Democrats Wrestle With DOGE and Musk

WASHINGTON—During the first two months of the second Trump administration, few issues have united Democrats like opposition to Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a time-limited organization directed by executive order to “to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity” across scores of agencies.

That unified anti-DOGE message came through from both the New Democrat Coalition and the more left-leaning Congressional Progressive Caucus. The groups held separate press conferences at a retreat for House Democrats on March 13.

The New Democrats’ chair, Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), described Musk as an “unelected billionaire and shadow president,” celebrating a federal judge’s order to the administration to reinstate thousands of probationary employees it fired.

Though Musk and DOGE cannot fire employees, they have led the charge in identifying prospective cuts to staff, leases, contracts, and other federal spending that agency heads can then implement.

Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairman Greg Casar (D-Texas) said more moderate Democrats at the retreat were talking about taxing billionaires, reflecting “a progressive win,” one born out of resistance to Musk and President Donald Trump.

Top national Democrats have joined protests against DOGE activity and prospective cuts at the Treasury Department, the Department of Education, and other agencies, while drawing attention to a barrage of lawsuits aimed at DOGE and DOGE-related activity.

Additionally, House Democrats on the Oversight Committee are investigating possible conflicts of interest involving Musk, a technologist whose work with SpaceX, Tesla, and other companies has often garnered federal subsidies, contracts, and other financial support from the government.

On Feb. 20, Senate Democrats sent Scott Turner, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, a letter seeking answers on DOGE’s work at his agency.

Meanwhile, Rep. Sarah Elfreth (D-Md.), whose district includes territory near the District of Columbia, has introduced legislation with Democrats and Republicans to help fired probationary employees. It would prevent them from having to begin their probationary period all over again if they are ultimately rehired.

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On March 13, Elfreth told NTD the fact that workers were fired “does not mean they were not stellar civil servants” before sharing her worries about DOGE’s staff—a concern frequently voiced by Democrats.

“We’re not seeing people who are, frankly, qualified to be making these decisions about efficiency,” she said.

The six-month continuing resolution that recently passed the House and the Senate does not place guardrails on DOGE. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top Democratic appropriator in that chamber, released a list of areas in which expiring congressional directives could give the Trump administration considerable discretion over federal spending.
Yet, that six-month funding patch, which Trump signed into law on March 15, does not codify DOGE-related cuts either. Some of that could come through a rescissions package, which Musk discussed with Senate and House Republicans on March 5.

House members who attended that meeting told The Epoch Times that implementing DOGE’s proposals through the legislative branch would take longer than the ongoing budget reconciliation process. They said it would likely be tied to the regular appropriations process, in line with comments from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).

Even as national Democrats try to put a leash on DOGE, the outcomes of the funding and reconciliation debates so far reflect a challenging reality for the party out of power: their ability to check DOGE is limited.

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), along with other democratic congressmen, speaks to a crowd gathered in protest of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, in front of the U.S. Department of Treasury in Washington on Feb. 4, 2025. Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images

Aside from gathering evidence of what they see as DOGE’s missteps, deficient transparency, and vexed relationship to the Constitution, Democrats’ meaningful moves to counter DOGE largely depend on the judiciary as well as any influence they and their allies may have on how Americans view Musk and DOGE.

On Feb. 18, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) stopped short of saying the funding discussion would offer Democrats leverage on DOGE.

“We will be taking advantage of the opportunity to raise issues about the budget,” he told The Epoch Times.

Asked on March 5 if Democrats could curtail DOGE through the then-ongoing funding discussion, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) told The Epoch Times, “I don’t know.”

Democrats Stress Role of Congress

In interviews with The Epoch Times, DOGE-skeptical Democrats frequently stressed their general support for the idea of targeting waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government. Their issue, they say, is with DOGE’s sweeping approach and the role of Musk, a special government employee whose activities they seek to scrutinize in more granular detail. Soon after the second Trump administration started, House Oversight Republicans blocked Democrats from subpoenaing Musk to appear before that committee.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), a swing-state senator who has established a record of voting with Republicans on some issues, told The Epoch Times on Feb. 18 he was working with Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Penn.) “to develop a solution” to DOGE-related cuts affecting his state.

“If all [DOGE is] about [is] trying to save money, Pennsylvanians would support that. I would want to save our money and make it more efficient,” Fetterman said. “I think it’s about chaos.”

He noted that Republicans control the Senate, restricting his leverage on DOGE until its effects percolate to constituents in red states. DOGE-inspired cuts have led to the closure or consolidation of dozens of Social Security Administration offices, many in the deep-red South.

On March 5, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), a progressive whose district includes portions of Chicago’s South and West Sides, told The Epoch Times that the government could stand to scale back funding to space exploration, one of Musk’s major areas of interest, “with the idea that you’re just putting it on the back burner.”

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Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) speaks to reporters outside of the Senate Chambers at the U.S. Capitol on March 13, 2025. Fetterman says that with Republican control of the Senate, his leverage on DOGE is restricted, until its effects percolate to constituents in red states. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Like Fetterman, he suggested the administration’s cuts would cost Republicans support once it impacts their voters.

