Former Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) penned a Thursday op-ed in The Wall Avenue Journal urging Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to initially focus their push to chop authorities spending on Congress in the event that they need to have a long-lasting affect.
President-elect Trump tapped Musk and Ramaswamy to co-lead the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), a fee tasked primarily with lowering federal spending. Gallagher stated it’s a worthy purpose that have to be achieved by way of a restructured method to congressional finances evaluate.
Gallagher wrote that “if the DOGE males don’t give attention to reforming Congress’s finances course of, they are going to wrestle to appreciate their ambition of revolutionizing the federal authorities and returning America to fiscal sanity.”
“If the department focuses only on executive orders, it will pump water out of the swamp only to deposit it back in. DOGE will be remembered as a cheap public-relations stunt.”
He slammed Congress for many years of stop-gap measures as an alternative of a long-term technique in the case of spending. He urged Congress to move one thing much like the Stop Authorities Shutdowns Act, proposed by Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), forward of the following spending deadline in March. The invoice would pressure Congress to remain in session throughout shutdowns and halt publicly funded journey till lawmakers fund the federal government.
Gallagher additionally pushed for lawmakers to advance the Belief Act, which might empower particular committees to pressure votes on reforms to Social Safety and Medicare belief funds.
“DOGE should therefore champion the Trust Act, which was a bipartisan, bicameral proposal in the previous Congress until the Biden administration demagogued it as a ‘death panel’ bill,” he wrote.
“The bill would empower each rescue committee to bring its solution to the House and Senate floors for a vote, so congressional leadership couldn’t kill reform efforts merely to shield members from making tough votes.”
Musk and Ramaswamy haven’t detailed particular reductions they’d make to realize a desired $2 trillion in top-line cuts, however say they are going to start a evaluate of federal company budgets beginning this month.
