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Elon Musk on Tuesday said White House DOGE office staffers aren’t “dictators of the government” and that progress made by DOGE is tied to its support from Congress and the executive branch.
Musk, the public face of DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts, told the Qatar Economic Forum that DOGE has performed “incredible” work but that it couldn’t make changes alone.
“The ability of DOGE to operate is a function of whether the government — and this includes the Congress — is willing to take our advice,” he said. “We’re not the dictators of the government — we are the advisors. And the progress we’ve made thus far is incredible.”
“The DOGE team has done incredible work, but the magnitude of the savings is proportionate to the support we get from Congress and from the executive branch of the government in general,” he added.
DOGE’s work to downsize federal departments and agencies, including its efforts to probe sensitive information that’s raised alarm bells for many lawmakers, has, in part, defined President Donald Trump’s second term.
Before the official launch of DOGE, Musk said that $2 trillion in savings was a “best-case outcome” for the initiative, which delighted conservatives who had long railed against the size of the federal deficit. The tech titan recently said DOGE has saved $160 billion so far through its efforts to weed out waste and abuse.
The Trump administration is seeking to codify DOGE’s cuts into law, but it has run into snags from a swath of GOP lawmakers who have resisted some of the more drastic initiatives.
At the forum, Musk continued to praise DOGE while also emphasizing its limitations.
“DOGE is an advisory group. I don’t think any advisory group has done better in the history of advisory groups of the government,” he said.
“We do not make the laws, nor do we control the judiciary, nor do we control the executive branch,” he continued. “We are simply advisors. In that context, we are doing very well.”
In April, Musk said he was stepping back from his work with DOGE in order to focus on Tesla.
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