Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., participates in a panel with members of the House Freedom Caucus on the Covid-19 pandemic at the Heritage Foundation on Nov. 10, 2022.
Tom Williams | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has been tapped to lead a new House subcommittee that will work with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Greene and House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., have met with Ramaswamy and his team and are “already working together,” a person familiar with the matter told CNBC on Thursday.
Comer aims to set up the subpanel early next year, the source said.
Greene’s group will be called the “Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency,” allowing it to share the acronym DOGE with the extragovernmental entity appointed by President-elect Donald Trump.
“I am pleased to chair this new subcommittee to work hand-in-hand with President Trump, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and the entire DOGE team,” Greene said in a statement to CNBC.
She said her panel would lead to the firing of government “bureaucrats” and promised to “bring transparency and truth to the American people through hearings.”
“No issue will be off the table,” Greene said.
The congressional version of DOGE, which Fox News first reported on Thursday, has similar goals to those of the two billionaires. The aim is to examine government waste and look for ways to reorganize federal agencies and cut bureaucracy, the person familiar with the matter said.
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“An important step to increase efficiency in government is to bring the issue to the attention of the public,” said a spokesman for Ramaswamy.
“We are grateful that the House Oversight Committee has established a DOGE subcommittee to focus on this work,” the spokesperson said. “We look forward to working together.”
Comer said in an interview with Fox Business on Thursday morning: “We will be working very closely with Elon Musk and Ramaswamy.”
Comer denounced “too many fat cats in government” and promised that his committee would “get the chopping block moving.”
Trump announced on November 12 that he had tapped Musk, the world's richest man and a key backer of Trump's presidential campaign, and entrepreneur Ramaswamy to lead the government efficiency group. The initials “DOGE” are reminiscent of an internet meme and a related cryptocurrency that Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has frequently touted.
Trump's announcement said the group would not be an official branch of the government but would provide “advice and guidance” to the White House and the Office of Management and Budget.
In an editorial published Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal, Musk and Ramaswamy complained that “most of the government's enforcement decisions and discretionary spending are made not by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees, but by millions of unelected, unappointed officials.”
Musk and Ramaswamy, who also were not elected, said they would “advise DOGE at every step to pursue three broad types of reforms: regulatory repeals, administrative reductions, and cost savings.”
Greene currently sits on Oversight's Subcommittee on Government Operations and Federal Workforce, among other positions.
In the previous Congress, the House of Representatives voted to strip Greene of her committee assignments as punishment for her history of promoting fringe conspiracy theories.
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