Trump's Top Dog Elon Musk Makes MTG Top DOGE in Congress
Donald Trump is wasting no time meddling in congressional oversight of his incoming administration, arranging for one of his favorite attack dogs to become his top doge.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was chosen to lead a new House subcommittee that will work with the planned Department of Government Efficiency run by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The House panel will reportedly be called the Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency—allowing it to also carry the DOGE acronym.
I'm thrilled to announce I'll be chairing a brand new subcommittee to work hand-in-hand with @ElonMusk and @VivekGRamaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency.
I won't rest until we've rooted out every penny of waste and abuse.
The American people deserve a government that… pic.twitter.com/f0ajUTguWU— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) November 21, 2024
“I’m excited to chair this new subcommittee designed to work hand in hand with President Trump, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and the entire DOGE team,” Greene said in a statement. Her subcommittee, she added, would lead to the dismissal of government “bureaucrats,” and “provide transparency and truth to the American people through hearings.”
After Greene announced the “BIG NEWS”—surrounded by six red sirens—on X, Ramaswamy retweeted it, saying he’s looking forward to working with the firebrand from Georgia
Looking forward to working together with Congress. Proper oversight of agencies & public transparency are critical. https://t.co/K5ZoGLcdb8
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) November 21, 2024
Greene and House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY) have connected with DOGE leader-to-be Ramaswamy and are “already working together.” Comer aims to establish the subcommittee by early 2025. Fox News first reported the news Thursday.
Much like its extra-governmental partner, the congressional DOGE panel has similar goals to investigate and reduce government waste and red tape. And, according to Comer, the subcommittee will “work very closely” with Musk and Ramaswamy.
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) said he wasn’t surprised to hear that the strong arm of Trump is deciding how Congress should run its oversight of the executive branch.
“It’s crazy,” he told the Daily Beast.
“But that’s efficiency for you,” he joked. “Cut out the middle man—Speaker Johnson. That’s what they’re going to do and Speaker Johnson will say, ‘Yes, sir. How many more, sir? I’ll have another, sir.’”
Musk and Ramaswamy’s DOGE agency will provide “advice and guidance” to the White House and the Office of Management and Budget, and Greene’s subcommittee gives the two billionaires and Trump a path to implementing their agenda in a Republican-controlled Congress.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, the Trump fan boys laid out their plan to slash federal spending and regulations, arguing that “most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren’t made by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants.”
“We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees,” they wrote. “Unlike government commissions or advisory committees, we won’t just write reports or cut ribbons. We’ll cut costs.”
Among their ideas is ending remote work for federal employees, dubbing it a pandemic-era “privilege” that taxpayers shouldn’t have to fund.
A return to office mandate, they claim, would lead to a wave of voluntary resignations, shrinking the government workforce. The proposal could impact more than a million workers, although only about 10 percent of federal employees are working fully remote, according to the Office of Management and Budget.