Republicans on Capitol Hill are divided over tech billionaire Elon Musk being the public face of President Trump’s aggressive bid to shrink the government, with some souring on Musk’s prominent role as he increasingly has become a target of Democratic attacks.
Several GOP senators worry that having an unelected billionaire crow about slashing federal jobs, which happen to employ many people in their home states, is not a good look when inflation remains a major problem and many Americans are having trouble making ends meet.
Some Republicans, such as Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), have defended having the political outsider take the lead in reforming federal agencies. But other GOP colleagues are grumbling that the execution has been “flawed,” as Musk has shuttered agencies and pressured workers to resign.
One GOP senator said Musk’s buyout effort offering more than seven months of severance was “poorly executed” and his latest attempt to slim federal agencies by pushing a reduction in force has failed to consider how it might impact federal agencies.
“I think they’re just looking to reduce numbers, it’s not efficiency, it’s not output. It’s, ‘We just need bodies gone.’ And I don’t know that’s the metric that you use,” the senator said.
The GOP senator also reacted angrily to Musk’s call for a “wave of judicial impeachments” in response to federal judges putting holds on Trump’s executive orders and actions.
“Wrong, wrong, wrong. Get him out of the White House. Get him out, the sooner the better,” the senator added. “Every day that he’s there, he seems more destructive.”
Polls show that Musk is highly unpopular with independent and moderate voters, who could be key to Republican senators winning reelection in battleground states.
An Economist/YouGov poll of 1,595 adult citizens conducted Feb. 9-11 found that surveyed independents disapproved of Musk’s handling of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) by 18 points, with 31 percent approving and 49 percent disapproving.
The survey found that self-described moderates disapproved of Musk’s leadership of DOGE by 21 points, with 33 percent approving and 54 percent disapproving.
A second Republican senator said Musk’s “Fork in the Road” buyout offer and now his planned reduction in the federal workforce are causing havoc. The lawmaker said federal workers from home are calling Washington in a frantic scramble to figure out what it means for them and their families.
“There’s a lot of concern among my constituents. The concern is, ‘Who is this guy?’ He’s a billionaire, which puts him in a certain category. ‘How does he have the authority if he’s not elected by anybody to do what he’s doing?’” said the senator, who said there are “a lot” of federal workers in their home state.
The senator said there’s a lot of “confusion” about the buyout offer for federal workers because it was offered and then withdrawn, a judge put a hold on it, the judicial order was later lifted and it applies to some parts of government but not others.
The senator said that Musk’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) also created problems for farmers who sell products to provide food assistance around the world.
A third Republican senator said several Head Start programs were shuttered in their home state, and funding has been threatened for nonprofit groups that depend on regular federal payments to keep people employed and provide community services.
Another GOP senator was worried by a report that Musk’s team had gained access to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which serves 9 million enrolled veterans across more than 1,200 facilities around the country.
The VA has more than 43,000 probationary employees who were given a scare after the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which Musk took over earlier this month, advised agencies to begin firing recently hired employees.
Some Republicans have complained publicly about Musk’s high profile.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said earlier this month that Trump had empowered Musk “far beyond” what is appropriate.
“There’s no doubt that the president appears to have empowered Elon Musk to go far beyond what I think is appropriate,” she told reporters.
On Thursday, Collins questioned the wisdom of Trump’s decision to suspend for 180 days the enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, under which two of Tesla’s suppliers incurred penalties. Musk is the CEO of Tesla motors.
“First of all, I don’t think the administration should be suspending laws. That’s the basic issue here,” she said.
She has also pushed back on Trump and Musk’s support for freezing broad swaths of federal grants and loans and for reorganizing federal agencies without alerting Congress ahead of time.
GOP senators say that Musk’s brash online personality has inflamed constituents who are already skeptical of his broad access to federal programs, the Treasury Department’s sensitive federal payment systems and millions of Americans’ personal information.
Musk boasted on his social media platform X that “we spent the weekend feeding USAID into the woodchipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead.”
Speaking virtually at Dubai’s annual World Government Summit, Musk compared some federal agencies to obnoxious weeds found growing in someone’s yard.
“I think we do need to delete entire agencies, as opposed to leave part of them behind. … It’s kind of like leaving a weed,” he said. “If you don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back.”
Musk has given Democrats plenty of ammunition to argue that Trump has turned over the keys of government to Musk, who has plenty of conflicts of interest given his stakes in Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink, the social media company X, and the Boring Company.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) led a group of lawmakers in demanding that Musk, a special government employee, publicly release his full financial disclosures containing information about potential conflicts of interest.
“Given the scale of your power to carry out sweeping administrative policies and your vast personal financial interests, the American people deserve to know how you stand to profit from your role in the Trump administration,” the senators wrote in a letter to Musk on Thursday.
They highlighted Musk’s access to the Treasury Department’s payment systems, “including information on Americans’ Medicare and Social Security benefits, student loan information — potentially in violation of the Privacy Act of 1974.”
They also accused him of “illegally” attempting to shut down USAID and to “unlawfully shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.”
Some prominent Republicans have defended Musk’s move-fast-and-break-things approach to reforming the federal bureaucracy as necessary after years of lax oversight by Congress.
Thune told Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom” that “people are very supportive, and we are, too,” of what Musk is doing at DOGE.
“This is a scrub that’s long overdue. There are so many systems in our federal government that are antiquated,” he said. “You know, people operating in silos, bureaucracies built on top of bureaucracies.
“I’m delighted that it’s happening, and we want to do everything we can to be supportive,” he said.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) chuckled when asked about Musk’s low approval rating with self-described moderate and independent voters.
“That’s funny, I’ve always thought of him as a bit of a moderate independent,” he said, but he acknowledged he’s “provocative” on social media.
“I think he fits right in with Donald Trump, certainly with the people that are glad to see a ball-breaker in there,” he said. “I’ve talked about the need for some guardrails if he’s getting too close to the areas he could benefit from. Even if it’s just for appearance’s sake.”
“Otherwise, most people I know are cheering him on,” he said.
