Latest news with #governmentspending
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Projects awaiting potential fate ahead of government spending review in June
A NUMBER of key planned projects in Cumbria could have their fate decided by next month's government spending review. Rachel Reeves has been warned that 'tough trade-offs' await her at this summer's spending review, as she has been urged to prioritise investment that 'boosts' public services and standards for families. Projects across the country and in Cumbria have been put on hold whilst the government reviews their spending plans. A report from the Resolution Foundation has suggested that the Government should focus spending from its 'limited pot' in areas such as health and housing if it wants to increase living standards. The analysis by the think tank also urges ministers to examine investment at June's spending review in the prisons system and public transport, but describes them as 'secondary priorities'. The Treasury is currently undertaking the review, which will set the budgets for Government departments for the next three years in terms of day-to-day spending. The process will set the budgets for so-called unprotected departments, including local government, justice, transport and culture. Protected departments include defence, the NHS in health, and schools as part of the education envelope. 'The Chancellor must now decide how to allocate a limited pot of capital spending in a way that both addresses the UK's legacy of frayed infrastructure and supports future ambitions for growth and higher living standards,' the report stated. 'Focusing direct government investment in health and housing would allow the Government to deal with the legacy they have inherited, while furthering their missions of boosting growth and raising living standards.' Capital spending is money used to spend projects such as new hospitals or road schemes, rather than day-to-day running costs such as salaries. At the budget in October 2024, Ms Reeves announced more money for capital spending, but also said that there would be 'four key guardrails' introduced to ensure good value for money. 'Ultimately, if the Government wants to avoid dramatic cuts to departmental budgets, then it will likely have around £20-50 billion of capital spending to allocate over the next five years,' the Resolution Foundation report said. It added: 'The Government should prioritise investment based on areas of particularly acute historical under-investment, and the future impacts on living standards and economic growth. 'Investment that is likely to be well targeted across both of these criteria includes social investment in housing and health, with investment in the prison system and well-targeted transport infrastructure projects in the UK's second cities being secondary priorities.' Rachel Reeves told the BBC in March that 'we can't just carry on like we have been, spending on the same things that the previous government spent on'. In Cumbria there are several projects waiting on government funding approval before they can go ahead. Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Farron is campaigning for the Government to approve plans to dual the A66 from Penrith to Scotch Corner which he says would 'reduce congestion, boost the economy, and save lives.' Mr Farron recently met with the roads minister who said that a final decision on the project would be made in the Spending Review in June. The previous government approved the A66 Northern Trans-Pennine project which would see the 80-kilometre stretch between Penrith and Scotch Corner in North Yorkshire made into a full dual carriageway. The A66 Northern Trans-Pennine project is aimed at dualling the road between Cumbria and North Yorkshire (Image: National Highways) The project would also include improvements to multiple junctions and minor enhancements to the already existing sections of the dual carriageway on the A66. Following the election, the new Labour Government put the whole project – which would cost hundreds of millions – under review, blaming the 'dire' state of the public finances left by the Tories. The new government cancelled and put other major road and public transport infrastructure projects across the country in review following the election. Tim said: 'Dualling the A66 would bring huge benefits to our area – reducing congestion, providing a big boost to the North's economy, and helping to limit the number of serious and fatal accidents which tragically are a regular occurrence on this road.' The spending review could possibly give the green light to the University of Cumbria's request for additional funding for their ambitious Citadels project in the city centre. The university had originally pledged to give £23.5million to the £77million Borderlands Partnership project but has since requested to pay £15.5million. The request for the additional £8million funding is now with the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government. The project is set to 'transform' the city centre, with a brand-new campus being built in and amongst the historic citadels. Properties on English Street and Victoria Viaduct have been purchased and vacated ahead of the build which was given planning permission in August 2022. What the Citadels could look like when the project is complete... but it needs funding In a report sent to the Borderlands Partnership at the time of their request, the university said it is suffering with 'intense inflationary pressures, increasing employer pension contributions and increased utility costs' which have all contributed to the request. The chancellor is under pressure to approve projects in the north of England with Bassetlaw Labour MP, Jo White calling for more investment in the north. Ms White said: 'Every time we [red wall constituencies] get missed out, and I'll give a very good example is when Rachel Reeves did her speech, and she talked about the third runway for Heathrow, and then she talked about the connectivity between Oxford and Cambridge via Milton Keynes, and then she's recently talked about the extension to Luton airport. "Everything in the south is very, very easy investment because the industry and the business are there to support it.' Jo White, MP for Bassetlaw (Image: UK Parliament) She went on: 'We are the more hard-to-do areas, and what we want Treasury and government to be thinking about is: how can we work with business to ensure that they come to areas like ours? 'Because that then brings the infrastructure in partnership with it. So our challenge is: don't go for the easy options, because electorally, it won't make any difference to you whatsoever.' Projects awaiting approval in Cumbria have both been called key for economic growth in the area and have been publicly backed by local MPs. The chancellor will announce the spending review on June 11.
