WASHINGTON ― For congressional Republicans, DOGE actually did age in canine years.
The federal government’s cost-cutting effort, inspired by a 2010s-era meme, was all the fad for the GOP final winter. Republicans had been excited to have Elon Musk, a cool billionaire, lead their trigger. Within the Home, they made a DOGE caucus, which is mainly a fan membership, and an official DOGE committee.
Eleven months later, the committee’s chair has resigned, DOGE did not get wherever near its promise of $1 trillion in spending cuts, its actions received horrible reviews from the general public, and Musk has not solely deserted the challenge, he’s advised he regrets beginning it.
“As a substitute of doing DOGE, I might have, mainly, constructed ― labored on my firms,” Musk stated on a current podcast.
However Republicans on Capitol Hill aren’t able to put DOGE down. Home Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.), whose panel consists of the brand new Delivering on Authorities Effectivity subcommittee, stated he’ll appoint a brand new chair after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene resigns in early January.
“There’s nonetheless a couple of individuals within the administration tagged with DOGE,” Comer instructed HuffPost. “They’re simply not Elon Musk, clearly. So there’s nonetheless loads of areas to take a look at.”
The subcommittee will give attention to rescissions, Comer stated, that are controversial spending cuts directed by the chief department. President Donald Trump received congressional approval for one rescissions package deal in 2025, and he later reduce $5 billion in overseas support with a unilateral “pocket rescission” even some Republicans questioned.
The subcommittee beneath Greene’s management held a listening to on codifying White Home spending cuts, nevertheless it additionally examined different subjects, similar to non-government organizations, or NGOs, and the hazard of people attempting to manage the climate. Greene warned at a listening to in September that geoengineering fans “wish to management the earth’s local weather to handle the faux local weather change hoax.”
Greene, who feuded with Trump within the run-up to her resolution to resign, declined to touch upon DOGE’s destiny in her absence.
bean.home.gov/doge-caucus
Rep. Aaron Bean (R-Fla.), co-chair of the DOGE caucus, stated the group would meet in January.
“He launched an enormous motion of a brand new give attention to waste, fraud and abuse,” Bean instructed HuffPost. “We’re not useless.”
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), the primary Democrat to affix the DOGE Caucus again in February, stated in Could the group was defunct and had nothing to do with what Musk was as much as. “DOGE was a whole failure,” Moskowitz told Politico.
Contained in the administration, Musk’s most distinguished initiatives included a short-lived requirement that each one authorities workers write weekly emails detailing 5 achievements, a haphazard effort to assault imaginary fraud on the Social Safety Administration, and placing the U.S. Company for Worldwide Improvement “into the woodchipper,” as he stated it. Atul Gawande, a Harvard College Medical professor and former USAID official, has estimated gutting USAID resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide.
Not less than one particular person within the president’s internal circle was appalled. White Home chief of employees Susie Wiles, in an interview published on Dec. 16 by Vanity Fair, stated “no rational particular person might suppose the USAID course of was an excellent one. No one.”
The person most answerable for the Trump administration’s finances course of ― and its zeal for doing round Congress to chop spending ― is Workplace of Administration and Finances Director Russ Vought. And he’s nonetheless round.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), a high Democratic appropriator, stated Musk and Trump had been clueless about how the federal government works and didn’t know something about an appropriations course of.
“Russ Vought is evil,” DeLauro stated.
When Musk first got here to city, a number of Democrats, together with Moskowitz, had an open thoughts about DOGE and stated they agreed with the fundamental idea of bettering authorities effectivity. However Musk quickly wound up as certainly one of their greatest punching baggage, as his assaults on Social Safety specifically made him one of many least widespread political figures in America.
Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), the highest Democrat on the DOGE subcommittee, instructed HuffPost she doesn’t know why Republicans would wish to hassle with it anymore.
“I’m stunned to listen to that my colleagues would wish to proceed to affiliate themselves with that enterprise, even realizing that the administration themselves and the founder have turned their backs on it,” Stansbury stated.
