Congress
DOGE Can’t Do It All. Here’s What It Can Do.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have grand ambitions for their supercharged government consultancy.
The so-called Department of Government Efficiency is going to solve the U.S.’s debt problem. It’s going to dramatically reduce the government’s power and slash the size of its workforce. And it’s going to crack down on that perpetual, easily named enemy: waste, fraud and abuse in federal spending.
Or, so they say.
Here’s the thing: those are completely different objectives that can be in conflict. Each poses its own political and legal obstacles. It’s not clear how — or if — DOGE intends to pick its battles.
DOGE could have real value if it zeroes in on things that should be dealt with, like federal buildings sitting unused, outdated technology systems or the estimated $247 billion in improper payments that went out in fiscal year 2022.
There’s a fair amount of enthusiasm and energy around the project, in a way that suggests it could have serious political legs (despite a name inspired by the meme dog “Doge” who utters exclamations like “much wow!” and has an offshoot cryptocurrency). Musk’s and Ramaswamy’s efforts are integrated with the overall presidential transition, and candidates for all manner of jobs are being asked where cuts would make sense.
But there’s comparatively less value for these two un-elected business guys to answer foundational questions about what we as a society should value. They’ve talked about balancing the budget. But doing that would require building consensus on broad tax and spending priorities — a completely separate undertaking. After all, the government does not exist to be efficient. It should seek efficiency as a means to achieve its goals.
And it’s unclear why Musk and Ramaswamy are qualified to set those goals.
In fact, President-elect Donald Trump himself seems to have a narrower view of their role, one that is focused on targeted cuts. This week he effectively promised that voters would not have to make tough sacrifices for the sake of efficiency.
“We’re looking to save maybe $2 trillion, and it’ll have no impact — actually it’ll make life better — but it’ll have no impact on people,” he told reporters about DOGE on Monday. “We will never cut Social Security.”
For now, the DOGE project is broad — identifying regulations that its co-heads deem to be a government overreach, or even agencies that they think shouldn’t exist.
But inaction is much easier in Washington than action, and it won’t be easy getting a long list of recommendations implemented (I’m assuming there will be 420, given Musk’s fondness for the number).
The “first buddy” so far seems to be taking a hardball approach, posting on X that politicians who oppose Trump’s agenda “will lose their primary/election. Period.” And on Wednesday, he took direct aim at the spending deal negotiated by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, saying it should not pass.
Those are bold moves, and Washington is definitely taking notice. Johnson said Wednesday on Fox News that he is on a text chain with Musk and Ramaswamy. “They said, ‘It’s not directed at you, Mr. Speaker, but we don’t like the spending,’” the speaker said. “And I said, ‘Guess what, fellas, I don’t either.’”
But given the practical limits of DOGE’s power (it is not actually a government agency, despite its name), it will need to have buy-in — from lawmakers, from the incoming Cabinet as well and, of course, from Trump.
“They don’t have any authorities,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former head of the Congressional Budget Office who’s president of the American Action Forum, said to me about DOGE. “On my most cynical days, I think they’re just a think tank, and I run a think tank. I know how little power I have.”
Just look at a past, DOGE-like effort: the Grace Commission in the 1980s. It was the same basic idea — a private-sector advisory group designed to look at ways to make government work better. Almost none of that body’s suggestions were actually adopted, despite a mandate from then-President Ronald Reagan.
I brought up the shortcomings of that commission to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who was in the Senate at the time and is now the top Republican on the Budget Committee. He said DOGE is different in one respect.
“Their approach is, to do all you can do under the law by executive action,” he told me. “And I don’t think that was the theory behind the Grace Commission. That’s about the only difference I think I can say in their process.”
Grassley said it’s important to focus on “both the long term and the short term” when it comes to spending and noted that DOGE is soliciting input from lawmakers.
“But I think at least their short-term goal is not to try to get something through Congress,” he said.
That executive-focused approach squares with the op-ed Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in The Wall Street Journal in late November, but it doesn’t quite match up with their rhetoric. Musk has suggested that the government should “delete” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and solicited feedback on the budget of the Internal Revenue Service.
You’d need Congress for those kinds of things.
