For Republicans in Congress, a cost-cutting initiative named after a 2010s internet meme has aged poorly, failing to live up to its ambitious promises and losing its most famous backer.
The Rise and Fall of a Meme-Driven Policy
Last winter, the DOGE project was a rallying point for the GOP, symbolizing a push for drastic government efficiency. The effort gained cultural cachet with the endorsement of billionaire Elon Musk. The House of Representatives formalized the movement, creating both an official DOGE committee and a separate DOGE caucus, akin to a fan club.
Eleven months later, the initiative is in disarray. The committee's chair, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, is resigning in early January. The project failed to come anywhere near its pledge of $1 trillion in spending cuts and received terrible public reviews. Most notably, Elon Musk has not only abandoned DOGE but expressed regret for starting it. "Instead of doing DOGE, I would have, basically, built ― worked on my companies," Musk said on a recent podcast.
Republican Persistence Amidst Failure
Despite the setbacks, some Republicans are not ready to end the DOGE effort. House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), whose panel houses the Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) subcommittee, said he will appoint a new chair after Greene's departure. "There's still a few people in the administration tagged with DOGE," Comer told HuffPost. "They're just not Elon Musk, obviously. So there's still plenty of areas to look at."
Comer stated the subcommittee will focus on "rescissions," a controversial process where the executive branch claws back congressionally approved funds. Former President Donald Trump secured one such package in 2025 and later used a unilateral "pocket rescission" to cut $5 billion in foreign aid, a move that drew criticism from some Republicans.
Under Greene's leadership, the subcommittee's work ranged from codifying White House spending cuts to examining non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the alleged dangers of human-controlled weather modification. Greene warned in a September hearing that geoengineering proponents "want to control the earth's climate to address the fake climate change hoax."
Internal Criticism and Lasting Damage
Inside the Trump administration, Musk's most prominent DOGE-inspired actions included a short-lived mandate for government employees to email five weekly achievements, a haphazard probe into imaginary fraud at the Social Security Administration, and gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which Musk described as putting it "into the woodchipper."
The consequences were severe. Atul Gawande, a Harvard Medical professor and former USAID official, estimated that dismantling USAID resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide. The move was condemned even within Trump's inner circle. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said in a December interview, "no rational person could think the USAID process was a good one. Nobody."
Democrats who initially had an open mind about improving government efficiency quickly turned against DOGE, especially after Musk's attacks on Social Security made him deeply unpopular. Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), the top Democrat on the DOGE subcommittee, expressed surprise that Republicans would continue the association. "I am surprised to hear that my colleagues would want to continue to associate themselves with that enterprise, even knowing that the administration themselves and the founder have turned their backs on it," Stansbury said.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), the first Democrat to join the DOGE Caucus in February, declared the group defunct by May, calling DOGE "a complete failure." Meanwhile, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) placed blame on Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, calling him "evil" for enabling the administration's budget tactics.
As the DOGE Caucus plans to meet in January, its co-chair Rep. Aaron Bean (R-Fla.) insists, "We're not dead." However, the project's legacy is one of unmet promises, internal regret, and policies with devastating human costs.
