President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort – which has a mission to find ways to reduce government spending and potentially do away with any number of government operations – went from a mostly aspirational advisory exercise to a potentially powerful political force on Thursday.
That’s because Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee – said he plans to create a new subcommittee of House Oversight to work with DOGE and act as a conduit to turn its ideas into legislation.
The planned subcommittee, Rep. Comer said, will be chaired by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.
DOGE itself – at least as currently conceived – is a private, non-government entity being organized by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.
Despite its government-sounding name and the close relationship that its principals appear to enjoy with President-elect Trump, DOGE is still a private entity possessing no legal authorities on its own to impact government operations.
But what it has gained now, according to Rep. Comer, is a willing partner in Congress to advance its aims and those of the incoming Trump administration.
In remarks on Nov. 21 posted to social media, Rep. Comer did not endorse budget or headcount reductions at any particular Federal agency but enthused about the DOGE’s aims.
“We’re really excited, a lot of what DOGE is trying to do would fall under the legislative jurisdiction of the Oversight Committee,” he said. “We have jurisdiction over the Federal workforce. We’re the good government committee that tries to root out waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in the Federal government. So everything that Musk and Ramaswamy are talking about pretty much falls under the House Oversight Committee.”
“We’re going to try to implement their recommendations, because that’s all that Musk and Ramaswamy are going to be able to do is recommend things for either Donald Trump to pass as an executive order or for Congress to pass as a law,” Rep. Comer said.
“With respect to Congress, if you go back four years ago when Trump was president the first time, he didn’t really have a go-to person or a go-to committee in Washington,” the congressman said, emphasizing that his committee includes “willing partners that want to make government more efficient.”
“We don’t care if someone’s feelings get hurt because we eliminate their fat-cat bureaucratic job in Washington, we want to work for the taxpayers, not the bureaucrats,” he said. “And we hate the deep state. We’ve dealt with the deep state, we fought with the deep state, so we want to work with [President Trump] to implement his policies and initiatives. And I think it’s going to be a pretty good match.”
Rep. Taylor Greene was equally enthusiastic about her role heading the new subcommittee.
“I ran for Congress to gut the federal government of waste, fraud and abuse, and get rid of the unelected bureaucrats and the horrible spending and ridiculous programs that have brought us to $36 trillion in debt,” she said in remarks posted to her social media account on Nov. 21.
“This is an opportunity – being the chair of a subcommittee on DOGE – where I will finally get to work on the very things that led me to run for Congress in the first place,” she said. “It’s also one of the most important things we can get done in the Trump administration, and this is a one-time opportunity through President Trump and his appointment for Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead up this DOGE commission.”
“This is going to be an almost two year-process going into July of 2026, where it will be an entire process, but the subcommittee on Oversight is an extremely important piece, because this is the way Congress can work, hand in hand to expose everything that needs to be exposed, things that people have heard about but they’ve never seen,” she said. “And we can do that through the subcommittee on Oversight.”
