WASHINGTON ― House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) announced Thursday that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) will chair a new subcommittee named after an internet meme from the early 2010s.
President-elect Donald Trump tapped entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head an advisory panel called the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, that’s tasked with identifying trillions in government waste.
Not wanting to be left out, Republicans on Capitol Hill this week created a caucus (an informal group of lawmakers with shared interests) called Delivering Outstanding Government Efficiency, and now an official subcommittee, named Delivering on Government Efficiency.
“A lot of what DOGE is trying to do would fall under the legislative jurisdiction and the Oversight Committee,” Comer said Thursday in an interview with right-wing influencer Benny Johnson.
The acronym DOGE (pronounced “dodje”) refers to a once-popular image macro featuring a Shiba Inu dog with excerpts of its inner monologue represented by superimposed text. Here’s a DOGE meme for the new subcommittee, courtesy of HuffPost:
“I’m excited to chair this new subcommittee designed to work hand in hand with President Trump, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and the entire DOGE team,” Greene told Fox News Digital, which first reported the new committee.
Musk has said he could easily cut at least $2 trillion out of the $6.5 trillion federal budget, which is an extremely unrealistic goal, especially if DOGE doesn’t touch Social Security, Medicare or programs for veterans.
Despite having the word “department” in its name, Musk’s DOGE initiative is not an official federal agency, and is more like the kind of ineffectual blue-ribbon commission that policymakers have often established when they can’t figure out how to solve a complex policy problem.
It’s supposed to be up to Congress to decide how the government spends money, but Musk and Ramaswamy claimed this week they would pioneer new constitutional authorities for Trump to make their cuts without giving Congress a say.
(Editor’s note: Ramaswamy holds shares in BuzzFeed, HuffPost’s parent company.)
The lawmakers getting in on the DOGE action seem to want to make common cause with Musk and Ramaswamy while reminding the duo who’s actually in charge of spending.
“It takes an act of Congress to do some of the things that they want [done]. If we’re going to cut anybody, or if we’re going to make changes, then Congress has to act,” Rep. Aaron Bean (R-Fla.), co-founder of the new DOGE caucus, told HuffPost.
“We’re the good government committee that tries to root out waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement in the federal government,” Comer said. “So everything that musk and and Ramaswamy are talking about pretty much falls under the House Oversight Committee.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the committee, mocked the new DOGE subcommittee in a statement.
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“It’s hard to keep track of all the new departments and bureaucracies the Republicans are setting up to study the size and efficiency of government,” Raskin said. “So now a noted student of American government, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, will chair a subcommittee to work with two unvetted billionaires who stand to receive billions more in government contracts and subsidies from the government under Trump.”