By Chris Matthews

The program covers more than 30% of the population in 11 states

President-elect Donald Trump will enter the White House in January on a wave of conservative enthusiasm that his victory has given Republicans a mandate to enact significant budget cuts to help offset the costs of extending tax cuts they enacted in 2017.

Trump announced Tuesday night that Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will lead his administration's efforts to identify wasteful federal spending and recommend ways to restructure the government to save taxpayers money.

Trump may find success, where so many before him have failed, finding significant levels of waste and fraud in the budget to cut, but experts say real spending reform will have to come in the form of cuts to Social Security and government health-insurance programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

It's Medicaid - which largely provides health insurance for low-income Americans - that's most likely to be cut, according to Spencer Perlman, director of health care policy research at Veda Partners.

"Many Republican lawmakers and conservative thought leaders are increasingly concerned by the substantial growth in Medicaid enrollment and federal spending that has occurred over the last 15 years, driven primarily by the coverage expansion authorized by the Affordable Care Act," he wrote in a Wednesday note to clients.