Yahoo
15 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump backs Musk's cost-cutting after report on billionaire's alleged drug use
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump commended Elon Musk for helping cut government spending despite "outrageous abuse" on the day of a report about the billionaire adviser's alleged drug use during the 2024 campaign. 'He willingly accepted the outrageous abuse and slander and lies and attacks because he does love our country,' Trump said in the Oval Office. 'Americans owe him a great debt of gratitude.' 'He had to go through the slings and the arrows, which is a shame because he's an incredible patriot,' Trump added later. A reporter tried to ask Musk about a New York Times report about his alleged drug use during the 2024 campaign. But Musk, who said, "some of the slingers are in this room," dismissed the question from a publication that he said had falsely written about Russian interference in the 2016 election. "Let's move on," Musk said, standing behind the president at the Resolute Desk. The meeting came the same day the New York Times reported that Musk allegedly used drugs such as ketamine more frequently than previously known while campaigning with Trump in 2024. The paper said it was unclear whether Musk used drugs while working for Trump in the Department of Government Efficiency. Trump commended Musk repeatedly during the press conference for finding at least $160 billion in savings and said the billionaire corporate chief would continue to offer advice about how to make the government more efficient. 'Elon has worked tirelessly helping lead the most sweeping and consequential government reform program in generations," Trump said. Musk, whose last day as a government adviser was May 30, has been critical of the House-passed package of legislation filled with Trump's priorities to cut taxes and bolster border enforcement. As the Senate prepares to debate the bill, Musk argued it didn't cut government spending enough. 'Elon's really not leaving," Trump said. "He's going to be back and forth, I think, I have a feeling." Musk, the CEO of carmaker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, and owner of social-media platform X, acknowledged in March 2024 that he used prescription ketamine to combat bouts of depression. He worried corporate executives by puffing on a marijuana cigarette during a podcast in 2018. The New York Times story built on a Wall Street Journal story in January 2024 that alleged Musk used drugs such as LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. The campaign featured some erratic behavior, such as Musk jumping on stage behind Trump during an October rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Musk didn't respond to reporters' questions related to his drug use, but he has previously acknowledged using "small amount" of ketamine "once every other week" and marijuana "almost never." The New York Times reported that his ketamine use was often enough to affect his bladder. Ketamine is an anesthetic that also has some hallucinogenic effects, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. The drug gained widespread recognition after the overdose death of 'Friends' television star Matthew Perry in October 2023. Musk told journalist Don Lemon during a YouTube interview in March 2024 that he took ketamine occasionally to combat depression. 'Ketamine is helpful for getting someone out of a negative frame of mind,' Musk said. He denied abusing it. 'If you use too much ketamine, you can't really get work done,' Musk said. 'I have a lot of work.' Musk could also be seen on video smoking marijuana during the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in September 2018. He said he partook 'almost never.' Tesla's chief accounting officer, Dave Morton, quit just a month into the job, the company said in a filing the same day as that podcast. The company's chief people officer, Gaby Toledano, also announced she would not return from a leave of absence, just over a year after joining the company. Lemon asked Musk about smoking marijuana. 'I had one puff,' Musk said. 'I think anyone who smokes pot can tell I don't know how to smoke pot.' 'I can't really get wasted because I can't get my work done,' Musk added. FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino announced on May 26 that the agency was investigating cocaine found in the White House when President Joe Biden was in office in 2023. The Secret Service closed that investigation in July 2023, citing "a lack of physical evidence," and concluded an investigation into the cocaine mystery without identifying a suspect. "Shortly after swearing in, the Director and I evaluated a number of cases of potential public corruption that, understandably, have garnered public interest," Bongino wrote. The FBI didn't respond to a request for comment about Musk's alleged drug use. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, brushed off a reporter's question on May 30 about whether the administration was concerned about Musk's possible drug use. 'The drugs that we are concerned about are the drugs coming across the southern border,' Miller said. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump praises Musk cutting government spending despite 'attacks'
Wall Street Journal
18 hours ago
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
Inside Trump and Musk's Complicated Relationship
WASHINGTON—President Trump recently posed an evocative question to his advisers about billionaire Elon Musk's promise to slash $1 trillion in government spending. 'Was it all bullshit?' Trump asked, according to administration officials, wondering whether Musk could have ever come close to the cuts he promised to carry out through the Department of Government Efficiency.
