DOGE Caucus meets with Musk and Ramaswamy on Capitol Hill in first move to shrink government

The mostly Republican caucus aimed at reducing the size of the federal government met with President-elect Donald Trump’s designated government efficiency czars, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, on Thursday.

“We’re going to see a lot of change around here in Washington,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, told reporters, according to the Associated Press, as Musk entered the closed-door meeting.

Musk and Ramaswamy, along with veteran D.C. budget slasher Russ Vought, nominated by Trump as Director of the Office of Management and Budget, are tasked with rolling back the size and cost of the federal government using the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

But it won’t be enough to just pass laws and cut spending recommended by DOGE, warned one senator who attended the caucus meeting. There has to be fundamental reform at the personnel level of the bureaucracies. 

“There’s a lot of stuff we can do in [Congress], but you also need people inside these agencies [who] are committed to real reform,” Sen. Eric Schmidt, R-Missouri, told reporters after the session. 

Toward that end, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, said she has filed a DOGE Act, which would aim to stop the growth of the federal government. 

“I just met with @elonmusk and @VivekGRamaswamy to discuss how @DOGE 

 will get its arms around our bloated federal government,” said Blackburn on X. “My DOGE Acts will support this by relocating federal agencies out of D.C., freezing federal hiring & salaries, and getting workers back in the office.”  

Musk also met with newly-elected Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota, who said he had a “great” meeting with the space, auto and technology entrepreneur.  

Thune called for the end of tax credits, including tax credits for electric cars, which would hurt Musk’s Tesla automotive brand, reported Politico. 

“I think we just need to make sure we spend the public’s money well,” Musk told reporters after leaving his meeting with Thune, according to Defense Daily, echoing comments Thune later made to reporters. 

Ramaswamy and Musk have called for a debate about defense spending too, one of the largest line items in the federal government.  

Ramaswamy said previously there has been a “lazy debate” to date, only concentrating on top-line defense spending. That debate must be changed to talk more specifically about what money is being spent on, “like drones and hypersonic missiles.” 

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-North Carolina, noted that it’s too early to cite specific reforms that DOGE will make, reported Politico. 

But he mentioned one tool Congress can use immediately to wipe away decades of regulatory burden created by the Obama and Biden administrations. 

The Congressional Review Act (CRA) allows Congress to get rid of regulations with simple majority votes of both the U.S. House and the U.S . Senate. 

“[We should] use the CRA effectively, like we did when President Trump first came into office, to rescind [the regulations],” Tillis said, after the DOGE caucus meeting. “Because that has the benefit of getting rid of a costly, unneeded regulation, but it also prevents those agencies from ever promulgating something substantially similar in the future without an act of Congress.” 

The AP noted that similar ambitious government reform programs have previously stalled over pork barrel spending. 

“But this time Trump is staffing his administration with battle-tested architects of sweeping proposals, some outlined in Project 2025, to severely reduce and reshape the government,” said the AP.  

At least one of those architects is warning daily that unless federal spending is brought under control, the U.S. is headed for bankruptcy. 

“If we don’t tackle the exponential growth in national debt, there will be no money for anything, including essential services!” said Musk in his latest daily entreaty to the public to force the federal government to exercise fiscal control.