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Trump wants Elon Musk to overhaul the government. Here’s what could be on the chopping block
特朗普欲让埃隆・马斯克全面改革政府，以下是可能面临削减的方面
By Tami Luhby, Tierney Sneed and Rene Marsh, CNN
7 minute read
Updated 11:06 AM EST, Thu November 14, 2024
CNN — President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk have big ambitions for making the federal government leaner and more efficient by reviewing its budget and operations from top to bottom.
美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）报道 —— 当选总统唐纳德・特朗普和埃隆・马斯克有着宏大的抱负，他们打算通过全面审查联邦政府的预算和运作，使其变得更精简、更高效。
Musk, the world’s richest person who owns or runs several companies, has warned that his goals – including cutting at least $2 trillion in federal spending – could cause “temporary hardship” before ultimately creating “long-term prosperity.” His pronouncements are prompting budget experts to scoff, while sending chills down the spines of many federal workers and those who depend on the federal government for assistance or their livelihood.
Details about how the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, will operate – and how Musk and his co-leader Vivek Ramaswamy will avoid conflicts of interest – remain scarce. But the duo has spoken openly about areas of the government they’d like to see altered, while Trump and Republican lawmakers have a long list of programs and operations they’d like to reform.
马斯克作为世界首富，拥有或经营着数家公司，他曾警告称，自己的目标（包括削减至少 2 万亿美元的联邦开支）在最终创造 “长期繁荣” 之前，可能会造成 “暂时的困难”。他的这番言论引得预算专家们嗤笑，同时也让众多联邦政府工作人员以及依靠联邦政府援助或以此为生的人们胆战心惊。
关于新的政府效率部（DOGE）将如何运作，以及马斯克和他的联合负责人维韦克・拉马斯瓦米（Vivek Ramaswamy）将如何避免利益冲突，相关细节仍十分匮乏。但二人已公开谈论过他们希望政府做出改变的一些领域，而特朗普和共和党议员们也有一长串想要改革的项目和运作事项清单。
It’s important to note that while Trump has promised that the initiative will make “drastic changes,” Musk and Ramaswamy will not have any direct power to make spending cuts, regulatory changes or other moves. The group will exist outside of the government and will likely serve to make recommendations to the White House for the president’s annual budget, which outlines the president’s vision but Congress is not required to follow.
需要注意的是，尽管特朗普承诺这一举措将带来 “大刀阔斧的改变”，但马斯克和拉马斯瓦米并不会拥有直接削减开支、变更监管规定或采取其他行动的权力。该团体将独立于政府之外，很可能会就总统年度预算向白宫提出建议，总统年度预算体现了总统的设想，但国会并非必须遵循这些建议。
What Musk and Ramaswamy have said they’d target
马斯克和拉马斯瓦米声称的目标对象
Asked at a town hall on X last month about what the initiative’s first steps would be, Musk said there is so much government waste that it would be easy to find targets.
“We, just as a country, obviously, we need to live within our means,” said Musk, who owns X and is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. “So that means just looking at every line item, every expense and saying, ‘Is this necessary at all?’”
But he also acknowledged that “everyone’s taking a haircut here.”
“That necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity,” said Musk.
Musk also took aim at the Department of Education, a frequent target of Trump and Republicans, criticizing the agency for allegedly indoctrinating kids with left-wing propaganda and other failings. However, he did not call for its elimination during the town hall.
Meanwhile, Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur and former 2024 Republican presidential candidate who shifted his support to Trump, has been more specific about how he’d change the federal government.
On the campaign trail, he said he would get rid of up to 75% of the federal workforce. About 2.3 million civilians are employed by the federal government, with nearly 60% working for the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security.
“Hordes of unelected bureaucrats stifle innovation and ignore the voted desires of the American people,” Ramaswamy wrote in a white paper.
The plan also called for closing the Education Department and shifting its workforce training programs to the Labor Department; eliminating the FBI and relocating its 15,000 special agents who solve cases to other agencies; and getting rid of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and shifting its duties to other departments.
Rooting out waste in the government is “a huge undertaking,” said Stephen Moore, an economic campaign adviser to Trump and a Heritage Foundation economist.
