Rand Paul: 'You don't get close' to Musk's spending cut goals without key social programs

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said Friday evening on Fox News what many have thought: President-elect Donald Trump's initiative for massive government spending cuts must go after major social programs to work.

"I'm for looking at the entitlements, the waste, everything because it's such an enormous problem that if you put military off the table, you put entitlements off the table, all you have left is 16 percent of the budget," said Paul. "If you eliminate that, you don't get anywhere close to balancing the budget ever."

Trump has tapped billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy for a task force they have dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, an inside reference to an internet meme. Musk has set a goal of cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget to eliminate the federal deficit.

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Proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare, America's flagship basic income and health insurance programs for retirees, is generally considered a third rail in American politics. Trump himself has repeatedly vowed he will not cut either program.

But Paul is likely correct; fact-checkers have noted that meeting the $2 trillion target without cuts to entitlement programs or national defense is essentially impossible because $2 trillion is more or less the cost of every single other federal government program, agency, and department when those three main expenditures, along with interest payments on the national debt, are excluded.

Musk, for his part, has not taken defense spending cuts off the table and has insisted he wants to make these programs more efficient by eliminating unnecessary administration and headcount. It's unclear how this would produce meaningful savings of the magnitude the DOGE initiative has promised.

Watch the video below or at the link here.