Rep. Blake Moore and other members of the House of Representatives met Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the heads of the Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE,” on Thursday.
“I’m very excited to kick off the DOGE Caucus as a co-chair as we work to cut federal waste, fraud, and abuse at this crucial time,” Moore said in a post on X. Republicans Rep. Aaron Bean of Florida and Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas will lead the panel with Moore.
His work on this committee will fall in lockstep with his time on the House Ways and Means and Budget Committees, where he worked on addressing the national debt and weeding out wasteful government spending.
Late last month, he won reelection for the vice chairmanship of House Republicans. In a conversation with the Deseret News earlier on Thursday, Moore laid out the House GOP leadership’s plans for 2025 while navigating a razor-thin majority.
“It’s just wild,” Moore said of the atmosphere on Capitol Hill as of late. “There’s all this anticipation on what we’re going to be able to work on when we have a new reality back here with a White House, House and Senate under Republican control.”
At the top of the list is passing the fiscal year budget.
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Congress extended government funding on current funding levels until Dec. 20. To avoid a government shutdown, lawmakers have to either pass spending bills or a stopgap that will bankroll federal agencies through the new year and possibly until springtime.
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, in his remarks on the Senate floor ahead of the Thanksgiving holidays, said, “Letting the government shut down just before Christmas would be asinine, plain and simple, and nobody wants that to happen.”
Moore, who represents Utah’s 1st District, said representatives on both sides of the aisle want to finalize spending bills in a timely fashion, “but that’s not going to happen.”
“I’m not on the Appropriations Committee. They have constant delays,” he said before calling out Schumer for stalling.
“He wants more things to be put on Trump’s plate when he gets into the White House,” Moore said. “I think it’s complete nonsense, and he’s done it over and over again.”
Either way, the stopgap is the right move for Republicans, he said. That would allow House GOP leadership to work with Sen. John Thune, who will take on the role of Senate Majority leader in January, and President-elect Donald Trump. He doesn’t expect Congress to pass funding for Ukraine, arguing Trump will project stronger leadership and end the war with Russia.
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Republicans also face a stark reality with a “more narrow majority in the House” for the foreseeable future, the Utah congressman said. It’s “unfortunate, but it is our reality,” he added.
On Wednesday, the House Republican leadership held a news conference, where House Speaker Mike Johnson said they’re experienced in dealing with thin margins.
“We have nothing to spare, but all of our members know that — we talked about that today, as we do constantly, that this is a team effort that we’ve got to all row in the same direction,” he said. “In unified government, we’re all on the exact same team,” the speaker added. “This isn’t junior varsity. ... And we have to think that way and operate that way.”
Moore, the vice chair of the Republican Conference, said Johnson had made calls for unity before, but at the time, they were up against Schumer and President Joe Biden, playing defense against the White House’s “massive spending proposals.”
“Getting people aligned from the Senate to the House to the White House — it’s so much more possible than when you have constant competing forces,” the Utah representative explained.
House Republicans are setting up the groundwork for the next quarter but there are “competitive voices right now, even among Republicans” about what the priorities should be among a sea of pressing issues, like taxes and immigration.
“There are a lot of different opinions being swirled around right now ... and we agree with all of them,” Moore said. But they have to decide what comes first.
He looks forward to staying on the House Ways and Means and Budget committees. “This is the moment that we’ve kind of been waiting for,” Moore said. He expects this panel to be most influential in 2025 when many provisions in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are set to expire. Aside from shaping tax policy, the Ways and Means panel also oversees Social Security and Medicare and can usher in budget reform — another pressing issue as U.S. federal debt crosses $36 trillion.
“It’s gonna be a really busy December, and an even busier January,” he said. Moore doesn’t have big plans for Christmastime and looks forward to being home for the holidays with his family. Skiing with his boys is also on the books, but only if there is some good snow on the ground, he said.