When two of US President Donald Trump’s top lieutenants issued a call to remove government spending from the nation’s most-watched gauge of economic growth, they waded into an old and fierce debate that goes far beyond statistics.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Monday questioned Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick over the access tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has to his competitors and business partners.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday that government spending could be separated from gross domestic product reports in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick plans to make an internet infrastructure investment program “technology-neutral,” according to The Wall Street Journal, meaning Elon Musk’s Starlink could more easily benefit.

Howard Lutnick said Sunday that government spending could be separated from gross domestic product reports in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn.

Heterodox economists have long criticized politicians’ maniacal obsession with GDP growth, pointing to its relatively recent creation as a measure of national accounts and its limits as a catch-all indicator of a country’s economic health.

Elon Musk wants to privatize the United States’ Postal Service and Amtrak, he said on Wednesday. It’s “kind of embarrassing” how other countries have “way better passenger rail than we do,” like China’s bullet trains,

The stock market dropped sharply in recent days as investors worried about the effects of new tariffs on Canada and Mexico by President Trump.

Under new rules from President Trump’s Commerce Department, a $42 billion high-speed internet effort will no longer favor fiber-optic cable.

Elon Musk grabbed center stage at the first cabinet meeting of President Trump’s second term, saying “America will go bankrupt” without his budget-slashing efforts.

The Commerce Department has changed its rules in a way that could open the door for Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite internet service, to become part of a federal $42 billion grant program to bring high-speed service to rural and poor areas of the United States.