DOGE is sputtering on Capitol Hill

Everywhere you look in Washington, DOGE is beginning to slow down.

It's not just that Elon Musk is preparing to scale back his involvement in the project and devote more time to Tesla. Nor is it merely that Musk's estimated $2 trillion in cuts to the federal budget have shrunk to less than $200 billion. DOGE-related initiatives on Capitol Hill — where decisions about government spending are ultimately made — are also losing steam.

"That's one of my big frustrations right now," Republican Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee told BI. "The president's DOGE agenda is all through executive orders, and not through anything else."

A House caucus established to provide cost-cutting ideas to DOGE has had little interaction with the Trump administration. On Wednesday, a House panel created to support government efficiency efforts held a hearing on transgender athletes in fencing. And plans to vote on making DOGE cuts permanent have stalled as well.

Despite the shock and awe of Musk's first several weeks in government, time has shown that DOGE is still subject to the laws of political gravity. Musk has become unpopular, DOGE has faced massive blowback from the public, and Tesla — the source of most of Musk's wealth — has become the target of protests.

The substance of Musk's project is also at risk. Though Congress has largely taken a backseat to the executive branch in the initial months of President Donald Trump's term, the legislative branch will have to act to ensure that any changes made by DOGE aren't reversible by the next administration.

'We're not even going to call it the DOGE subcommittee anymore'

For months, the House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency — aka, the DOGE subcommittee — has been the main forum for Republicans and Democrats to hash out DOGE-related topics in a public forum. It's held hearings on improper payments, USAID, funding for NPR and PBS, and whether the federal government should downsize its real estate portfolio.

On Wednesday, the subcommittee departed from that course, holding a hearing on transgender athletes participating in fencing competitions.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, the chairwoman of the subcommittee, said ahead of the hearing that the topic was tied to government efficiency because Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring transgender women from competing in women's sports.

During the hearing, several Democrats on the committee argued that the hearing was off-topic.

"We're not even going to call it the DOGE subcommittee anymore. This is called the fencing oversight committee," Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, the top Democrat on the panel, said mockingly. "Welcome to the fencing oversight committee."

Republicans on the subcommittee largely demurred when asked about the apparent off-topic nature of the hearing. "Yeah, I don't know," Burchett said. "You know, people are concerned about it."

Meanwhile, the House DOGE caucus — a bipartisan group that boasts nearly 80 members — has been far less active than originally envisioned. Leaders told BI in January that the group planned to release a report at the end of the first quarter that compiled cost-saving suggestions for the White House and Musk.

But the group hasn't met in months, and Republican Rep. Blake Moore of Utah, one of the group's three co-chairs, told BI that the plans for a report had been delayed.

"There just hasn't been a lot of interaction with us and the administration," Moore said.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida, one of a handful of Democrats who had joined the group, went even further in a recent CNN interview. "The DOGE caucus in Congress is dead, it's defunct," Moskowitz said. "It met twice, I was there, it never met again. They weren't included in any conversations."

As of now, Moore said, members have been left waiting for the White House to submit a request asking Congress to withdraw funding that lawmakers had previously approved, known as a "rescission."

The administration had planned to ask lawmakers to cut funding for USAID, NPR, and PBS, according to various reports. But now that's also been put on hold, and the White House did not respond to a request for comment on when the recission request would be made.

"Our focus is just, at this point, going to be on what rescissions ultimately come," Moore said. "But there's been a major delay in that, so it's kind of waiting to see what legislative action happens."