“DOGE is going to need hundreds of people to pull this off. It won’t just be Elon and Vivek,” said Moore, who is not involved in the effort.
在上个月 X 平台（原推特）举办的一次市政厅活动中，当被问及这一举措的首要步骤会是什么时，马斯克表示，政府存在大量浪费现象，所以很容易就能找到削减目标。
“显然，作为一个国家，我们需要量入为出，” 马斯克说道，他拥有 X 平台，同时还是特斯拉和太空探索技术公司（SpaceX）的首席执行官。“这意味着要审视每一项条目、每一笔开支，然后问一问‘这到底有没有必要？’”
但他也承认 “每个人都得做出些牺牲”。
“这必然会涉及一些暂时的困难，但它将确保长期繁荣，” 马斯克说。
马斯克还将矛头对准了教育部，教育部一直是特朗普和共和党人频繁攻击的目标，马斯克批评该机构涉嫌向孩子们灌输左翼思想以及存在其他问题。不过，在那次市政厅活动中，他并未呼吁裁撤教育部。
与此同时，拉马斯瓦米作为一名生物技术企业家以及曾参与 2024 年共和党总统候选人竞选（后转而支持特朗普）的人士，对于如何改变联邦政府说得更为具体。
在竞选活动期间，他表示将裁减多达 75% 的联邦政府工作人员。目前约有 230 万文职人员受雇于联邦政府，其中近 60% 就职于国防部、退伍军人事务部和国土安全部。
“大批未经选举产生的官僚阻碍了创新，无视美国民众通过投票表达的意愿，” 拉马斯瓦米在一份白皮书中写道。
该计划还呼吁裁撤教育部，并将其劳动力培训项目转至劳工部；取消联邦调查局（FBI），把负责破案的 1.5 万名特工调配到其他机构；裁撤核管理委员会，并将其职责移交给其他部门。
特朗普的经济竞选顾问、传统基金会经济学家斯蒂芬・摩尔表示，根除政府中的浪费现象是 “一项艰巨的任务”。
“政府效率部（DOGE）将需要数百人来完成这项工作，不会只有埃隆（马斯克）和维韦克（拉马斯瓦米），” 未参与此项工作的摩尔说道。
Experts are doubtful
专家们表示怀疑
A host of budget experts across the political spectrum have questioned the effort’s ability to cut anywhere near $2 trillion a year in spending, which is more than the federal government spent on defense, education, veterans’ health and other discretionary items in the past fiscal year.
Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, and Glenn Hubbard, a former US Council of Economic Advisers chairman in the George W. Bush administration, both poured cold water on the idea at an event on Tuesday.
Slashing that much from the federal budget – which totaled roughly $6.8 trillion in fiscal 2024 – would require cutting every program by roughly one-third, said Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.
And if Social Security, Medicare and veterans’ programs were protected, the rest of the budget could have to be cut by 62%, affecting defense, food stamps, home heating assistance, housing aid, food safety inspections and infrastructure, among others.
“$2 trillion per year is such an absurdly large number, it’s impossible,” Kogan said, noting that more than 70% of federal government spending (not including interest payments) consists of payments to individuals, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other aid programs. “You could only propose $2 trillion a year if you are not interested in living within reality or if you are completely callous to the major harmful effects that doing that would entail.”
Actual savings from cutting waste, fraud and abuse would likely total between $150 billion and $200 billion, Brian Riedl, senior fellow at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute, posted on X Tuesday.
“Additional savings beyond that becomes more of an ideological project focused on killing programs you dislike rather than making them more efficient,” wrote Riedl, who also worked for Republican presidential candidates and as chief economist for former GOP Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio. “Trump’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ will not be an actual department. It will not likely even be a White House office. It will likely be a private effort that writes a report and sends it to the White House & Congress. Nothing more.”
Congressional Republicans have repeatedly targeted certain government programs and operations for cuts, many of which were also included in Project 2025, the conservative blueprint published by the Heritage Foundation that Trump distanced himself from.
Among the biggest targets have been Medicaid, which provides health coverage to lower-income Americans, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Affordable Care Act exchanges, which cover about 100 million people in total, said Sharon Parrott, president of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
“The only way to get significant savings anywhere close to the dollar levels that Republicans have put forward is to take health care away from people,” she said.
