The federal government will be seeing many more layoffs if the House Republicans have their way. According to NBC, Washington, D.C. could be forced to dismiss a significant number of first responders, police officers, teachers and bus and rail service employees if a GOP-proposed bill, calling for drastic cuts to the District’s budget is approved, city leaders said.
“We are not a federal agency. We are a city, county, state all at once,” D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said at a news conference Monday. “Our budget was balanced and approved, and if we go back to fiscal 2024 levels we would be forced to reduce spending by $1.1 billion in only six months.”
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Amid this upheaval in the capital, Elon Musk has floated the idea of doubling the staff at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)— the initiative, led by Musk under Trump, is responsible for laying off thousands of federal employees recently.
Speaking to Fox Business host Larry Kudlow in an interview that aired on Monday, Musk said the DOGE team now has “a little over 100” employees, adding that his team was going to “get to 200.”
Musk told Kudlow in the same interview that it hasn’t been easy working on DOGE alongside his other businesses like Tesla and SpaceX.
“With great difficulty,” Musk said when asked how he was running his companies.
“I’m just here trying to make government more efficient, eliminate waste and fraud, and so far, we’re making good progress, actually,” Musk said.
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Musk spoke of efficiency while his company SpaceX lost two starships in consecutive disastrous launches in recent months. It is also important to note that SpaceX enjoys billions of dollars in government subsidies and federal contracts.
As per White House records of about 30 employees previously obtained by Business Insider, DOGE’s team already includes software developers, former Supreme Court clerks, and ex-consultants.