WASHINGTON — Even as President Donald Trump and multibillionaire Elon Musk deal with the fallout of their public dispute, Republican lawmakers still believe the original mission of DOGE can be carried out.
And the absence of Musk is not likely to hinder that progress, according to a Utah congressman.
“We’ve always been a little frustrated that there was such limited interaction from the DOGE administration to the DOGE caucus — we couldn’t really identify where we were to lean in,” said Rep. Blake Moore, co-chair of the congressional DOGE caucus. “And we had a ton of folks ready to support but there just wasn’t that interaction.”
Moore acknowledged that much of Musk’s role over the Department of Government Efficiency and Trump’s big ambitions to slash government spending amounted to a lot of “over-promising (but) under delivering.”
“I think that people should recognize … most everybody knew Elon was exaggerating as to what he could do, right?” Moore told the Deseret News.
“I think people recognize that now, and we need to be willing to pick up the appropriations process right now and find some substantive work to reduce the juice, the overall expenditure burden that our nation has,” he added. “I think there’s still an opportunity there.”
Moore declined to say whether he thought it was a mistake to put Musk in such a position of power — instead noting it would be better to “just sit back and kind of see what happens. It’s all sort of just spinning around right now.”
Other Republicans also expressed interest in continuing DOGE’s mission on Capitol Hill, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who leads the House Oversight DOGE subcommittee.
“I think DOGE is great. Government efficiency is fantastic,” Greene told reporters on Friday. “It’s exactly what we need. The American people support it, and it must continue.”