The two right-wing billionaires President-elect Donald Trump has tasked with spearheading a new “government efficiency” commission outlined their vision Wednesday for the mass firing of federal employees, large-scale deregulation, and major spending cuts that could impact antipoverty programs, drug research and development, and more.

For the first time since Trump announced plans to create the Department on Government Efficiency (DOGE) — which, despite its name, would be an advisory commission rather than an actual federal department — Tesla CEO Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy offered a detailed look at how they plan to achieve their stated objective of taking a “chainsaw” to federal operations.

“We are assisting the Trump transition team to identify and hire a lean team of small-government crusaders, including some of the sharpest technical and legal minds in America,” the pair wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. “The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions, and cost savings. We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws.”

Decrying rules crafted by “unelected bureaucrats,” Musk and Ramaswamy — unelected outside advisers — wrote that they intend to present to Trump “a list of regulations” they believe should be eliminated. The culling of regulations would, they argued, provide the justification for “mass headcount reductions” — corporate-speak for sweeping firings — across federal agencies, a plan the two wrote would not be deterred by civil service protections.

Watchdogs have noted that the regulatory cuts envisioned by the commission’s co-leaders would likely benefit Musk’s companies, at least three of which are currently under scrutiny from nine federal agencies.

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