The first meeting of the congressional “DOGE” subcommittee took place Wednesday morning, and it quickly offered a bizarre look at how Republicans are justifying President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s aggressive dismantling of the federal government.
The committee was created as a legislative counterpart to the “Department of Government Efficiency,” a temporary organization created by Trump and run by Elon Musk. It has flooded several federal agencies with Musk aides who have sought extensive access to sensitive technology, and has pursued deep budget and personnel cuts, despite not having congressional authorization.
As Democrats hammered the administration for illegally shuttering entire agencies, attacking civil servants and handing over enormous power to an unaccountable billionaire, Republicans largely avoided talking about the rampage. But Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), the subcommittee’s chair, did occasionally offer some insight into Republican thinking about Trump and Musk’s hatchet job.
After House Oversight Committee ranking member Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) called out Trump’s (allegedly illegal) massfiring of 17 inspectors general ― the internal investigators literally tasked with sniffing out bad behavior ― Greene bizarrely blamed the same civil servants for the entirety of the federal debt.
“If we want to be serious, we’ve got to have objective, neutral inspectors general who are monitoring government waste, fraud and abuse and expenditures, and I think you would find Democrats more than willing partners in that kind of enterprise if we’re going to be serious,” Connolly said. “But a wrecking crew ― a wrecking crane, a wrecking ball ― is not going to do it.”
Greene responded by scapegoating the inspectors general.
“The president of the United States has the prerogative to fire anyone that has overseen $36 trillion in debt, enslaving the American people, and rightfully so,” she said.
Inspectors general have nothing to do with the creation of federal debt, which is actually the result of bills that have been approved by Congress and then signed into law by several presidents.
As noted in a lawsuit from several recently-fired inspectors general, by law, presidents must notify Congress 30 days before removing an inspector general, and they must provide “a substantive, case-specific rationale” for the removal. Trump has done neither. IGs also more than earn their keep: For every dollar spent on an inspector general’s office budget, $26 are returned to taxpayers, the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency reported in an analysis of fiscal year 2023.
Later in the hearing, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) asked committee witness Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, the director of government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, what the impact was of Trump mass-firing the inspectors general.
“To put it simply, it completely undermines our ability to root out waste, fraud and abuse,” Hedtler-Gaudette responded. He noted that the inspector general role was created after Watergate, when “there were not cops on the beat that were internal, that were independent, that were situated in agencies to be able to find these things and expose them and do something about them.”
“That’s what inspectors general exist to do,” Hedtler-Gaudette added. “So it’s completely anathema to any stated mission to find cost savings and to root out waste, fraud and abuse, to fire inspectors general and to undermine them. It makes no sense. Those two things do not add up.”
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Separately Wednesday, Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) pointed out one inherent conflict of interest in the inspector general firings: “At least five inspector generals that were looking into Elon Musk’s companies were fired by the Trump-Musk administration,” he said.
Responding to Casar, Greene repeated her bizarre justification for the firings.
“The American people are $36 trillion in debt. It certainly seems reasonable that someone has been fired,” she said.