Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, who has joined Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), wants to digitize the government’s retirement process, calling the current system a “injustice to civil servants.”
“This online digital process will take only a few days at most…” “It’s an injustice to civil servants who are subjected to these processes,” Gebbia told “Special Report” in an exclusive interview on Thursday. Gebbia joined Musk and six other DOGE team members to discuss the department’s cost-cutting efforts with executive editor Bret Baier.
Gebbia, for his part, stated that his goal is to transform the paper-based retirement process for federal employees into a system that takes only a few days. He stated that the antiquated system in its current state takes months.
“There is a mine in Pennsylvania that houses every paper document for the retirement process in the government,” Gebbia told the crowd.
“This giant cave has 22,000 filing cabinets stacked 10 high to house 400 million pieces of paper,” he explained, adding that the process began in the 1950s and has largely remained unchanged over the last 70 years.
“We firmly believe that the government can offer an Apple-like store experience. “Beautifully designed, great user experience, and modern systems,” Gebbia added.
His efforts are part of DOGE’s larger goal to eliminate “waste and fraud” in the federal government. On Thursday, Musk stated that DOGE aims to reduce government spending by at least 15%, which he believes is “quite achievable.”
Musk has previously stated that the nation’s debt is so high that interest payments exceed the total military budget, and that DOGE is required to keep the country from going bankrupt.
Shortly after taking office, President Donald Trump gave Musk’s organization 18 months to streamline government operations and reduce spending.
Since then, the department has canceled numerous diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at federal agencies, consulting contracts, leases for underutilized federal buildings, and duplicating agencies and programs.
As of March 28, DOGE claims on its website that it has saved Americans $130 billion, or $807.45 per taxpayer, through a combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions.
However, those cuts bring challenges. Some judges have already called for the reinstatement of probationary employees from dozens of agencies who were terminated. Last week, two judges issued back-to-back decisions that effectively reinstated employees from 24 agencies.
Musk’s work with DOGE has also spurred protests from opponents who have in some cases targeted Tesla, the automaker for which he serves as CEO. These incidents have included vandalism against individual Tesla owners as well as the EV manufacturer’s dealerships and charging stations.
Lawmakers have also expressed some concern. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, also posted on X earlier this month that Alaskan U.S. Agency for International Development employees informed her about the “confusing and callous handling of personnel matters by OPM and DOGE” and “painted an incredibly troubling picture of what the world looks like without humanitarian assistance from the United States.”
