By New York Post (Politics) | Created at 2024-12-05 20:51:37 | Updated at 2024-12-25 20:35:56
2 weeks ago
WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Mike Pence’s group on Thursday pushed Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the co-heads of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to slash government spending by eliminating handouts for illegal migrants and banning DEI funding, among other proposals, according to a memo exclusively obtained by The Post.
Advancing American Freedom urged the DOGE counterparts to trim the fat off of the federal bureaucracy and cut a host of costly spending programs, several of which were imposed by President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ administration — including provisions from their $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
“The American people want less government in their lives and want the government to spend less of their money on wasteful and woke programs,” said AAF President Tim Chapman.
“Advancing American Freedom wants to help advance the vision of DOGE to improve the lives of every day Americans,” added Chapman, spurring DOGE “to cut through the overwhelming maze of bureaucracy and reassure the American people that their government is accountable to them for how their taxes are being spent.”
The memo calls for ending federal benefit programs tasked with helping illegal immigrants, prohibiting federal funding for programs that push Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and clawing back unspent COVID-19 money.
It also prods Republicans to repeal Democrats’ “Green New Deal” provisions tucked into Democrats’ IRA, halt hundreds of billions of dollars in student debt from being cancelled via programs started by Biden’s Education Department, and get non-defense spending back to pre-COVID levels.
Another long-held GOP priority that made the list was mandating all able-bodied workers to be kicked off of welfare.
Musk and Ramaswamy went to Washington on Thursday to discuss their unprecedented budging-cutting plans with GOP lawmakers, many of whom welcomed their ideas.
DOGE, named after the cryptocurrency with a Shiba Inu as its mascot, will be committed to shutting down redundant agencies and firing useless government employees, Musk and Ramaswamy have both said.
“We need to make sure we’re spending public money well,” Musk told reporters on his way out of a meeting with soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD).
A significant portion of congressional Republicans support a smaller federal government, but DOGE — which is not a government department — could potentially run into hurdles lowering budgets if just a few dissenting GOPers push back in Congress.
“Two people who know nothing about how the government works pretending they can cut a trillion dollars, both with decent pulpits to preach from, and the ear of an unpredictable president? Disaster,” one senior Republican aide griped to Punchbowl News. “The only good thing is that at some point they’ll overpromise and get bounced by [President-elect Donald] Trump. But until then … disaster.”
So far, however, their ideas are being met publicly with positive feedback from Republican lawmakers — with Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) introducing legislation to bolster DOGE’s efforts.
Fox News’ Martha MacCallum asked House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday if it would be possible to enact Musk’s plan to cut the 428 government agencies down to 99.
“We certainly hope so, we want to be willing partners in that,” Johnson (R-La.) replied, pointing to the Supreme Court overturning the 1984 Chevron doctrine earlier this year as an indication that control is being taken back from ham-handed federal regulators.
“It’s a new thing and this is a new day in Washington, a new day in America. We have long lamented the size and scope of the government — that it has grown too large,” Johnson told reporters in the hallway Thursday.
“There’s an enormous amount of waste, fraud and abuse.”
Musk has been Trump’s top confidant at Mar-a-Lago in the weeks following the 45th president’s re-election, advising him on transition moves and weighing in on calls with foreign dignitaries.
The DOGE initiative comes as a natural progression of the two business titans’ opprobrium for the “swamp” and rooting out government excess — just as Musk did with Twitter, now X, when he eliminated the majority of the staff.
“Look, it’s a refreshing idea that we’re going to actually make government work better and make your taxpayers go further,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” before his Musk-Ramaswamy sitdown. “There are probably 75% of federal employees here in Washington that still are not showing up to work under the excuse of COVID.”
“The swamp is elitist and bipartisan,” Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) said on X ahead of his own meeting with the pair. “I look forward to hearing from [Elon Musk] and [Vivek Ramaswamy] today on Capitol Hill.”
Disdain for unelected, meddling government employees was a center piece of Ramaswamy’s own presidential campaign — and he hopes to continue in that vein in the second Trump administration.
“I have a passion for tearing down bureaucracy,” Ramaswamy told The Post in late October. “And that’s something I’ve been vocal about over the last two years.”
