Billionaire tech entrepreneur turned Donald Trump loyalist Vivek Ramaswamy is already making it known what he thinks needs to be done to improve the federal workforce even before the proposed “Department of Government Efficiency” has formed.
Ramaswamy – who along with fellow billionaire Elon Musk was tapped to lead the new agency known as “DOGE” – hopes to significantly slash federal personnel. But he said Wednesday that he hopes those cuts will be "good for many of the individuals who make a transition from government service back to the private sector,” Axios reported.
The comments came during a discussion at the Aspen Security Forum with Axios’ Mike Allen, where the failed presidential candidate said that the reduction in federal workers is not "really about saving costs," but tackling what he views as an "overgrown federal government that is doing things that were never supposed to be done by the federal government in the first place,” according to the publication.
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In his remarks, Ramaswamy told Axios he believes that the “productivity” of the U.S. economy will improve once the workforce is cut "because I don't believe that the highest and best use of any of those talented people is what they're doing in the federal government today."
He added that because downsizing the workforce isn’t about cost-cutting, DOGE will have “a lot of latitude” to handle federal employees and their families "in a respectful way, in a way that doesn't leave them in a lurch, it might even be by private sector standards, generous in transitioning."
But, however rosy a picture Ramaswamy paints, “federal workers are unlikely to thank Ramaswamy for recommending they lose their jobs,” Axios noted.
