Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
- The Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, faces collaboration issues.
- DOGE caucus, initially promising, is now defunct, with diminished congressional collaboration.
- Lawmakers express frustration over slow progress and unclear future direction of DOGE initiatives.
WASHINGTON — One of the biggest stories of the year on and off Capitol Hill is the Department of Government Efficiency: The newly created commission, led by multibillionaire Elon Musk, is designed to cut spending in the federal government.
The agency has done its job to dominate the news cycle and headlines. And it's certainly made waves in turning the government upside down. But in terms of its collaboration with lawmakers in D.C., that relationship has appeared to break down.
Earlier this week, Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz — the first Democrat to join the congressional DOGE caucus — told Politico the group on Capitol Hill was essentially dead. "It's defunct. We haven't met in months," he told the outlet.
DOGE was officially created on Jan. 20, the first day of Trump's second term. But DOGE-related caucuses began forming two months earlier after Republicans won the November election.
At the time, Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who were expected to co-lead DOGE, expressed interest in working closely with Congress. This included weekly communications, podcast collaborations, and more, the Deseret News has learned.
But after Ramaswamy exited DOGE — leaving Elon as the lone leader — that initial excitement began to diminish.
The congressional caucuses were designed to provide recommendations to the administrative DOGE team for spending cuts. However, that collaboration began to break down weeks into the administration, according to several members of the caucus.
In fact, there was "no interest to accept any of (the recommendations) at that time," one source familiar with the caucus' work told me. There was little to no outreach or communication with House members, which came as a shock to many members.
"There hasn't been any work done to do the initial plan," I was told.
For example, the caucus was supposed to meet with DOGE officials a few weeks ago but that meeting was canceled.
Instead, the caucus has evolved into a more reactionary body rather than a collaborative teammate — at least, that's how several of these members described it to me.
So now, five months later, the momentum has all but slowed.
"There has not been the collaborative effort that we were hoping that we would have," Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, told me in an interview.
Sessions acknowledged that DOGE officials inside the Office of Management and Budget are "bright people" but they have run into bureaucratic issues that have slowed progress. Sessions also said that the busy schedule of Congress trying to get Trump's agenda through has hindered caucus projects.
"To be honest with you, I think we're so darn busy," Sessions told me. "We would have hoped we had (progress), and I still wish we will get it, and I expect to have it. But everybody has been so busy with our own great, great big bill."
And that slow movement has made some constituents confused, wary, and downright angry. In fact, I get emails from readers pushing me to ask lawmakers about DOGE and what exactly they are accomplishing up here.
It's put some lawmakers in a tricky position. Take Utah Rep. Blake Moore, for example. His district has one of the most dense federal workplace populations in the country. And he's a co-chair of the DOGE caucus.
"We have an incredibly strong federal workforce district that works very hard, primarily in DOD, but (also) a big IRS processing facility, and a lot of them have just been really, really confused," Moore told me in his office this week. "We've worked closely with all the agencies to try to help navigate this with them."
One point of tension that has most concerned Republican lawmakers was Musk's initial strategy of firing federal workers as a way to cut down on costs.
This is how one member put it: "These folks that work within these agencies, the majority of them want to be a part of the solution. But then they felt completely attacked by a five-bullet-point email that really had no strategy behind it. It was mostly just demonizing them, instead of actually trying to work with them."
Moore especially has pushed to include federal workers in conversations about how to identify waste and fraud within agencies, telling me the absence of such conversations is "a missed opportunity."
The administration has since shifted from that strategy, placing Cabinet secretaries in charge of personnel decisions and operating in different ways to identify waste and fraud, which Moore says was a beneficial correction.
Moving forward, it's not entirely clear what the DOGE caucus will focus on — especially if that communication with the administration is lacking.
Congress is expected to receive a formal rescissions package in the coming months with official requests to approve its spending cuts. While that process will mostly pertain to the House Appropriations Committee, Moore and Sessions told me they expect the DOGE caucus to have some sort of role.
And a message from Sessions to Moskowitz: "He still should expect there to be significant impact from this new way of doing business, where it is going to be value added and efficiency-oriented. So he should not become dismayed just yet."
