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Tesla (TSLA+7.98%) CEO Elon Musk’s pledge to slash trillions of dollars in government spending has found some helping hands from Democrats — some being the keyword.
President-elect Donald Trump handed Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy control of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an “outside of government” group that will recommend ways to slash federal spending. They plan to take aim at remote work for federal employees, non-government organizations, and regulations they deem burdensome.
“DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. “We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington.”
The pair of businessmen visited Capitol Hill on Thursday for closed-door meetings with legislators after an invite from House Speaker Mike Johnson.
DOGE has been embraced by Republicans — including Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — while Democrats are a little cooler on the idea. Some Democrats agree with the mission but have selected narrower priorities for which they think DOGE can be used. Others want to ensure that Republicans won’t try to slash programs they care about, such as Medicare or Social Security, and have a voice in discussions.
“Why wouldn’t you want to be in the room? Why wouldn’t you want to be working together?” Rep. Greg Landsman of Ohio said on Tuesday. “And so there are opportunities where I think both parties would say, ‘yeah, that’s abuse’ or ‘that’s a waste of money’ or ‘that’s duplication.’”
Landsman is the second Democrat to announce he would join the Congressional DOGE Caucus, following Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida. The caucus will be led by Ernst and Sen. Rick Scott in the Senate and Republican Reps. Aaron Bean and Pete Sessions in the House. Punchbowl News reports that at least 40 members had signed up to join the caucus as of Wednesday afternoon.
Landsman is the second Democrat to announce he would join the Congressional DOGE Caucus, following Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida. The caucus will be led by Ernst and Sen. Rick Scott in the Senate and Republican Reps. Aaron Bean and Pete Sessions in the House. Punchbowl News reports that at least 40 members had signed up to join the caucus as of Wednesday afternoon.
It’s unlikely that Democrats and Republicans will agree on most ways to cut federal spending.
Ramaswamy has said he expects “certain agencies to be deleted outright” by DOGE’s recommendations, including the Education Department. He also wants to cut funding for groups generally supported by Democrats, such as Planned Parenthood, criticized recent loans from the Biden administration’s $400 billion clean-energy lending program and raised questions about federal spending that lacks current congressional authorization, including Department of Veterans Affairs medical services.
While speaking with NPR on Thursday, Moskowitz dismissed Musk and Ramaswamy’s calls to defund the Education Department and slash veterans benefits, stating that they wouldn’t get Congressional support. He’d rather focus on moving the Secret Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency out from under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security.
“So my singular focus is to get those two agencies out of DHS and make them direct reports to the White House,” he told NPR. “At the same time, if there are tens of billions, or hundreds of billions of dollars that we can save in agencies and still deliver the same services, why wouldn’t we have the conversation?”
Other sympathetic Democrats have their eyes trained on the Defense Department and its massive budget. More than 16% of the federal government’s budget for the 2024 fiscal year was allocated to the department, or almost $2 trillion.
Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats, won’t join the DOGE caucus but has said Musk is right about waste in the Defense Department. The Pentagon has routinely failed audits of its $824 billion budget, and Musk has specifically called out the Pentagon’s expensive F-35 program.
“We need a strong military, but we don’t need all the waste and the profiteering and the fraud that exists in the Pentagon right now,” Sanders told Business Insider this week, noting that Musk is “absolutely right” to call for the first independent audit of the Pentagon in more than seven years.
California Rep. Rho Khanna, who represents the district home to Tesla’s Fremont factory, on Thursday joined Sanders, writing on X that he was ready to work with DOGE and its leaders on ensuring “Americans get their money’s worth with DOD spending.” Khanna touted his work on the House Oversight Committee, which helped push defense contractor TransDigm (TDG-0.77%) to return $16.1 million in excess profits to the Defense Department in 2019.