Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are bringing Trump’s DOGE to Capitol Hill

WASHINGTON — Are DOGE time at the U.S. Capitol.

Billionaire Elon Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy A closed-door meeting with lawmakers is expected Thursday on Capitol Hill to discuss the president-elect Donald Trump’s plans to “dismantle” the federal government.

Trump tapped the two business giants to run his Ministry of Government Efficiencyin charge of firing federal employeescutting government programs and eliminating federal regulations — all part of what he calls his “Save America” agenda for a second term in the White House.

“I think this will be a good start to the whole process,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who will chair a House Oversight subcommittee in the new year as part of “building the bridge between Congress and DOGE.”

Washington has seen this before, with ambitious efforts to reduce the size and scope of the federal government, which has historically been the case encounters resistance when the public faces cuts to trusted programs that millions of Americans depend on for jobs, health care, military security and daily needs.

But this time Trump is man his administration featuring battle-tested architects of sweeping proposals, some of which are detailed in Project 2025to seriously reduce and reform the government. Musk and Ramaswamy said they plan to work with the White House Office of Management and Budget, led by Trump’s nominee Russ Vought, a mastermind behind the cuts of the past.

“DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural cuts across the federal government,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in a message op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. “We are prepared for the attack.”

The duo was invited by House Speaker Mike Johnson to visit Capitol Hill and undergo an initial test in private with lawmakers from the House of Representatives and the Senate – some of whom are eager to hear what they have in mind.

“I’m excited to get out there and do something,” said Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., who joined Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, in launching what they call the DOGE caucus in the House name, with more than 50 Republicans and two Democratic members.

Bean said the DOGE caucus will unveil an email tip line where people can report wasteful spending. He also envisions a kind of scoreboard that people can view on a website, showing “how many positions we’ve cut, agencies we’ve cut, and what the actual number is.”

In the Senate, Sens. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, and Rick Scott, R-Fla., have launched a similar caucus.

While neither Musk nor Ramaswamy have much public sector experience, they have track records in private business – Musk’s activities do extensive government contracts — and enthusiasm for Trump’s agenda, after campaigning with him in the latter part of the election.

The richest man in the world, Musk millions poured in an effort to get out of the vote to help the former president return to the White House. He is politically famous for transforming the popular social media site formerly known as Twitter into X, a platform embraced by Trump’s MAGA enthusiasts.

Despite its name, the Department of Government Efficiency is neither a department nor part of the government, which frees Musk and Ramaswamy from the typical ethics and background checks required for federal employment. They said they would not be paid for their work.

One good-government group has said that DOGE, as a presidential advisory panel, should be expected to adhere to traditional practices of transparency, equal representation and public input — as happened with similar advisory organizations from the Reagan to Obama administrations.

The Federal Advisory Committee Act “was expressly designed for situations like this,” Lisa Gilbert and Robert Weissman, the co-chairs of Public Citizen, wrote in a letter to the Trump transition team.

“If the government is going to turn to unelected and politically irresponsible individuals to make recommendations as large as $2 trillion in cuts, it must ensure that those recommendations come from a balanced and transparent process that is not designed to target insiders to favor.”

The $6 trillion federal budget routinely runs a deficit, which this year reached $1.8 trillion, an all-time high, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Since the Clinton administration more than twenty years ago, the balance has been out of balance.

Republicans generally blame what they see as exorbitant spending for the deficit, while Democrats point to tax cuts passed under Republican Presidents Trump and George W. Bush as the main driving force.

Revenues as a percentage of gross domestic product last year were just below the average of the past fifty years, while expenditures amounted to 23.4% of GDP, compared to the fifty-year average of 21.1%.

Some of the biggest spending increases last year came on politically popular programs that lawmakers may be reluctant to adopt. For example, according to the Congressional Budget Office, spending on Social Security benefits increased 8%, Medicare spending increased 9%, defense spending increased 7%, and spending on veterans’ health care increased 14%.

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said he would like to see Musk testify before the House Armed Services Committee about the “bloated defense budget.”

“I’d like to see Elon recommend some cuts. Let’s get him to testify,” Khanna said.

He said he is open to proposals on non-defense spending but was skeptical.

“If they find waste, maybe, but in terms of large numbers I mean that no one will allow to cut education funding for children with special needs and for low-income schools, or to cut social security and healthcare,” Khanna said. . “If they want to do that, they will give us a landslide in 2026.”