Globe and Mail
19 hours ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Elon Musk exits DOGE but promises department will still deliver US$1-trillion in cuts
Elon Musk is promising that DOGE will still find US$1-trillion in cuts to U.S. government spending and he will remain an adviser to President Donald Trump, even as the world's wealthiest person leaves Washington having achieved only a small fraction of that target. At a White House news conference on Friday, Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump tried to project unity as the former ended his stint leading the Department of Government Efficiency, better known as DOGE after Mr. Musk's favourite cryptocurrency. But the South African-Canadian-American billionaire had already criticized the President's centrepiece domestic policy legislation which, if passed, would increase the deficit by US$3.2-trillion, negating DOGE's cuts many times over. And the pair did not outline any plan to reach Mr. Musk's target. 'I'm confident that, over time, we will see US$1-trillion in savings,' Mr. Musk said in the Oval Office, wearing a black T-shirt reading The Dogefather. 'I'll continue to be visiting here and be a friend and adviser to the President.' Mr. Trump, sitting at the Resolute desk, said that because of Mr. Musk's work, 'we've found things that are unbelievably stupid and unbelievably bad' and praised DOGE's ability at 'working with computers.' Among Mr. Musk's accomplishments, Mr. Trump said, were eliminating US$2-billion 'to Stacey Abrams' and US$8-million 'for making mice transgender.' On the first, Mr. Trump appeared to be referring to a grant to Power Forward Communities, a consortium of charities running environmental programs. Ms. Abrams, whose voter registration work in Georgia may have cost Mr. Trump the state in the 2020 election, was an adviser to one of the groups. On the second, he was referencing National Institutes of Health studies that examined the effects of hormones in mice. DOGE says it has cut US$165-billion in government spending. Musk Watch, a newsletter that covers the billionaire, said it can only verify US$16.3-billion of that number. The modest outcome stands in sharp contrast with both Mr. Musk's grandiose promises and the fiery way he tried to fulfill them. After spending roughly US$275-million to help Mr. Trump get elected, he emerged as the dominant figure in the opening weeks of the new administration. Trump announces plans to double steel tariffs on imports to 50% Trump's new tax bill contains 'sledgehammer' to hit back against foreign digital taxes Mr. Musk's DOGE staffers – many of them university students with little previous experience – ordered layoffs, and immediate program and contract cancellations across the federal government. In his highest-profile move, Mr. Musk shut down the entire United States Agency for International Development, or USAID. Among other things, the move meant cutting off food to civil war-ravaged Sudan, and taking away health care and education from tens of millions of people in low-income countries. Other controversies included cuts to the health department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and efforts to gather up Americans' personal data. Along the way, DOGE and its leader became known for a string of strange spectacles: On one occasion, Mr. Musk wielded a chainsaw onstage at a conservative conference. According to a New York Times report on Friday, Mr. Musk's personal life has been equally chaotic in recent years. He has been taking ketamine, ecstasy, magic mushrooms and Adderall, the newspaper reported, and impregnated multiple women while falsely telling them their relationships were exclusive. Asked about the report, Mr. Musk refused to directly address it. He instead accused the newspaper of 'lies' on a different story, over Russian interference in the 2016 election. 'Let's move on. Next question,' Mr. Musk said. He was also quiet on Mr. Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Earlier in the week, Mr. Musk told CBS that he was 'disappointed' in the tax-cuts-and-spending package, which 'undermines the work' of DOGE. He also criticized the legislation's plan to eliminate tax incentives for building green electricity generation and buying electric vehicles. Mr. Musk will now turn his attention back to his own electric carmaker, Tesla, which has suffered a drop in sales since he joined up with the climate-change-denying Mr. Trump. He will also be working on xAI, an artificial intelligence company that may benefit from DOGE's efforts to replace some government workers with chatbots. At Friday's news conference, Mr. Musk had a bruise on his face, which he said was caused by his son, X, punching him while 'horsing around.' Mr. Trump, for his part, praised Mr. Musk for taking rhetorical blows. 'He willingly accepted the outrageous abuse and slander and lies and attacks,' Mr. Trump said, 'because he does love our country.'
