Lawmakers spar over DOGE as Republicans look to lock in cuts

Republicans and Democrats traded jabs on Tuesday over the work of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency during a DOGE subcommittee hearing.

“We need to lock in DOGE savings for the taxpayers, and we should also be thinking about locking in the DOGE process that has produced these savings,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., the head of the House Committee Oversight and Government Reform’s DOGE subcommittee, saying that the government is like an “overgrown, out-of-control animal.”

Trump set up DOGE on his first day in office with a purported focus on tech, cost savings and efficiency, although since then the group’s efforts have been wide-ranging, including effectively shutting down entire agencies. Cost savings from the effort have fallen far short of Musk’s trillion-dollar goal, and DOGE’s public tally of cost savings has been riddled with errors. Critics say the unit's work has actually made many government processes less efficient.

Billionaire Elon Musk stepped back from DOGE weeks ago, but the office’s associates remain dispersed across agencies. The administration is also seeking $45 million in funding for DOGE next year.

“To win this war, we need to make sure these cuts aren’t just temporary,” said Greene. “That means passing laws to streamline agencies, eliminate redundant programs and give the president the authority to fire bureaucrats who don’t do their jobs.”

Republican lawmakers are trying to push through a $9 billion rescission package that they say is meant to cement DOGE priorities with cuts to foreign aid and public broadcasting. They’re also up against a looming July 4 goal to pass a tax and spending reconciliation package to extend and expand tax cuts and enact priorities like immigration enforcement. Democrats noted that such a package is projected to add to the deficit.

Democrats pushed back on the premise that DOGE is about efficiencies or savings. 

“All of this talk about lowering costs and reducing waste is absolute BS. Their agenda is about one thing: making the federal government so weak that they can exploit it for their personal gain,” said Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, who tried to subpoena Musk during the hearing. Republicans blocked the request, as they have with previous attempts.

Greene said that DOGE is working to reduce waste, fraud and abuse. But since January, the Trump administration has fired many inspectors general, whose job it is to fight waste, fraud and abuse in agencies, despite the White House’s purported focus on those issues. 

“We came to the table at the beginning of this whole process in good faith with real ideas, bipartisan ideas, that folks have been working on for years and a desire to actually fix and modernize the federal government, what we've seen from DOGE is the exact opposite,” said the top Democrat on the subcommittee, Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M.

“We all agree the government should be more efficient. We all agree that we should cut waste. We all agree that there should be bipartisan pathways forward to make the government operate in a modern manner,” Stansbury added. “But that's not what this enterprise is all about.”

Some Democrats —and their witness Emily DiVito of the Groundwork Collaborative, an economic policy think tank — pointed to Social Security as an example of the negative impact of DOGE. The Trump administration is pushing to shrink its workforce by thousands, and SSA has been at the center of headlines for customer service problems. 

In May, the agency reversed an anti-fraud policy that slowed down retirement processing after it found essentially no fraud. It was put in place after DOGE and White House leaders repeated false claims about fraud levels on SSA phone lines.

“[DOGE has] led to poor services, a brain drain on our federal government, and it’s going to cost taxpayers money long term,” said Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va.