“Many individuals in red districts and in red states are low-income people,” he said.

At the House Democrats’ retreat on March 13, Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) told The Epoch Times that “Democrats are committed to modernizing our systems” as well as “rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse.”

“That should be done in full view of the American people,” she said. “It should be debated. It should be the role of Congress.”

She added that the approach spearheaded by Musk, who holds an unelected position overseeing an organization attached to the executive branch, “is just not the way to do it.”

Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, made a similar argument during a panel at the same retreat.

“There’s always efficiencies that you can gain in any organization,” he said. “It’s done with inspectors general. It’s done in committee rooms.”

“It isn’t done with 19-year-old DOGE folks running around downloading people’s data,” Aguilar said.

One DOGE-skeptical Democrat who has raised a core DOGE issue—improper payments by the federal government—is Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.). During a March 11 House Oversight hearing, Mfume highlighted legislation he supports, the Taxpayer Funds Oversight and Accountability Act, aimed at strengthening agencies’ internal finances and financial management planning across the government.

He said he and Government Operations Subcommittee Chair Pete Sessions (R-Texas) have “worked on a bipartisan basis to discover real pathways to reducing fraud and improper payments,” highlighting an October 2024 letter they jointly sent the Government Accountability Office seeking clarity on a reported $2.7 trillion in improper payments since 2003.
In 2024, the House Oversight Committee’s then-ranking Democrat, Maryland’s Rep. Jamie Raskin, called on Republicans to support the Government Spending Oversight Act, which was co-sponsored in the Senate by then-Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) along with Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.). It reached the Senate’s legislative calendar in July 2024, half a year before the 118th Congress ended.
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(Left) Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.) speaks during a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on April 9, 2024. (Right) Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) speaks at a press briefing in Washington on June 3, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Some Support Pentagon Scrutiny, Cuts

While Democrats are generally averse to DOGE-related cuts to social spending, many showed interest in greater scrutiny and cuts to another massive federal target—the Pentagon, which received almost $900 billion in the recent continuing resolution.

In late 2024, progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) joined forces with conservative Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and other lawmakers to reintroduce the Streamline Pentagon Spending Act, legislation aimed at scrapping the Department of Defense’s mandatory unfunded priorities lists, the Streamline Pentagon Spending Act. The 2022 and 2024 versions of the bill didn’t make it out of the Committee on Armed Services.

DOGE’s targets have included the Department of Defense.

After DOGE staff members visited the Pentagon in February, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth proposed shuffling 8 percent of the agency’s budget from non-lethal areas to national security-focused items on Trump’s agenda.

A March 5 letter from Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense Dane Hughes to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) states that prospective spending for the next fiscal year is being reviewed “to reallocate resources away from low-impact areas.”

In late February, the Pentagon began firing 5,400 probationary employees.

On March 3, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) pointed out to The Epoch Times that talk of cuts from Hegseth has occurred alongside prospective increases to Defense Department spending from Congress. The continuing resolution that made it through the House and Senate raises defense spending by $6 billion out of a $1.7 trillion topline.

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Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth stands at the entrance of the Department of Defense in Washington on Feb. 24, 2025. After DOGE staff members visited the Pentagon, Hegseth proposed shuffling 8 percent of the agency’s budget from non-lethal areas to national security-focused items on Trump’s agenda. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Some of the Pentagon’s moves in the DOGE era seem aimed at shaking up military contracting, long dominated by a few massive players that have been identified with what President Dwight Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex.

Along those lines, a March 10 memo from Hegseth aims to streamline software acquisition by the Pentagon.

“It takes a big step in combining tools that we have in the department to make capabilities go faster while simultaneously opening up the industry base to nontraditionals and commercial vendors,” a defense official said during a background briefing on the memo.

Michigan’s Peters, whose Midwestern swing state was the United States’ “Arsenal of Democracy” during World War II, expressed an interest in efforts to make military contracting less top-heavy.

“We need to have space for innovative, smaller companies to be involved in the supply chain for the defense industry. It should not be just dominated by a few big players,” Peters said on March 6.

At the retreat on March 13, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), chair of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, told The Epoch Times she “would start with the Pentagon” in pinpointing federal waste, fraud, and abuse.

Trahan echoed Dingell’s point. She and Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.) also noted that the Pentagon has not passed an audit in years—a sticking point for both progressive Democrats and many Republicans.

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Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) speaks to reporters in Washington on Jan. 8, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

A 2023 proposal that would have required spending cuts to Pentagon elements that do not pass audits, the Audit the Pentagon Act, attracted cosponsors spanning the ideological spectrum, from Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). It died in committee.

Not all Democrats sound eager to trim the Pentagon.

Schneider told The Epoch Times that the National Democrat Coalition, which includes a majority of House Democrats, is focused on maintaining a strong U.S. defense.

“That’s where our work is going to stay,” he said.

NTD reporter Melina Wisecup and Epoch Times reporter Emel Akan contributed to this report.

Original News Source Link – Epoch Times

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