After meeting with senators earlier in the day, Musk assuaged House lawmakers on VA job cuts and discussed a path for Congress to codify the efficiency plans.
WASHINGTON—House Republicans met with Elon Musk late March 5 to discuss the work of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The meeting came several hours after Musk held a similar meeting with Senate Republicans.
DOGE, a time-limited organization created through a repurposing of the U.S. Digital Service, has been tasked with identifying waste, fraud, and abuse in coordination with the broader Trump administration to facilitate sweeping efficiency cuts across the federal government and implement technological reforms.
That administration-wide effort faced a setback the same day at the Supreme Court. The court ruled 5–4 that the administration must release a freeze on $2 billion in foreign aid from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
The meeting also comes after an internal memo leaked with a plan to cut 80,000 jobs from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in a return to 2019 staffing levels.
After hearing from Musk at the meeting, Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) and Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) said that those proposed cuts were the VA’s handiwork, suggesting they moved too sweepingly after DOGE advised them to scrutinize probationary positions.
The VA did not directly respond to The Epoch Times as of publication time.
Before they had a chance to hear from Musk, lawmakers voiced support for DOGE. Some also articulated concerns about the nature and scope of particular cuts.
Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) said that lawmakers should “go line by line and see if those programs are valid or if they’re invalid—and if they’ve been negated and they want to be put back in, you can always do that.”
Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.) said he hoped Musk could provide documentation of his findings.
“I fully support finding all this wasteful spending, tackling that, and also, at the same time, making sure that we protect vital services,” he told The Epoch Times.
During the Senate meeting earlier in the day, Musk apparently learned that the formal process of budget rescissions could enable the codification by Congress of approved DOGE-identified cuts.
Musk left the evening House meeting trailed by members of Congress and a throng of media. Asked if there should be a congressional vote on a rescissions package for DOGE, he responded, “Yeah, sure.”
Mast said that talk of rescissions “wasn’t a big part of the conversation,” telling The Epoch Times that lawmakers sought to know where they could pinpoint spending identified by DOGE “so that we can move those things into law through the proper documentation.”
He added that the process would likely require more time than ongoing reconciliation negotiations, a point that Hudson echoed.
“We’re probably talking about the normal appropriations process,” Hudson told The Epoch Times. “Hearings can start at any time,” he added, saying members simply needed more specific documentation from DOGE.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said a rescissions package could be “an avenue to take” as part of an approach to codifying DOGE cuts—an effort that he stressed he strongly supports.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who chairs the House Oversight Committee’s Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) Subcommittee, told The Epoch Times that she left the meeting equipped “with major tools” to use in her subcommittee chair role.
Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) drew attention to U.S. government support for medical facilities in Hyderabad, India. USAID cuts led to the closure of a transgender clinic in that city touted by the United States’ previous ambassador to India.
Scott also addressed DOGE’s pattern of reported mistakes in identifying waste, fraud, and abuse, saying, “I think the error rate’s actually pretty low.”
Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) pledged to America’s veterans that they would continue to receive benefits.