Elon Musk literally left a government job with a black eye, has seen profits at his car company sink and must worry about federal regulators disrupting his plans to unleash a fleet of driverless taxis on America's roads in the next few years.

Billionaire Elon Musk is expected to fall far short of even his most modest goal of shaving $150 billion from the federal deficit, having publicly opined last year that he could identify $2 trillion, roughly the size of the federal deficit.

Elon Musk arrived in the nation’s capital with the chain saw-wielding swagger of a tech titan who had never met a problem he couldn’t solve with lots of money, long hours or a well-calibrated algorithm.

When Bill Clinton came to Washington as president, his Democratic administration used corporate know-how and the new internet to streamline the federal bureaucracy as part of the “Reinventing Government” push.

An idea first proposed on social media has bubbled up to the White House and received President Donald Trump’s enthusiastic endorsement: Take some of the savings from billionaire Elon Musk’s drive to cut government spending and return it to taxpayers.

Since President Donald Trump began his second term last month, he has focused on bringing about a dramatic reduction in the federal workforce at a breakneck pace.

As President Joe Biden attempts to reassure supporters following his widely panned debate performance on Thursday, Democrats still worried about having him at the top of the ticket in November have few realistic options at their disposal.

That's likely to be the case for Vice President Kamala Harris, who this week was named the new point person on immigration. This is definitely not a ceremonial task,” said Nina Rees, a former deputy assistant for domestic policy to Vice President Dick Cheney. Harris' team has clarified that the vice president does not own all of immigration policy. Kamarck's argument bucks the traditional wisdom, which says if a vice president does well on thorny issues, more credit goes to the president and, if not, it gives the president some political cover. The matter of who gets praise, or blame, is even trickier when it's clear the vice president has White House aspirations.