• Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy offered more details on their DOGE government efficiency commission.
• They said their plans to cut government spending will lead to layoffs across federal agencies.
• Impacted workers would be offered early retirement and severance payments.

The leaders of President-elect Donald Trump’s government efficiency commission have more details on how they will reduce head count across government agencies.

On Wednesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy wrote an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal that explained their vision for a new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

Musk and Ramaswamy said DOGE’s focus will be on offering suggestions to Trump on administrative cost reductions and regulations to rescind in partnership with the Office of Management and Budget. Doing so, they wrote, would result in layoffs across federal agencies.

“DOGE intends to work with embedded appointees in agencies to identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote, adding that the number of employees cut should be proportionate to the number of federal regulations that Trump rescinds.

“Employees whose positions are eliminated deserve to be treated with respect, and DOGE’s goal is to help support their transition into the private sector,” they wrote. “The president can use existing laws to give them incentives for early retirement and to make voluntary severance payments to facilitate a graceful exit.”

The two DOGE leaders also floated requiring federal employees to come into the office five days a week, which they argued could lead to “a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home.”

Musk previously suggested at a town hall in October that he would consider giving impacted workers “very long severances” that could amount to two years’ pay, saying at the time that “the point is not to be cruel or to have people not be able to pay their mortgage or anything.”

Data from the Treasury Department showed that the US spent $6.75 trillion in fiscal year 2024, with the Department of Health and Human Services, the Social Security Administration, and the Department of Defense topping the spending lists. With the federal government being the largest employer in the US, with a workforce of over 2 million Americans, the DOGE commission could have a wide-ranging impact.

DOGE would target “$500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote, which they said would include nearly $300 million to “progressive groups like Planned Parenthood.”

The commission would not have the power to act on its own to cut forms of mandatory spending, like Social Security and Medicare — making changes to those programs would have to be done by legislation with congressional approval.

Are you a federal worker with thoughts on DOGE? Reach out to this reporter at asheffey@businessinsider.com.