Elon Musk, whom President-elect Donald Trump tapped to lead a task force to slash government spending, has downsized an ambitious goal of cutting at least $2 trillion from the federal budget. In a Jan. 8 conversation broadcast on X, a platform Musk owns, the billionaire tech entrepreneur told political strategist Mark Penn that the $2 trillion figure represents the most optimistic outcome. “If we try for $2 trillion, we’ve got a good shot at getting one [trillion dollars],” Musk told Penn, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton. “And if we can drop the budget deficit from $2 trillion to $1 trillion and kind of free up the economy to have additional growth—such that the output of goods and services keeps pace with the increase in the money supply—then there will be no inflation,” he said. “So that, I think, would be an epic outcome.”…