The House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency—DOGE—held its first hearing on Wednesday, and Elon Musk, who was not in attendance, was one of the main topics of debate. Rep. Melania Stansburg, the subcommittee's ranking Democrat, accused Musk and President Trump of "illegally dismantling the federal government, shuttering federal agencies, firing federal workers, withholding funds vital to the safety and well-being of our communities, and hacking our sensitive data systems," the Hill reports. She called for Musk, who leads the Department of Government Efficiency—also DOGE—to testify before the panel under oath.
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, chair of the subcommittee, said Americans were in "debt slavery" due to excessive government spending. She urged fellow lawmakers to avoid "political theater and partisan attacks," Politico reports. Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia, however, brought up the time Greene displayed photos of Hunter Biden in a 2023 hearing. She "literally showed a d--- pic in an Oversight congressional hearing, so I thought I'd bring one as well," he said before a staff member brought out a photo of Musk. "Now this, of course, we know, is President Elon Musk," Garcia said.
Committee members from both parties agreed that wasteful government spending could be cut, though one witness, Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, director of government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, said an administration serious about rooting out waste would not fire inspectors general "en masse in an unlawful midnight purge." Another witness, Haywood Talcove, the CEO for Government at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, estimated that fraud and waste could be cut by $1 trillion with moves including implementing front-end identity verification at all levels of government, the Hill reports. (More DOGE stories.)
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