Democrat goes after Trump, Musk in first DOGE hearing

Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) went after President Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk in the first Delivering on Government Efficiency subcommittee hearing Wednesday, saying lawmakers “can't just sit here today and pretend like everything is normal.”

Stansbury, the top Democrat on the subcommittee, accused Republicans of shielding Musk and Trump “as they are clearly breaking the law,” before taking a swing at Vice President Vance, who she argued was “trying to rewrite the U.S. Constitution by tweet and undermine the judiciary.”

At the close of her opening remarks, the Democrat also sent a message “directly” to Musk, telling him to come to the committee if he has a “serious desire to engage in democracy and transparency.”

“Come and testify in front of the American people under oath, because we want to know what you’re up to,” she said.

Musk heads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has sought to dismantle federal agencies and offer buyouts to federal workers to cut government, sparking several lawsuits and pushback from Democrats.

Stansbury's comments came not long after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who heads the subcommittee, said at the top of the hearing that the legislative branch “will fight the war on waste shoulder to shoulder with President Trump, Elon Musk and the DOGE team.”

“We as a country are $36 trillion in debt,” Greene said during the hearing, which is focused on improper payments and fraud, while sounding the alarm over rising interest payments on the nation’s debt.

“In 2025, interest payments are projected to be $952 billion, which is more than our entire military budget,” she said.

Stansbury said Democrats have organized a list of bipartisan proposals “to work on together that would root out waste, fraud and abuse.” But she warned about Trump’s recent executive orders to freeze federal spending that have been tangled up in courts, among other actions.

“The people who actually investigate waste, fraud and abuse at these agencies are the inspector generals who Donald Trump fired his first week in office in a midnight massacre,” she said. “So we have to ask ourselves, what is really going on here?”

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