Former GOP lawmaker: DOGE should focus on fixing Congress

Former Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) penned a Thursday op-ed in The Wall Street Journal urging Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to initially focus their push to cut government spending on Congress if they want to have a lasting impact.

President-elect Trump tapped Musk and Ramaswamy to co-lead the "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE), a commission tasked mainly with reducing federal spending. Gallagher said it’s a worthy goal that must be achieved through a restructured approach to congressional budget review.

Gallagher wrote that “if the DOGE men don’t focus on reforming Congress’s budget process, they will struggle to realize their ambition of revolutionizing the federal government and returning America to fiscal sanity."

“If the department focuses only on executive orders, it will pump water out of the swamp only to deposit it back in. DOGE will be remembered as a cheap public-relations stunt.”

He slammed Congress for decades of stop-gap measures instead of a long-term strategy when it comes to spending. He urged Congress to pass something similar to the Prevent Government Shutdowns Act, proposed by Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), ahead of the next spending deadline in March. The bill would force Congress to stay in session during shutdowns and halt publicly funded travel until lawmakers fund the government.

Gallagher also pushed for lawmakers to advance the Trust Act, which would empower special committees to force votes on reforms to Social Security and Medicare trust funds.

“DOGE should therefore champion the Trust Act, which was a bipartisan, bicameral proposal in the previous Congress until the Biden administration demagogued it as a ‘death panel’ bill,” he wrote.

“The bill would empower each rescue committee to bring its solution to the House and Senate floors for a vote, so congressional leadership couldn’t kill reform efforts merely to shield members from making tough votes.”

Musk and Ramaswamy haven’t detailed specific reductions they'd make to achieve a desired $2 trillion in top-line cuts, but say they will begin a review of federal agency budgets starting this month.

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