Some supporters of the Department of Government Efficiency have likened it to previous fiscal commissions, particularly the Grace Commission authorized by former President Ronald Reagan in 1982. It was charged with eliminating waste and inefficiency in the federal government.
The commission presented more than 2,500 recommendations to Reagan and Congress, but most – particularly those that required legislation – were never implemented, G. William Hoagland, a Bipartisan Policy Center senior vice president who served as a staffer for Senate Republicans for 25 years, wrote for the Peter G. Peterson Foundation last year.
政界各方的众多预算专家都对这一举措能否实现每年削减近 2 万亿美元开支的能力提出了质疑，要知道，2 万亿美元可比联邦政府在上一财年用于国防、教育、退伍军人医疗以及其他可自由支配项目上的开支还要多。
克林顿政府时期的前财政部长拉里・萨默斯和小布什政府时期的前美国经济顾问委员会主席格伦・哈伯德在周二的一场活动中都对这一想法泼了冷水。
左倾的美国进步中心联邦预算政策高级主任鲍比・科根表示，要从 2024 财年总额约 6.8 万亿美元的联邦预算中削减这么多开支，就需要将每个项目的开支削减大约三分之一。
而且，如果社会保障、医疗保险和退伍军人项目受到保护，那么预算的其余部分可能就得削减 62%，这将影响到国防、食品券、家庭取暖补助、住房援助、食品安全检查以及基础设施等诸多方面。
“每年削减 2 万亿美元这个数字太荒谬了，根本不可能实现，” 科根说道，他指出，联邦政府超过 70% 的支出（不包括利息支付）是面向个人的支付，比如社会保障、医疗保险、医疗补助以及其他援助项目。“只有不考虑现实情况，或者对这样做会带来的重大负面影响完全麻木不仁，才会提出每年削减 2 万亿美元这样的提议。”
右倾的曼哈顿研究所高级研究员布赖恩・里德尔周二在 X 平台发文称，通过削减浪费、欺诈和滥用行为所能实现的实际节省金额可能总计在 1500 亿到 2000 亿美元之间。
“在此基础上进一步节省开支更多地会变成一个基于意识形态的项目，重点在于砍掉你不喜欢的项目，而不是提高它们的效率，” 里德尔写道，他还曾为共和党总统候选人工作，并担任过俄亥俄州前共和党参议员罗布・波特曼的首席经济学家。“特朗普的‘政府效率部’不会成为一个真正的部门，甚至不太可能成为白宫的一个办公室，它很可能只是一项民间行动，撰写一份报告然后呈递给白宫和国会，仅此而已。”
国会共和党人曾多次将某些政府项目和运作列为削减目标，其中许多项目也包含在传统基金会发布的保守派蓝图 “2025 计划” 中，不过特朗普已与该计划保持距离。
左倾的预算与政策优先中心主席莎伦・帕罗特表示，最大的目标项目包括为美国低收入人群提供医保的医疗补助计划、儿童健康保险计划以及覆盖了总共约 1 亿人的《平价医疗法案》医保交易平台。
“要想实现接近共和党人提出的金额水平的大幅节省，唯一的办法就是剥夺人们的医疗保健权益，” 她说。
一些支持政府效率部的人士将其与以往的财政委员会相类比，尤其是 1982 年由前总统罗纳德・里根授权设立的格雷斯委员会，该委员会负责消除联邦政府中的浪费和低效现象。
曾在参议院共和党人手下任职 25 年、现为两党政策中心高级副总裁的 G・威廉・霍格兰去年为彼得・G・彼得森基金会撰文称，格雷斯委员会向里根和国会提出了 2500 多条建议，但大多数建议（尤其是那些需要立法的建议）从未得到实施。
Potential conflicts of interest
潜在的利益冲突
Musk’s and Ramaswamy’s vast business ventures pose considerable conflict of interest concerns if they lead the new initiative. For instance, in his X town hall, Musk repeatedly criticized government regulations, citing their interference with his companies. The duo and Trump have all pushed for slashing regulations.