It’s not as though DOGE is destined to fail by trying to work with lawmakers. But they will need to direct their energy in clear, productive and politically savvy ways, such as tapping into preexisting interest in cutting waste.
There are early signs that they’re doing so. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who is in charge of her chamber’s DOGE caucus, is finally having her moment after years of publishing a report about spending she considers unnecessary. The often-mentioned $2 trillion in potential savings is a figure that comes from that report.
“As the top watchDOGE in the Senate, I will be using my decade of making Washington squeal as a roadmap to work with the Trump administration to reduce waste, downsize government, and drain the swamp,” Ernst said in a statement to me.
A person familiar with DOGE efforts in the Senate told me that having Ramaswamy and Musk on board with these kinds of moves offers publicity for potential cuts that would be much harder for senators to achieve on their own (X owner Musk has more than 200 million followers on the social media platform).
There’s some high-level consistency in how the central players are talking about it. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who is leading a DOGE subcommittee in the House, has called $2 trillion in spending cuts “a very worthy goal mark.” And there’s plenty of interest from other lawmakers, even some Democrats.
But for the moment, DOGE represents whatever people want it to be, and that’s not a realistic way to achieve any of their goals.
The DOGE heads have said they’ll close up shop on July 4, 2026, though we’ll get an important signal about their work well before then — in Trump’s forthcoming budget proposal.
It’s easy for Republicans to be enthusiastic about a vague idea. It’s much harder to build support for a specific plan.
Meanwhile, even small-dollar items have powerful constituencies that will bring political blowback. Just ask Betsy DeVos’ Education Department, which proposed cutting $17.6 million in funding for the Special Olympics in 2019.
In her book Hostages No More, she described being “raked over the coals” in a House hearing for this proposition. “I did my job defending the budget, making the perfectly valid point that taxpayers can’t fund every worthy program,” she wrote.
But the backlash was enough to budge Trump.
“I have overridden my people,” he told reporters two days after the hearing. “We’re funding the Special Olympics.”
Top Republican officials are increasingly accepting the House may already be lost as they shift to trying to limit the damage and salvage a Senate majority.
After waiting for weeks to see if the party’s deluge of money could help a raft of GOP incumbents who appeared to be in terrible shape in internal polling, more recent internal Republican polling still shows deep erosion in Trump country.
Now, Trump officials and Republican operatives say more candidates may have their funding from GOP campaign groups cut off in the coming days, before it’s too late to spend the money elsewhere to shore up other shaky races.
“I speak to a lot of people. There is no one who has privately stated that they believe Republicans can hold the House — not in recent weeks, anyway,” said former Rep. Carlos Curbelo, who lost in the last big House Democratic wave in 2018 after representing a South Florida swing district.
Five senior House Republicans, granted anonymity to candidly discuss their party’s precarious position, told Blue Light News the House has all but slipped from their grasp.
One of those Republicans compared the situation to Democrats’ 2006 flip of the House — specifically noting that potential Senate seat flips in North Carolina and Ohio could have downballot effects, while House candidates in redrawn red states like Florida and Texas are “hanging on with their fingernails.”
President Donald Trump’s political operation and the top House GOP super PAC have been cutting off ad spending across the map in races they feel are no longer winnable or worth the money, including for Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Tom Kean Jr.
And some national operatives are already starting to point fingers over who’s to blame, arguing that surprisingly-competitive Senate races are sucking away donor attention — therefore forcing House operatives into tough spending decisions.
White House officials insist they’re not giving up on the House, and that moves by the president and his team to shift the allocation of resources shouldn’t be seen as them prioritizing one chamber over another.
“The cutting of resources should not dictate what the philosophy is or what the outlook is for the overall race at large,” a senior White House official said. “It’s not doom and gloom around here. Everyone’s very positive, upbeat.”
But on the ground, Republicans seem to be giving up hope for any saving grace from the president in the final stretch.
“President Trump has made this election all about himself,” a second senior House Republican said in an interview. “Now we have to survive that political storm.”
