Elon Musk’s newest targets in his quest to slash the federal government: the United States Postal Service and the national passenger railroad company Amtrak.
The DOGE chief said Wednesday at a Morgan Stanley tech conference, “Logically, we should prioritize anything that can reasonably be privatized... We should privatize the post office and Amtrak,” according to CNN.
“To understand the federal government, it is like a corporate takeover at scale,” Musk also said, “but one where the company is actually in much worse shape than any commercial company could ever be.”
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While Musk has spent the weeks since Donald Trump’s inauguration leveling accusations of fraud at the federal government and cutting programs he disagrees with, this seems to be the first time that he has publicly advocated for the privatization of these two high-profile government organizations.
Privatizing the USPS—which in recent years has faced dramatic financial difficulties, losing billions each year—has long been floated as an idea to make the service more effective.
Trump has been mulling the option since before he entered office, according to The Washington Post.
“There is a lot of talk about the Postal Service being taken private,” he said in December. “It’s a lot different today, between Amazon and UPS and FedEx and all the things that you didn’t have. But there is talk about that. It’s an idea that a lot of people have liked for a long time.”
Last month, the Post reported that Trump was considering attempting to seize control of the USPS by way of an executive order, which could violate federal law. He hasn’t done so yet.
However, privatizing the postal service could have serious downsides, especially for rural communities and small businesses. The agency’s “universal service obligation” means that it will deliver to distant parts of the country regardless of whether doing so is profitable.
Likewise, proposals to privatize Amtrak have also come up in the past amid the organization’s financial difficulties. While the railroad service is majority-owned by the government and relies on federal subsidies, it is already run as a for-profit company.
While supporters argue that taking the passenger railroad private would make it operate more efficiently, critics of the idea point to the many problems that emerged when Britain privatized its passenger rail service in the 1990s. It resulted in greater service lapses and further financial issues, yet still required significant government subsidies.
If Musk follows through on his words, the two agencies would just be the latest on which he has sicced his DOGE team. The squad has already infiltrated numerous government organizations, including the Department of Education, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