Arab News
20 hours ago
- Business
- Arab News
Musk put a spotlight on federal spending, but cut less than he wanted
Elon Musk's effort to dramatically cut government spending is expected to fall far short of his grand early pronouncements, and perhaps even his most modest goals. It didn't have to be that way. According to experts across the ideological spectrum, a major problem was a failure to deploy people who understood the inner workings of government to work alongside his team of software engineers and other high-wattage technology talent. Even that might not have achieved Musk's original target of $2 trillion, which is roughly the size of the entire federal deficit. Musk, whose last day spearheading the Department of Government Efficiency is Friday, slashed his goal for savings from $2 trillion to $1 trillion to finally only $150 billion. The current DOGE results put Musk's efforts well short of President Bill Clinton's initiative to streamline the federal bureaucracy, which saved the equivalent of $240 billion by the time his second term ended. The effort also reduced the federal workforce by more than 400,000 employees. It also seems clear that Musk was unable to change the overall trajectory of federal spending, despite eliminating thousands of jobs. The Yale Budget Lab, in an analysis of Treasury data, shows money is flowing out of government coffers at an even faster pace than the previous two years. 'It was an impossible goal they were trying to achieve. They kept lowering the standards of success," said Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "A more knowledgeable DOGE team wouldn't have made insane promises that would be impossible to keep. They set themselves up for failure.' At a White House event with Trump on Friday, Musk said his team would stay in place and renewed the goal of reaching at least $1 trillion in cost savings. 'This is not the end of DOGE, but really the beginning. The DOGE team will only grow stronger over time. It's permeating throughout the government,' Musk said in the Oval Office, wearing a black blazer over a T-shirt emblazoned with 'The Dogefather.' 'We do expect over time to achieve the $1 trillion.' The early evidence suggests that the goal will be exceedingly difficult to reach. By relying chiefly on information technology experts, Musk ended up stumbling through Washington and sometimes cutting employees vital to President Donald Trump's own agenda. Immigration judges were targeted at the same time the administration was trying to accelerate deportations of people in the U.S. illegally. Likewise, technologists with the Bureau of Land Management were purged from the Department of Interior, despite their significance to clearing the way for petroleum exploration, a Trump administration priority. In many cases, fired employees were rehired, adding administrative costs to an effort aimed at cutting expenditures. Had Musk's team been staffed with experts on what positions are required under federal law to continue efforts such as drilling and immigration enforcement, it could have avoided similar mistakes across multiple departments, Nowrasteh said. 'I just think there were a lot of unforced errors that a more knowledgeable DOGE team would have avoided,' Nowrasteh said. Grover Norquist, president and founder of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, had a more favorable perspective on Musk's work, saying it should be judged not only by the total dollars saved but his ability to spotlight the issues. 'When you find the problem, you don't know how far the cancer has spread. You just found a cancer cell,' Norquist said. Norquist said it's up to Congress to take the baton and set up a permanent structure to continue where Musk is leaving off. 'I just think it's going to be seen five to 10 years from now as something very big and very permanent,' Norquist said, 'and that was done only because of a guy like Musk, who can come in and shake things up.' Elaine Kamarck, a key figure in Clinton's government efficiency effort, said its efforts were guided by more modest fiscal targets than DOGE. The initiative was led by Vice President Al Gore, and it was aimed at making the government more responsive to people who used it, and focused heavily on updating antiquated hiring and purchasing procedures. It took years and carried into Clinton's second term. 'We went about it methodically, department by department and, yes, used some outside analysts, but they were seasoned government civil servants who knew about government in general,' Kamarck said. Clinton's effort saved $136 billion by the end of Clinton's second term, the equivalent of more than $240 billion today, and contributed to budget surpluses for each of the final four fiscal years he was in office. Kamarck said she expects what she called Musk's 'chaotic' approach will reveal mistakes or oversights that could create crises down the road, such as a transportation problem, response to a natural disaster, or delivery of entitlement benefits. 'These are the things that really hurt presidents, and they are increasing the probability that something is going to happen,' Kamarck said.