“It’s quite arduous getting regulatory approval,” Musk said while discussing his Neuralink startup that develops implantable brain-computer interfaces. “It does slow us down, and I think we should be able to go faster in the US with advancing Neuralink technology and other technologies that are out there unrelated to my company.”
马斯克和拉马斯瓦米庞大的商业版图引发了人们对利益冲突的严重担忧，毕竟他们要领导这一新举措。例如，在 X 平台的市政厅活动中，马斯克多次批评政府监管规定，称其干扰了自己的公司。这二人以及特朗普都在极力推动削减监管规定。
“获得监管批准相当艰难，” 马斯克在谈及他开发植入式脑机接口的 Neuralink 初创公司时说道。“这确实拖慢了我们的进度，我认为在美国，我们应该能够更快地推进 Neuralink 技术以及其他与我公司无关的技术发展。”
Trump's win made Elon Musk $15 billion richer 01:10 - Source: CNN 特朗普胜选让埃隆・马斯克财富增加 150 亿美元 时长：01:10—— 来源：CNN
Legal experts told CNN that the government efficiency entity, based on what’s known about it so far, will likely be covered by a federal law requiring transparency and a balance of views on such advisory commissions.
Multiple commissions set up under the first Trump administration faced litigation under the law, known as the Federal Advisory Committee Act, or FACA, and one of those commissions – set up to study the alleged problem of voter fraud after Trump claimed falsely that millions voted illegally in 2016 – ultimately disbanded rather than continue to fight the cases in court.
The Trump transition team did not respond to CNN’s inquiries about whether it believes the new initiative would be subject to FACA’s requirements, but legal experts said that if the president-elect follows through with his plan to have the two outsiders lead it, the law will be hard to get around.
“FACA is typically when the president sets up a commission to look at particular issues of interest and concern and so this does seem like FACA-like,” said Jon Greenbaum, a lawyer who was involved in FACA litigation during the first Trump term and founder of the legal advisory firm Justice Legal Strategies.
The law has strict transparency mandates requiring, among other things, advance notice of meetings, that meetings are publicly accessible and that the public has a view into what records a commission is using to do its work. It also requires that a commission’s members are not all of the same viewpoint.
“The idea that you can just say, ‘I am going to give my two wealthy friends the power to reshape government and they can do it in secret,’ that’s not how it works,” said Harry Sandick, another lawyer who sued the Trump voter fraud commission on behalf of a Democratic commissioner who said he was cut out of the commission’s work.
法律专家告诉美国有线电视新闻网（CNN），就目前已知的情况来看，这个政府效率机构很可能会受到一项联邦法律的约束，该法律要求此类咨询委员会保持透明度并平衡各方观点。
在特朗普的第一个任期内设立的多个委员会都曾因这项名为《联邦咨询委员会法》（FACA）的法律而面临诉讼，其中一个为研究特朗普谎称 2016 年有数百万非法选票这一所谓的选民舞弊问题而设立的委员会，最终选择解散，而不是继续在法庭上应对这些诉讼案件。
特朗普的过渡团队并未回应美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）关于他们是否认为这一新举措会受《联邦咨询委员会法》（FACA）要求约束的询问，但法律专家表示，如果当选总统特朗普按计划让这两位外部人士来领导这一举措，那么将很难绕开这部法律。
“《联邦咨询委员会法》（FACA）通常适用于总统为审视特定的、令人关注的问题而设立委员会的情况，所以这看起来确实符合该法的适用情形，” 乔恩・格林鲍姆说道，他是一名律师，曾在特朗普首个任期内参与《联邦咨询委员会法》（FACA）相关诉讼，也是正义法律策略法律咨询公司的创始人。
这部法律有着严格的透明度要求，其中包括提前通知会议情况、会议需向公众开放以及公众有权知晓委员会开展工作所依据的记录等内容。该法律还要求委员会成员不能全都持有相同的观点。
“那种认为‘我要赋予我的两位富豪朋友重塑政府的权力，而且他们可以秘密行事’的想法是行不通的，” 哈里・桑迪克说道，他也是一名律师，曾代表一名声称被排除在工作之外的民主党委员起诉特朗普的选民舞弊委员会。
文章来源：节选自CNN新闻网站
参考译文及笔记：英语老师弗雷德人工手打
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