Led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the Department of Government Efficiency will work to root out waste and fraud.
Billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will soon be getting reinforcements to help them shrink the size of the federal government.
House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) plans on creating a congressional subcommittee to assist Musk and Ramaswamy’s planned presidential-advisory commission to reduce wasteful government spending and administrative bloat, a source familiar tells National Review.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.), a bombastic ally of President-elect Donald Trump, is set to serve as chairwoman for the subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) for the upcoming congress.
Its name is a knock-off of the Department of Government Efficiency, the advisory commission Trump is forming with Musk and Ramaswamy at the helm. Lawmakers have already met with the incoming Trump administration’s DOGE team including Ramaswamy, the source familiar said.
“Looking forward to working together with Congress. Proper oversight of agencies & public transparency are critical,” Ramaswamy said on X.
The DOGE team is fully behind the subcommittee’s mission and the two groups are already working together. The subcommittee is expected to assist the Oversight Committee with its mission of curtailing government waste and fraud, while investigating methods for reorganizing federal agencies and cutting bureaucratic red tape. It will be officially established at the beginning of the next Congress when the Oversight Committee finalizes its rules.
“Wasteful government spending must end, and taxpayers deserve to see their money used effectively and efficiently,” Comer told Fox News.
He said the new DOGE subcommittee “will align with the Trump administration’s priorities to eliminate government waste, streamline the federal government’s operations and cut red tape that’s stifling jobs and increasing costs for the American people.”
Among the Oversight Committee’s broad set of responsibilities is overseeing the federal administrative state’s personnel and operations. Reforming the administrative state and rooting out ideological opposition within the civil service is a major priority of Trump’s because of his difficulties with the entrenched bureaucracy throughout his first term.
Trump announced last week his intention to name Musk and Ramaswamy leaders of DOGE, following through on his campaign promise to put Musk in charge of an entity tasked with reining in government abuses.
“Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies – Essential to the ‘Save America’ Movement,” Trump said in a statement.
“I look forward to Elon and Vivek making changes to the Federal Bureaucracy with an eye on efficiency and, at the same time, making life better for all Americans.”
Musk, the world’s richest man, spent at least $119 million helping Trump get elected and has become a close confidant of the president-elect. He spoke at multiple high-profile Trump rallies towards the end of the presidential campaign and frequently promoted Trump to the 200 million people who follow him on X, the social media platform he owns. Often, Musk assails the existing regulatory apparatus based on the regulatory hurdles and investigations he and his companies have experienced.
Ramaswamy, whose estimated net worth is close to $1 billion, became a prominent Trump surrogate after dropping out of the GOP presidential race in January following a much-discussed campaign. The biggest promise Ramaswamy made on the campaign trail was to dramatically reduce the scale of the federal bureaucracy by abolishing and reorganizing entire agencies.
Musk and Ramaswamy’s work on streamlining the federal government could build on that of the Government Accountability Office and other watchdog entities that have diligently tracked and investigated instances of government mismanagement to the tunes of billions of dollars annually.