Musk and Ramaswamy discuss govt cost cuts with US lawmakers

Billionaire Elon Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have spent several hours swapping ideas with lawmakers about President-elect Donald Trump's DOGE initiative to dismantle parts of the federal government.

Meeting behind closed doors at the Capitol on Thursday, Musk told the mostly Republican lawmakers they would be keeping a "naughty and nice" list of those who join in the budget slashing proposals and those who don’t, according to lawmakers who attended.

"We're going to see a lot of change around here in Washington," said House Speaker Mike Johnson, as Musk, with his young son on his shoulders, breezed by and into the private meeting.

Trump tapped the two business titans to head his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a nongovernmental task force assigned to find ways to fire federal workers, cut programmes and slash federal regulations — all part of what he calls his "Save America" agenda for a second term in the White House.

Washington has seen this before, with ambitious efforts to reduce the size and scope of the federal government that historically have run into resistance when the public is confronted with cuts to trusted programmes that millions of Americans depend on for jobs, health care, military security and everyday needs.

But this time Trump is staffing his administration with battle-tested architects of sweeping proposals, some outlined in Project 2025, to severely reduce and reshape the government. Musk and Ramaswamy have said they plan to work alongside the White House's Office of Management and Budget, headed by Trump's nominee Russ Vought, a mastermind of past cuts.

"DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government," Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in an op-ed inThe Wall Street Journal. "We are prepared for the onslaught."

Trump said on Thursday names venture capitalist and former PayPal executive David Sacks to be the "White House A.I. & Crypto Czar" and lead the Presidential Council of Advisors for Science and Technology.

Trump said in a social media post that Sacks would help "steer us away from Big Tech bias and censorship."

Trump's transition team didn’t say whether Sacks would be a government employee or a temporary government worker who would not be bound by the same ethics and disclosure rules.

'Everything has to be looked at'

Musk and Ramaswamy faced a first test as they sat on an auditorium stage in the Capitol basement, as House and Senate lawmakers, almost exclusively Republicans, lined up at the microphones to share ideas for ways to address the nation's budget imbalances.

Representative Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, brought up the Department of Education as a good place to cut. Representative Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., said to look at office space and how little of it is being used. Others talked about the need for workers to return to their offices.

Afterward, Johnson declined to say if Medicare, Social Security or other popular programmes were off limits for cuts, describing this first meeting as a “brainstorming” session with more to come.

"They said everything has to be looked at," said Representative Aaron Bean, R-Fla., who joined with Representative Pete Sessions, R-Texas, in launching what they are calling the DOGE caucus in the House, with more than 50 Republicans and two Democratic members.

Musk and Ramaswamy appeared to be taking it all in, Musk at times even taking notes, lawmakers said — experiencing a day in the life of congressional leadership, as the meeting went on and on, with lawmakers lined up 20-deep for their chance to speak.

Both left lawmakers with the impression they would be back for more, holding regular meetings and starting a podcast or some other way to share information with Americans to gauge public support — or opposition — to the proposals.