Billionaire and efficiency czar Elon Musk capped off a day on Capitol Hill with a meeting with House Republicans where he admitted to making mistakes and fielded questions from lawmakers on the inner workings and findings of his Department of Government Efficiency.
Mr. Musk’s closed-door meeting with the House GOP on Wednesday night came after lawmakers faced scrutiny in their home districts last month over DOGE’s fast-paced dismantling of government agencies.
Lawmakers leaving the meeting said that Mr. Musk, who spoke for about 15 minutes before taking questions for roughly an hour, acknowledged that there have been hiccups over the last few weeks since DOGE began taking a fine-tooth comb to the federal bureaucracy.
Some of the growing pains of Mr. Musk’s operation included reports of cancelling government contracts that were already cancelled, or mistakenly firing and then rehiring federal workers across a variety of agencies.
“He’s not trying to say that everything’s been done perfectly,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson, South Dakota Republican. “I think he’s really open to the idea that when there have been things done that weren’t a perfect fit, that we need to come back and figure out how to adjust fire.”
Much of the focus was on DOGE’s findings, and Mr. Musk’s desire to modernize elements of the government from antiquated practices, like switching from sending out paper checks to using more electronic payments, Rep. Marlin Stutzman told The Washington Times.
The Indiana Republican said that Mr. Musk raised concerns about the “lack of security” for payments, and that he was “convinced it’s billions and billions of dollars that just go to waste, and we don’t even know where they go.”
“It’s an instinctive feeling, like, there’s a lot of money that’s going to people that aren’t supposed to get it, and the people that do need it have a hard time getting it sometimes, and it doesn’t make sense,” he said.
Mr. Musk’s meeting with the House GOP followed a stop at Senate Republicans’ weekly lunches where he asked lawmakers to turn DOGE’s cuts into law.
Senators suggested that they could use the rescissions process, which allows the president to submit to Congress a list of unspent funding he wants clawed back from what lawmakers previously appropriated, to codify the cost-cutting actions taken by DOGE.
That process also only requires 51 votes in the Senate, as opposed to the typical 60-vote threshold for most spending bills.
Some Senate Republicans also said they would like a quicker way to get answers to constituent questions on what DOGE is doing. Mr. Musk responded that he would set up something so lawmakers could call and get “an almost instantaneous response,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican.
During the House GOP’s meeting, lawmakers were given the phone number of one of Mr. Musk’s colleagues to reach out with concerns or questions.
Rep. Michael Cloud, who met with Mr. Musk before the meeting with other members of the House DOGE Subcommittee, said that rescissions were broadly discussed, but the talks focused on building a better stream of communication, with a particular eye on helping the DOGE leader better know where to look next.
The end goal, the Texas Republican said, was to keep the pace with the White House and DOGE to turn as many of President Trump’s and Mr. Musk’s decisions into law.
“Everything the president’s doing, we’ve got to come by as Congress and codify this into law and make sure that this is a course correction, not just a blip on the radar,” Mr. Cloud said.
• Lindsey McPherson contributed to this report
