Bernie Sanders admits ‘Elon Musk is right’ to slash Pentagon with DOGE: ‘Lost track of billions’
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., appears to be in favor of the newly-established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), after slamming the Pentagon’s budget and failed audits on social media and admitting, “Elon Musk is right.”
President-elect Trump tapped Musk and former GOP presidential primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to lead DOGE in an effort to stop the government’s wasteful spending.
Sanders addressed the wasteful spending on Sunday in a post on X.
“Elon Musk is right,” he wrote. “The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions. Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud. That must change.”
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Musk responded to Sanders’ post with two American flags.
Sanders did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
The post comes as Musk continues to bash government spending on social media.
For example, he shared a post from DOGE’s X account about the California High Speed Rail Project, which was projected in 2008 to cost $33 billion, and now is projected to be between $88.5 and $127.9 billion. The post also said the estimated completion date was 2020 and, as of 2024, nobody has been transported and the majority of the railway has not been designed. The project received $6.8 billion in federal funding. The project team is now requesting another $8 billion in federal funds.
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Musk wrote in a repost, “The government needs to stop wasting your hard-earned money!”
In another post shared by Musk, he is seen speaking in front of an American flag.
“The interest that we owe on our national debt is now higher than the defense budget. Over a trillion dollars and growing. The country is going to go bankrupt,” he said. “That’s why we need the department of Government Efficiency, D.O.G.E., on a brass plaque on a desk.”
Even last week, Musk said a significant percentage of people do not even know there is such a thing as a national debt.
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“Those that do often don’t know how big it is or that our interest payments now exceed what we spend on our military. Only a small % understand that government overspending causes inflation,” he said on X.
The national debt has soared past $36 trillion.
“America is going bankrupt fast,” Musk warned in another post.
“The excess government spending is what causes inflation! ALL government spending is taxation. This is a very important concept to appreciate. It is either direct taxation, like income tax, or indirect via inflation due to increasing the money supply,” he asserted in a tweet earlier this month.
Trump said in a statement that DOGE “will provide advice and guidance from outside of government and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large-scale structural reform and create an entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before.”
In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Musk and Ramaswamy noted that they will work “as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees.”
Fox News Digital’s Alex Nitzberg contributed to this report.