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE ) will fix this,” said a post by Musk’s America PAC, which Musk reposted on X.
‘Festivus’ complaints
It could offer a window into the types of programs that will attract the focus of Musk and his partner in the project, Vivek Ramaswamy.
Paul has been publishing his end-of-year spending critiques for at least a decade, calling them “The Festivus Report” in a nod to the holiday popularized on “Seinfeld” that celebrates complaining.
Though the America PAC post said DOGE would act on the list, that is far from a sure thing.
The list includes long-standing focuses of Paul’s — like his opposition to federal health agencies — and also highlights spending that isn’t easy to cut, like the cost of mistakes or debt on interest.
African tourism, public information projects
The lists are sourced from internal government watchdogs, media outlets, and congressional and government websites.
In his latest list, published last year, Paul highlighted foreign aid spending, including an $8.6 million investment in the port city of Esna, Egypt, meant to support tourism jobs there. (That program was due to end in October 2024.)
A prior report highlighted $50 million of US funding for Tunisia’s tourism industry, meant to help it increase visitor numbers through 2026.
Government ad campaigns
The most recent report noted that an agency of the Department of Homeland Security produced graphic novels to increase public awareness of disinformation.
And in 2022 the report noted the Department of Transportation spent $200,000 to encourage people to obey safety rules at railway crossings.
Animal research
A frequent target is research programs on animals, which came up five times in the 2023 report and 12 times since 2021.
The 2023 report outlined a USDA study on whether Labrador fur color affects their body temperature, while the 2022 report highlighted a Cornell University study on social communication between parrots.
The 2023 report noted government-funded research on monkeys, including funding for an island off South Carolina where some 3,500 rhesus monkeys are kept for research.
It also featured studies funded by the National Institutes of Health, examining the effects of hormones and drugs on monkeys, which the authors said could have implications for human health.
Those criticisms are familiar topics for Paul, a prominent critic of agencies like the NIH and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Old-fashioned incompetence
Another major feature of Paul’s lists are accidental waste, often by the US military.
The 2023 report highlighted some $150 million of military equipment that was written off after being stored in the open air, and more than $200 billion that federal agencies paid out by mistake.
The DOGE agenda
Details are still scarce on how or when DOGE would take any action. But Musk has emphasized his desire to do identify wasteful spending in public, culminating in a leaderboard of spending deemed wasteful.
Writing on X on Wednesday, Musk said the DOGE’s actions “will be posted online for maximum transparency.”
“Anytime the public thinks we are cutting something important or not cutting something wasteful, just let us know!” he said.
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