As the second Trump administration prepares to take office next month, it’s promising to fundamentally slash the size of the federal government. That effort, under the leadership of businessmen Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, is already generating a lot of buzz on Capitol Hill, including among members of Colorado’s delegation.
GOP Rep.-elect Jeff Hurd said via email that the county is in dire financial straits and he fully supports any efforts to ensure a smaller federal government that is more responsive to its citizens.
“Our nation is $36 trillion in debt, which means our children's future depends on reducing deficit government spending,” said Rep.-elect Gabe Evans via email. “As a U.S. Army veteran, I believe supporting our troops means cutting wasteful spending and improving efficiency so we can get critical resources to where they will do the most good for our warfighters.”
Musk and Ramaswamy were on Capitol Hill last week to make their pitch for the Department of Government Efficiency. Despite its name, DOGE won’t be a government department but instead will serve as an advisory body with a direct line to President-elect Trump.
The two men, who have never served in government, have talked about drastically reducing the federal workforce, eliminating whole agencies, like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and cutting $2 trillion in federal spending.
GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert is excited about the idea and already sees a lot of places for cuts.
“We can start with government employees still working from home. That's one area. We could go after all of the waste, fraud and abuse with COVID funding and so much more. I mean, within the Department of Education, within Energy, with the regulations and rules that we have,” she told CPR News.
She added it should have been Congress doing this work in the first place, “but unfortunately it hasn't happened. So now we have Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy leading that up, and hopefully, Republicans don't get in their way.”
Many of the duo’s recommendations will likely need congressional approval, and they’ve already started lining up some high-level Republican support.
“Let me be frank about this: government is too big, it does too many things and it does almost nothing well,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson before meeting with the two men last week.
While Republicans are chomping at the bit to cut the federal bureaucracy, Colorado Democrats are more wary of the initiative.
“Good luck,” quipped Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette, who’s seen plenty of funding fights during her time in Congress. “I think that these outside billionaires don't have any idea how the federal budget works.”
She added that savings on the level DOGE is talking about would mean cutting programs that are “sacrosanct to a vast majority of Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike.”
“There's not $2 trillion of waste, fraud and abuse just sitting around. It would be substantial cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and defense spending,” she said.
For context, $2 trillion is almost a third of total federal spending this year. The vast majority of government expenses fall under mandatory spending, such as Social Security, Medicare and debt funding. When it comes to discretionary spending, Congress is in the process of passing a defense authorization bill that has spending levels close to $900 billion, or almost half of what DOGE wants to cut. To put a finer point on it, earlier this year Congress passed government funding bills that totaled just under $1.7 trillion.
This fiscal reality is why Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse, who also serves as Assistant Leader for House Democrats, has his doubts.
“Given the limited information that I have thus far about that particular initiative, I'm not particularly optimistic about their efforts,” he told CPR News. And he said Democrats will fight any effort to cut programs Coloradans rely on every day.
Neguse and other Democrats say they agree with the goal of making the government-run as well as possible. But he thinks the way this should happen is through bipartisan discussion and working with stakeholders on the ground.
“I don’t think there’s anyone that doesn’t support trying to make things run more efficiently,” Democratic Rep. Brittany Pettersen told CPR News. “I think that who's running it, the direction, what their approach is going to be, I think there's a lot of concerns around that.”
Pettersen is worried about Musk's conflicts of interest in particular; his companies hold billions in government contracts and have benefited from a range of tax incentives. They also are subject to numerous regulations he could now be in the position of trying to eliminate.
Senate and House DOGE caucuses have been created to help the advisory body. And while it’s so far largely a Republican effort, a couple of House Democrats, such as Florida’s Jared Moskowitz and Ohio’s Greg Landman, have also signed up.
Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper, who hadn’t heard about the Senate group, didn’t shut the door completely to the idea of joining it, saying he’d look into it.
In general, the idea of a leaner, more efficient government isn’t a new thing for Hickenlooper. He recalled when he first ran for mayor of Denver, it was as a businessman with the goal of making city operations smaller and more efficient.
That experience shapes his advice for the men leading DOGE: to have a well-functioning government, you need the people working in it to feel respected.
“I hope they understand that morale is very important in city government and state government and in federal government,” Hickenlooper told CPR News. He said when he was governor, his administration went through all of the rules and regulations in state government, looking for things to eliminate. But he also stressed the importance of public service and the value state workers bring to citizen’s everyday lives.
“I don't mind trying to make government more efficient and get rid of the red tape,” he said. “It's hard, but I've done it and I think it's worth doing. But I also think their morale is important.”
Just how much DOGE can actually accomplish will depend on what Musk and Ramaswamy propose and how willing members of Congress — especially in its Republican majorities — are to make tough cuts that could hit their constituents or their districts.
