The highly anticipated first meeting of the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, or DOGE, came and went on Wednesday with scarce political drama.
Democrats sought to cast the subcommittee — a complementary effort to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk — as an extension of what they see as a corrupt executive branch plot to destroy the federal bureaucracy. But Republicans largely sidestepped those attacks, arguing they were in the business of eliminating government waste while Democrats had little interest in engaging earnestly on the subject.
It was a surprising twist for a panel filled with political firebrands and chaired by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who just a few years ago was stripped of her committee assignments for controversial actions like suggesting she supported the assassination of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And on Wednesday, Democrats seemed at times keen on provoking Greene, known for viral spats and sparring with fellow lawmakers.
At one point, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) announced he’d decided to bring a “dick pic,” after Greene showed explicit images of Hunter Biden in a House Oversight Committee hearing in the previous Congress. Garcia then displayed a photo of “President Elon Musk.”
“We should in no way be cooperating with House Republicans who want to shut down the Department of Education and destroy Medicare and Medicaid,” said Garcia at the hearing.
And Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), who last year said during a spat with Greene during an Oversight Committee hearing that her colleague had “bleach blonde, bad built, butch body,” said Wednesday that Greene’s leadership of the DOGE subcommittee was notable, given her absence from a number of past hearings dealing with “improper payments.”
Greene has marketed her panel as a serious partner in Musk’s efforts to reduce government waste. On Wednesday, she said her subcommittee would soon release a report with legislative solutions to the problems raised at the hearing, titled “The War on Waste: Stamping Out the Scourge of Improper Payments and Fraud.”
“This is not a time for political theater and partisan attacks. The American people are watching. The legislative branch can’t sit on the sidelines,” Greene said in her opening remarks.
She also announced that the subcommittee had finalized a date to hold a hearing on whether the federally-funded public news outlets PBS and NPR are engaging in political bias in their coverage, and convene to discuss the U.S. Agency for International Development, which the administration is moving to dismantle.
“In this subcommittee,” Greene said, “we will fight the war on waste shoulder to shoulder with President Trump, Elon Musk and the DOGE team.”
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