Businessmen Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, chosen by the president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, to head the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) of his new government, discussed this Thursday (5) with leaders of the Congress his plan to dismantle the country’s bureaucracy.
The meeting took place behind closed doors, and Musk arrived at the meeting carrying his four-year-old son, X Æ A-XII, on his shoulders.
As Speaker of the House of Representatives and member of the Republican Party, Mike Johnson, told reporters before the meeting, Thursday’s meeting marked “the beginning of a journey” that aims to bring common sense to an Executive Branch that is “great too much”.
“Taxpayers deserve better. They deserve a government that is more responsive, more efficient, more agile and more focused on its core objectives. And that’s the opportunity we have here now. We believe that this is a historic moment for the country”, he declared.
The new agency, as Trump has anticipated in recent weeks, will propose “large-scale structural reforms” that could have a strong impact on the federal administration, reducing excess regulations and cutting spending considered unnecessary.
Musk and Ramaswamy have pledged to help end excessive federal spending by targeting the more than $500 billion in annual federal spending that is not authorized by Congress or is used in ways the Legislature never intended.
The two businessmen’s visit to the Capitol was a first contact that allowed them to talk to the main Republican figures in the House and Senate who deal with executive financing or government structure.
“This is the first in a long series of meetings as we lay the groundwork for the new year and the new Congress. There will be a lot of changes here and in Washington and the way things are run,” Johnson said.
The Republican leader highlighted that one of the first things that will be required of the new government is that federal employees “return to their offices and the work they should be doing”.
Musk stated on his social network X that, without counting maintenance and security teams, the number of government employees who go to work in person and work 40 hours a week is close to 1%. Upon leaving the meeting, he also said that “all subsidies” should be eliminated.
Trump’s Republican Party will take control of the White House and Congress in January. In the November 5 elections, Trump defeated the current vice president, Kamala Harris, of the Democratic Party.
Johnson emphasized that the effort to cut spending must be “bipartisan” and criticized the fact that Democrats are “spending money without measure.”
“There is an enormous amount of waste, fraud and abuse in government, and I think everyone knows that intuitively. The efforts here, with our subcommittees that are being created and Doge himself, will be to explore this, investigate it and expose it for the American people to see”, concluded the Speaker of the House.