"If the Department of Government Efficiency wants to cut $2 trillion in spending, handouts to the fossil fuel industry may be "a truth test to all of their messaging.""
"President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to upend the federal government, and he has enlisted firebrands Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to help him do it. The two men are set to lead the Department of Government Efficiency and aim to trim $2 trillion from the U.S. budget.
That’s about one-third of all federal spending, and the pair also believe they can cut the government workforce by 75 percent. In announcing the office, known as DOGE, Trump said that “these wonderful Americans” will “dismantle” bureaucracy, “slash” regulations, cut “wasteful” expenditures, and “restructure” agencies. Ramaswamy took to X to promise, “We will not go gently.”
Overall, that’s likely going to be bad news for U.S. environmental policy and the Biden administration’s landmark climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act. But there’s a chance that, if DOGE wields its cleaver widely enough, the department may actually please environmentalists by eliminating a few things they have long-loathed, including fossil fuel subsidies.
“It’s a truth test to all of their messaging,” said Matthew Tejada, a former Environmental Protection Agency official who’s now a senior vice president at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “These handouts to the oil and gas industry, which allows these multinational corporations to earn billions of dollars a year, fly in the face of everything else they talk about.”"
Tik Root reports for Grist January 3, 2025.
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