Republicans vowed Wednesday to tackle the “stunning” U.S. national debt, as lawmakers began work on President Donald Trump’s plan for the most radical downsizing of the federal government in decades.
The House of Representatives Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee will be the legislative arm of tech billionaire Elon Musk’s efforts as Trump’s right-hand man to save $1 trillion by attacking fraud and waste.
Its first hearing—”The War on Waste: Stamping Out the Scourge of Improper Payments and Fraud”—featured testimony from a former FBI agent and the head of a welfare fraud watchdog.
“This committee will be laser-focused on bringing full transparency to waste, fraud and abuse within the federal government, and presenting the plans to fix the tremendous problems we expose,” subcommittee chair Marjorie Taylor Greene said in her opening statement.
The hearing was convened with government workers staging demonstrations against deep staffing cuts ordered by Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Critics say the world’s richest man has enormous conflicts of interest as a major government contractor, although Trump—without producing any evidence—claims his “efficiency czar” has uncovered fraud amounting to tens of billions of dollars.
A prominent voice on the party’s hard right with a history of bigoted comments, Greene has been brought from the fringes into the center of Republican politics as Trump’s influence has grown.
“We, as a country, are $36 trillion in debt. That is such a stunning amount of money,” she told the panel.
“It’s absolutely staggering to even comprehend how we as a people, we as a country, found ourselves here.”
‘Meat axe’
Musk, newly emboldened by a Trump executive order giving him a veto over government hiring and firing, told reporters in the White House on Tuesday that DOGE was “maximally transparent.”
Democrats, initially open to the concept, have soured on Musk over his efforts to dismantle federal agencies, which they say are unlawful and shrouded in secrecy.
Democrats have upbraided Republicans for making strident pledges to save money while proposing a budget that would raise the national debt limit by $4 trillion.
“We all agree—I’ve said many times—that cutting waste in government and increasing efficiency is a good thing,” Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Party’s leader in the Senate, said in a floor speech.
“But what DOGE is doing is something else entirely. DOGE is taking a meat axe and attacking vital programs indiscriminately.”
Trump and Musk are facing multiple legal challenges, however, as they try to lift emergency orders blocking the dismantling of federal agencies, holds on grants and the firing of government watchdogs.
The White House lost an appeal in Boston on Tuesday upholding a decision to block Trump’s freeze in federal grants and loans.
On the same day, Trump fired an inspector general overseeing USAID, after the nonpartisan official filed a report critical of efforts to close the agency.
As with all his firings of inspectors general, the move looks on its face to be illegal, as Congress is supposed to be given 30 days’ notice.
Meanwhile the Homeland Security Department fired the Federal Emergency Management Agency chief financial officer and three other employees for approving payments for migrant housing in hotels.
And Trump’s spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, accused courts “in liberal districts” of abusing their power—although DOGE’s defeats have been delivered by judges nominated by presidents from both parties.
