House DOGE Committee holds its first hearing

The House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) held its first hearing on Wednesday morning to examine ways to eliminate government waste. But the Democrats on the panel had a different priority: denouncing President Donald Trump’s efficiency czar, billionaire businessman Elon Musk.

“He’s literally dismantling the government and breaking the law.” Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., said of Musk. “If you care about the rule of law or an unelected billionaire buying his way into the White House, dismantling federal agencies—every American should care about that. We’re trying to understand exactly what they’re up to.”

Trump appointed Musk to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, a digital services office that has rebranded to focus on eliminating waste. Musk and the DOGE already halted much of the work of the United States Agency for International Development and offered government workers a buyout. The DOGE is eyeing cuts to the Department of Education, among other agencies.

Rep. Brian Jack, R-Ga., said Democrats were misspending their efforts at the hearing.

“I just took a rudimentary count of the Democrat’s testimony today, and I’ve got 27 mentions of Elon Musk and three mentions of waste,” Jack said, holding up a count sheet. “I don’t know if that’s, in fact, the right count, but I think it illuminates and illustrates one of the problems that we’re facing, which is a lack of bipartisan efforts to address these critical things.”

Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., made a crude reference to a picture of Musk and called him the president—instead of Trump. I later asked Garcia if he felt the hearing focused too much on Musk.

“[Musk] and Donald Trump have ensured that Musk becomes a central part of the fight. He’s the one who’s put together this team,” Garcia said. “He’s amplifying what he’s doing on his social media platform. He’s the one with the large federal contracts. He’s, at this point, the co-president. It should be everyone’s concern.”

Although it shares an acronym with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the subcommittee, led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., is a purely congressional effort to pursue its aims from inside the Capitol. If the Trump administration calls on Congress to pass DOGE-related legislation, it will likely look to the subcommittee for coordination.

As its first slate of witnesses, the subcommittee called experts on government oversight, fraud prevention, and efficiency to testify about how well the government manages its many services and what prevents it from ensuring taxpayer funds serve their ends effectively.

Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., asked the witnesses about user ID standards, a long-standing problem for Congress that pits privacy concerns against the need to verify the identities of people who receive government benefits. Burchett asked Haywood Talcove, the CEO of LexisNexis Risk Solutions for Government, whether the government should adopt standards more in line with private sector companies like PayPal.

“They are systems that are based on encryption; they use data to validate you are who you say you are,” Talcove said. “You cannot allow individuals to provide the information based on what they think—it has to be based on what you know.”

When asked to estimate how much money is wasted on fraud and abuse in entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, Talcove said he believes the number is somewhere near $1 trillion.

“Putting in front-end identity verification, eliminating self-certification, and monitoring the back-end of the programs that are providing the benefits—those three things,” Talcove replied when asked how to prevent that waste.

Rep. William Timmons, R-S.C., said after the hearing that Trump is responding to the will of voters by working to make the government more efficient.

“President Trump is in charge. He has chosen to ask one of the brightest minds of our generation to find waste, fraud, and abuse, and the people who have an interest in these ridiculous government programs are going crazy,” Timmons said.