That unified anti-DOGE message came through from both the New Democrat Coalition and the more left-leaning Congressional Progressive Caucus. The groups held separate news conferences at a retreat for House Democrats on March 13.
Although Musk and DOGE cannot fire employees, they have led the charge in identifying prospective staffing cuts, leases, contracts, and other federal spending that agency heads can then implement.
Greg Casar (D-Texas), the Congressional Progressive Caucus chairman, said more moderate Democrats at the retreat were talking about taxing billionaires, reflecting “a progressive win,” one born out of resistance to Musk and President Donald Trump.
Additionally, House Democrats on the Oversight Committee are investigating possible conflicts of interest involving Musk, a technologist whose work with SpaceX, Tesla, and other companies has often garnered federal subsidies, contracts, and other financial support from the government.
Meanwhile, Rep. Sarah Elfreth (D-Md.), whose district includes territory near the District of Columbia, has introduced legislation with Democrats and Republicans to help fired probationary employees. It would prevent them from having to begin their probationary period all over again if they are ultimately rehired.
On March 13, Elfreth told Epoch Times sister outlet NTD that the fact that workers were fired “does not mean they were not stellar civil servants,” before sharing her worries about DOGE’s staff—a concern frequently voiced by Democrats.
“We’re not seeing people who are, frankly, qualified to be making these decisions about efficiency,” she said.
House members who attended that meeting told The Epoch Times that implementing DOGE’s proposals through the legislative branch would take longer than the ongoing budget reconciliation process. They said it would likely be tied to the regular appropriations process, in line with comments from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).
Even as national Democrats try to put a leash on DOGE, the outcomes of the funding and reconciliation debates so far reflect a challenging reality for the party out of power: their ability to check DOGE is limited.
Aside from gathering evidence of what they see as DOGE’s missteps, deficient transparency, and vexed relationship to the Constitution, Democrats’ meaningful moves to counter DOGE largely depend on the judiciary as well as any influence that they and their allies may have on how Americans view Musk and DOGE.
On Feb. 18, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) stopped short of saying the funding discussion would offer Democrats leverage on DOGE.
“We will be taking advantage of the opportunity to raise issues about the budget,” he told The Epoch Times.
Democrats Stress Role of Congress
In interviews with The Epoch Times, DOGE-skeptical Democrats frequently stressed their general support for the idea of targeting waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government. Their issue, they say, is with DOGE’s sweeping approach and the role of Musk, a special government employee whose activities they seek to scrutinize in more granular detail. Soon after the second Trump administration started, House Oversight Republicans blocked Democrats from subpoenaing Musk to appear before that committee.Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), a swing-state senator who has established a record of voting with Republicans on some issues, told The Epoch Times on Feb. 18 that he was working with Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) “to develop a solution” to DOGE-related cuts affecting his state.
“If all [DOGE is] about [is] trying to save money, Pennsylvanians would support that. I would want to save our money and make it more efficient,” Fetterman said. “I think it’s about chaos.”
He noted that Republicans control the Senate, restricting his leverage on DOGE until its effects percolate to constituents in red states. DOGE-inspired cuts have led to the closure or consolidation of dozens of Social Security Administration offices, many in the deep-red South.
On March 5, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), a progressive whose district includes portions of Chicago’s South and West sides, told The Epoch Times that the government could stand to scale back funding for space exploration, one of Musk’s major areas of interest, “with the idea that you’re just putting it on the back burner.”
Like Fetterman, he suggested the administration’s cuts would cost Republicans support once it impacts their voters.
“Many individuals in red districts and in red states are low-income people,” Davis said.
At the House Democrats’ retreat on March 13, Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) told The Epoch Times that “Democrats are committed to modernizing our systems” as well as “rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse.”
“That should be done in full view of the American people,” she said. “It should be debated. It should be the role of Congress.”
Trahan said the approach spearheaded by Musk, who holds an unelected position overseeing an organization attached to the executive branch, “is just not the way to do it.”
Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), chair of the House Democratic Caucus, made a similar argument during a panel at the same retreat.
“There’s always efficiencies that you can gain in any organization,” he said. “It’s done with inspectors general. It’s done in committee rooms.”
“It isn’t done with 19-year-old DOGE folks running around downloading people’s data,” Aguilar said.
One DOGE-skeptical Democrat who has raised a core DOGE issue—improper payments by the federal government—is Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.). During a March 11 House Oversight hearing, Mfume highlighted legislation that he supports, the Taxpayer Funds Oversight and Accountability Act, aimed at strengthening agencies’ internal finances and financial management planning across the government.
Some Support Pentagon Scrutiny, Cuts
While Democrats are generally averse to DOGE-related cuts to social spending, many showed interest in greater scrutiny and cuts to another massive federal target: the Pentagon, which received almost $900 billion in the recent continuing resolution.In late 2024, progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) joined forces with conservative Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and other lawmakers to reintroduce the Streamline Pentagon Spending Act, legislation aimed at scrapping the Department of Defense’s mandatory unfunded priorities lists, the Streamline Pentagon Spending Act. The 2022 and 2024 versions of the bill didn’t make it out of the Committee on Armed Services.
DOGE’s targets have included the Department of Defense.
After DOGE staff members visited the Pentagon in February, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth proposed shuffling 8 percent of the agency’s budget from non-lethal areas to national security-focused items on Trump’s agenda.
A March 5 letter from acting Assistant Secretary of Defense Dane Hughes to Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), House Armed Services Committee chairman, states that prospective spending for the next fiscal year is being reviewed “to reallocate resources away from low-impact areas.”
On March 3, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) pointed out to The Epoch Times that talk of cuts from Hegseth has occurred alongside prospective increases to Defense Department spending from Congress. The continuing resolution that made it through the House and Senate raises defense spending by $6 billion out of a $1.7 trillion topline.
Some of the Pentagon’s moves in the DOGE era seem aimed at shaking up military contracting, long dominated by a few massive players that have been identified with what President Dwight Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex.
“It takes a big step in combining tools that we have in the department to make capabilities go faster while simultaneously opening up the industry base to nontraditionals and commercial vendors,” a defense official said during a background briefing on the memo.
Peters, whose Midwestern swing state was part of the United States’ “Arsenal of Democracy” during World War II, expressed an interest in efforts to make military contracting less top-heavy.
“We need to have space for innovative, smaller companies to be involved in the supply chain for the defense industry. It should not be just dominated by a few big players,” Peters said on March 6.
At the retreat on March 13, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), chair of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, told The Epoch Times that she “would start with the Pentagon” in pinpointing federal waste, fraud, and abuse.
Trahan echoed Dingell’s point. She and Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.) also noted that the Pentagon has not passed an audit in years—a sticking point for both progressive Democrats and many Republicans.
A 2023 proposal that would have required spending cuts to Pentagon elements that do not pass audits, the Audit the Pentagon Act, attracted cosponsors spanning the ideological spectrum, from Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). It died in committee.
Not all Democrats sound eager to trim the Pentagon.
Schneider told The Epoch Times that the National Democratic Coalition, which includes a majority of House Democrats, is focused on maintaining a strong U.S. defense.
“That’s where our work is going to stay,” he said.
