CNN
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Republicans pushed Elon Musk on Wednesday in a pair of private meetings to move his efforts to slash federal spending and the federal workforce through Congress, as lawmakers vie for a seat at the table in the sweeping effort to overhaul government.
It’s a sign that Republicans are looking to reassert their power of the purse in the months ahead.
In meetings with Senate and House Republicans, the tech billionaire walked the lawmakers through how the Department of Government Efficiency has approached cuts to the federal government.
The meetings come as multiple GOP lawmakers have been making the case to their leadership behind the scenes for weeks that Musk needs to consult more with Congress about the programs DOGE is working to eliminate and the scope of the cuts. Up to this point, congressional Republicans have wanted to remain in lockstep with the way President Donald Trump and Musk are reshaping the federal government, and have so far carefully carried out their pushback.
To help address that, Musk gave out his cell phone number during the closed-door meeting to GOP senators and told them he wants to work more closely with them, according to a person familiar with the matter. House Speaker Mike Johnson said he and Musk have been in contact “almost daily now.”
In his meeting with House Republicans, Musk also attempted to distance himself from the widespread firings across the federal government, which he blamed on federal department heads, according to GOP lawmakers.
Musk has been a central figure in the Trump administration’s efforts to slash the federal government, though the White House has said that Musk is serving as a special government employee and is not officially tasked with leading DOGE. The Office of Personnel Management sent an email to federal employees last month asking them to justify their jobs, and Musk posted online that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” while heads of several departments issued guidance to employees telling them to hold off on responding.
GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden said that Musk told the group that recently announced plans to cut more than 70,000 jobs at the Department of Veterans Affairs “wasn’t a DOGE decision.”
The Wisconsin Republican added that Musk told lawmakers the “individual departments” were involved in plans to cut employees across the federal government, and that DOGE was making the “assumption” that department heads know who is being “unproductive” and would “reward the people that are being productive.”
Musk also privately acknowledged to House Republicans that DOGE has made some mistakes as decisions about certain federal freezes and firings have had to be reversed.
“He said, like, you know, there’s going to be mistakes along the way. He has said that publicly before too. And then when those are identified, they will be corrected,” GOP Rep. Russell Fry of South Carolina told CNN.
In a more than hourlong meeting with senators, Sen. Rand Paul, a strong advocate for shrinking government, made the case that Musk’s cuts – in order to be protected from the courts – should be moving through Congress in the form of what are known as rescissions packages.
A rescissions package claws back funding that was appropriated by Congress and only requires a simple majority vote in the GOP-led Senate and a majority vote in the GOP-led House.
The challenge for Republicans, however, is that voting to do so would mean that they will be on the record for voting for cuts that could be unpopular with some in the American public and even with some of their own constituents.
“In order to make it real, in order to make it go beyond the moment of the day, it needs to come back in the form of a rescission package,” Paul said.
“What we got to do as Republicans is capture their work product, put it in a bill and vote on it,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina and chair of the Senate Budget Committee, said, describing how Congress can play a bigger role in implementing DOGE cuts. “We need to capture this in the legislative process to make it real.”
“It is time for the White House now to go on offense. We are losing altitude here,” Graham added
Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, told reporters of the meeting to discuss DOGE, “some of that, the executive branch can do on its own, some of it we may have to do through a rescission package.”
Some House Republicans in recent weeks have pleaded with leadership for guidance on how to respond to the outpouring of questions from their home districts on recent federal cuts. Republicans have taken to privately urging humane treatment for federal workers in lieu of condemning elements of the administration’s approach.
Washington GOP Rep. Dan Newhouse told CNN the meeting was scheduled “to talk about these kinds of things, to engage Congress more, to be more thoughtful about some of the things that he’s doing,”
“We support the underlying efforts here and the goals, but we want to impress upon him how that we should be more strategic,” Newhouse said.
As the confusion around what federal grants remain flowing and how the firing of federal employees is being handled, Republicans, who continue to hear an earful from their constituents, want answers about DOGE’s process.
Sen. Mike Rounds said ahead of the Senate GOP meeting that he wanted Musk to explain how DOGE will fix any mistaken cuts.
The South Dakota Republican said he wants to hear “how we fix the things that don’t go the way they’re supposed to.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune told CNN’s Dana Bash on Tuesday that the DOGE effort should involve more compassion for how federal workers are being treated.
“You also have to pay attention to the aftermath of that and how it impacts people. I mean, these are real people. They need to be treated that way,” he said, speaking of affected federal workers.
As the pressure builds for the party to respond more publicly, the leader of the House GOP campaign arm, NRCC Chair Richard Hudson, urged GOP members on Tuesday not to hold in-person townhalls going forward and to opt for virtual ones instead, according to three sources in a private meeting of House Republicans, as lawmakers have been overwhelmed and confronted by concerned individuals.
Rounds said that White House chief of staff Susie Wiles “has offered to be the contact when she’s been in front of us,” about DOGE, but noted “she’s just one person,” so Republicans need more of a process to be able to get more information.
For now, the GOP criticisms of Musk remain a private discussion.
As one GOP lawmaker who attended the meeting with Musk described it, “Republican members may be reticent to criticize Elon publicly because they understand that you praise in public. If you’re good teammate, you criticized behind closed doors.”
“Most every Republican member who has any kind of a conscience for why they would be here are communicating with the White House what could be done better,” the GOP lawmaker added.
This story has been updated with additional details.
CNN’s Manu Raju, Ali Main, Veronica Stracqualursi, Danya Gainor and Morgan Rimmer contributed to this report.
