By Alex Miller – The Washington Times – Sunday, February 9, 2025

Republican lawmakers for years have preached fiscal responsibility and vowed to curb wanton federal spending, but Congress kept racking up deficits and the national debt has now ballooned to more than $36 trillion.

Enter Elon Musk, tech billionaire and leader of President Trump’s charge to downsize the federal government.

Mr. Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have taken Washington by storm, rattling the federal bureaucracy to its core by rooting out questionable spending — the type of freewheeling spending that Republicans have long derided.

It begs the question, why did Republicans need Mr. Musk to start cutting spending? After all, Congress controls the federal purse strings.

“Well, there’s a part of me that’s asking that same question,” Rep. Michael Cloud, Texas Republican, told The Washington Times. Mr. Cloud is a member of the debt-hawk-filled House Freedom Caucus and the House’s new DOGE subcommittee. He said that while Congress has “long had the authority to rein in the government spending,” sometimes they didn’t know where to look. 

The other side of the story, he said, was that bureaucrats have done everything they can to “hide, to obfuscate, to keep Congress from knowing the information for us to know where the money is actually going.” 

“He’s been able to bring some technology tools to the table that have provided transparency to where we and the American people are seeing where things were going,” Mr. Cloud said. 

Mr. Musk’s efforts have been met with criticism, both for their forcefulness and over their legality, particularly DOGE’s access to federal payment systems at the Treasury Department and moves to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Congressional Republicans welcome Mr. Musk’s involvement and see his work opening up new, more viable pathways to slashing federal spending.

“I’m at the point where I’m just glad it’s finally happening,” said Rep. Aaron Bean, Florida Republican. 

As co-chair of the House’s Department of Government Efficiency Caucus, Mr. Bean is all aboard for following Mr. Musk’s lead.

“People are rejoicing that action is finally being taken. How long have we talked about USAID … being a source of fraud and abuse, and now it’s been exposed. Thank you. Who do we send the thank you letter to, [do we] send it to Musk, or do we send it to Trump?”

Republicans are currently negotiating some of the steepest spending cuts seen in years as they pursue Mr. Trump’s agenda. Republican lawmakers have offered roughly $1 trillion in cuts, far more than what was originally offered by House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican.

The Republicans’ aggressive budget cutting may not be totally attributable to Mr. Musk.

Rep. John Rutherford, Florida Republican, said that paradigm shift among his colleagues stemmed not so much from DOGE or the new administration, but from voters.

“I think we’ve always known where the cuts needed to be, it was having the political will to do it,” he said. “And now that the members have the public behind them, I think they’re much more inclined to step out there and make those cuts.”