Republicans have lined up in droves to tie their names to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s much touted “Department of Government Efficiency,” with dozens of lawmakers joining the newly formed Delivering Outstanding Government Efficiency Caucus.
Republicans are all in on DOGE’s catch-all mission of slashing spending and inefficiencies, but specifics on how Congress can support DOGE’s ambitious goals for spending cuts have yet to materialize. The caucus — like DOGE itself — doesn’t have any real power, at least not yet. And with many constituencies on and off Capitol Hill, it’s not clear yet that the bright-eyed enthusiasts of the DOGE caucus will find much agreement on what, where and how to cut things.
What the caucus does have, though, is a lot of members. DOGE caucus co-founder Rep. Aaron Bean told NOTUS that membership stood at over 70 lawmakers as of last Thursday and he expected that number to hit triple digits soon, which would make it one of the larger caucuses in Congress.
“It’s going to continue to swell, especially when we get some wins,” Bean said. “We need some wins. That’s what we need. Wins.”
“We’re kind of wrestling with what the agenda looks like, how we’re going to divide up, to divide and conquer,” Bean added.
The caucus is set to meet this week for the first time. Bean said leaders hope to unveil branding for the group, and then they’ll start working to get everyone on a similar page about their approach.
“Hope to roll out a logo, roll out our website next week and then get feedback from the members, what they want, how they want to see the caucus go further,” Bean said.
Musk and Ramaswamy have called for $2 trillion worth of cuts to federal spending.
“That’s a huge number, to do it we’re gonna look at everything,” Bean said. “We know that everything’s on the table.”
“I’m going to advocate for: If we’re going to spend money on anything, then we have to cut somewhere else to offset that,” Bean continued.
Sen. Joni Ernst is set to chair the caucus on the Senate side, where lawmakers are similarly clamoring to support everything DOGE.
“I hope to be very involved,” Sen. Ted Cruz said. “Both Elon and Vivek are friends, they’re brilliant men, they both demonstrated a remarkable ability to think outside the box.”
Sen. Tommy Tuberville said he was more than happy to offer DOGE any help it needs, and Sen. Chuck Grassley said he expected to work within the caucus and do “whatever Senator Ernst asks me to do to support her efforts,” without naming specifics.
Lawmakers in leadership positions, however, threw some cold water on how fast anything truly transformative could make it through Congress.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said he likes DOGE — “I’m a big fan” — but cautioned that it would be some time before its recommendations would be ready for implementation as Republicans move to quickly pass their agenda via reconciliation.
“I do believe that it’s going to take us a bit of time for them — as they stand up that operation, take a hard look, scrutinize governmental operations and figure out savings and efficiencies — to be able to put that together into a legislative package,” Thune said during the Senate GOP’s weekly press conference.
Rep. Dave Joyce, chair of the Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee, said he likes the idea of making government “much more efficient,” but “just right now, I’m pretty busy with appropriations” — the process by which the federal government allocates trillions of dollars in funding for all of its programs.
The caucus is bicameral, but not quite bipartisan. Rep. Jared Moskowitz is the sole Democrat to have publicly joined DOGE as of Monday. The advocacy group Social Security Works immediately decried Moskowitz’s decision and vowed to run ads against him and other Democrats should they join the caucus.
Bean pushed back on any suggestion that DOGE could disrupt Social Security or Medicare, but said those areas would be examined for “waste.”
“That is not the intention, nor aim, where the delivery of any benefits will be affected,” Bean said. “Well, the recipient won’t be affected, but the delivery, we want to see if it can be more efficient.”
President-elect Donald Trump on Monday told reporters he would “never cut Social Security” and that DOGE’s recommendations would be limited to “waste, fraud and abuse.”
While Republicans are supportive of the catch-all goals of “slashing waste” and “increasing efficiency,” some fiscal hardliners told NOTUS they worry about the prospect of Republicans attaching their name to the effort without having the resolve to make substantive and possibly unpopular cuts.
“I’m always looking at where the problem is, the problem is members of Congress.” House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Andy Biggs told NOTUS. “I don’t think I need to be in a DOGE caucus to be pushing for cuts.”
“It’s a hard fight because the animal here protects itself,” Rep. Doug LaMalfa said. “Government protects itself very well.”
LaMalfa likened DOGE to another committee tasked with reducing the federal government’s size: Ronald Reagan’s Grace Commission. In 1982, Reagan tasked the industrialist J. Peter Grace with leading an outside group of business leaders to identify “waste and inefficiency,” along with methods to reduce them.
The commission ultimately outlined nearly 2,500 changes to reduce the size of the government, but most recommendations — “especially those requiring legislation from Congress” — were “never implemented,” according to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
“It’s optimistic in the beginning; it’s always hard to get what you really want,” LaMalfa continued. “The octopus doesn’t like having its arms chopped off, so it fights back hard.”
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Mark Alfred is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.