What else we’re watching:
— WATERS, CASTEN FACE OFF ROILS DEMS: House Democrats are poised to face a polarizing choice on the other side of the midterm elections: Shove aside one of the most prominent Black progressives in their party in favor of a middle-aged White guy with similar policy views, or hand one of the most powerful gavels in Congress back to a nearly 90-year-old as their base clamors for generational change. That fight between Rep. Sean Casten, 54, and Maxine Waters, 88, to be Financial Services’ top Democrat also threatens to derail the party’s unity as members race to take back control of the chamber.
— GOP’S TAX CUT DATA DELAYED: The Trump administration is delaying the release of detailed data showing how Republicans’ 2025 tax cuts affected millions of Americans’ taxes, even as it tries to tout the law ahead of the midterms. The data — which is expected to provide the first detailed look at taxpayers taking advantage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including new deductions for overtime wages and tipped income — was scheduled to be released in July and updated in September. But the IRS said it’s awaiting approval to publish the figures. The delay has already irked some who complain it is part of a pattern of the administration withholding otherwise routine releases of tax data.
Meredith Lee Hill, Andrew Howard, Mia McCarthy, Jasper Goodman, Katherine Hapgood, Riley Rogerson and Brian Faler contributed to this report.
Adam Hamilton raised $10.6 million in the third quarter of 2026 across his Senate campaign and his joint fundraising committees, his campaign tells Blue Light News, a significant haul for the Kansas Democrat.
The fundraising total illustrates Democrats’ newfound bullishness about flipping a Senate seat in the deep-red state for the first time since 1932.
“This grassroots support sends a clear message: with three weeks until Election Day, Adam Hamilton is building the momentum to win,” said Hamilton campaign spokesperson Tyson Brody.
Hamilton’s third-quarter figure is nearly triple his $3.66 million second-quarter total. His campaign did not provide a current cash-on-hand total.
National Democrats began pumping money into Kansas in recent days, a sign of their growing hopes that Hamilton could win. Last week, Senate Majority PAC — Senate Democrats’ top super PAC — reserved $5 million in television ads backing Hamilton. American Bridge PAC and Lower Costs Now, a new group affiliated with former Vice President Kamala Harris’ super PAC, have spent in Kansas in recent weeks.
Republicans have also flocked to Kansas to prop up Marshall: Senate Leadership Fund, the Senate GOP’s top PAC, has spent or reserved nearly $11 million backing Marshall in the past week, according to tracking firm AdImpact.
“It took us five months to raise $15 million. [Marshall] got it in a day,” Hamilton said at a campaign event in Lawrence, Kansas on Monday. “So please help us.”
Marshall’s campaign has yet to release his third-quarter fundraising totals. As of mid-July, Marshall had over $5 million in the bank to $1.73 million for Hamilton.
A bipartisan Senate duo is urging Trump national security officials to “bring its full capacities to bear” to stave off threats posed by artificial intelligence — sooner rather than later.
Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, and Republican South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, who serves on the Senate Armed Services cybersecurity subcommittee, are calling for a full government response to a growing number of cybersecurity breaches.
“Recent AI security incidents should serve as a warning,” the senators wrote in a Tuesday letter to Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and White House Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios. “Advanced AI agents have escaped testing environments, bypassed safeguards, and gained unauthorized access to real-world systems owned by government agencies and private organizations.”
Spokespeople for Clayton and Kratsios did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Their letter comes as lawmakers struggle to hash out what legislation on AI safety, if any, might look like. Members are currently in recess ahead of the November elections and there’s little hope progress can be made by the year’s end.
But those lawmakers who have been engaged on the topic for years now have mapped out administrative actions the Trump administration could move on now, without waiting on Congress.
The Cantwell and Rounds priorities include: strengthening federal AI safety and security standards at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST; expanding independent testing capabilities at the Center for Advancing Innovation and Standards for Super Intelligence, Department of Energy and the national labs; and working with the tech industry to develop and deploy defensive AI tools.
Specifically, the senators wrote, new NIST standards should address the risks posed by advanced AI capabilities, including the “potential misuse by malicious actors” to conduct sophisticated cyberattacks, automate attacks at scale and agents that threaten external systems and critical infrastructure.
They also said the federal government capacity should be complemented by universities and other research organizations, as well as by private sector, third-party evaluators.
Finally, they point to ways the government could use existing programs at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to work with AI labs to help detect threats and reinforce vulnerable systems.
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