The Utah Republican is one of the three co-leaders of the House DOGE caucus, a bipartisan group of lawmakers who had hoped to support Musk’s cost-cutting efforts.
That didn’t end up happening, in part because the White House DOGE Office ultimately had little interaction with the caucus.
“We’ve always been a little frustrated that there was such limited interaction,” Moore said on Thursday.
GOP leaders have said they’ll pursue DOGE cuts both through that process and through “rescission” packages, the first of which is set to be voted on in the House next week.
“When I saw Musk start posting, just parroting false claims about the tax reconciliation bill, it was clear something’s amiss,” Moore said.
A prominent DOGE-minded member of Congress made some scathing remarks about the richest man in the world shortly after the conflict between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk reached its peak on Thursday.
“Almost everyone was aware that Elon was overstating his abilities,” said Republican Rep. Reporters outside the Capitol were told by Utah’s Blake Moore. He said he was going to find cuts totaling $4 billion every day. He once claimed to be able to find $2 trillion. “.”.
According to Moore, “I think people are recognizing that now that it’s a massive exaggeration.”.
The House DOGE caucus is a bipartisan group of lawmakers who had hoped to back Musk’s cost-cutting initiatives, and the Utah Republican is one of its three co-leaders.
The leaders of the caucus previously informed BI that they planned to create a report outlining possible cost-cutting strategies for DOGE by the end of the first quarter of this year, and the group met a few times at the start of the year.
In the end, the White House DOGE Office had minimal contact with the caucus, which is one reason that didn’t happen. Last month, one Democratic member proclaimed the group to be “dead”.
“There was so little interaction, and we’ve always been a little frustrated,” Moore stated on Thursday. There simply wasn’t that interaction, even though we had a lot of people willing to support it and we couldn’t really pinpoint where we were to lean in. “.”.
An attempt to reach Musk for comment was not answered.
There are “plenty of Democrats that recognize there’s waste in our government,” Moore stated, adding that he intended to use the bipartisan government funding process to pursue federal spending cuts. “.”.
GOP leaders have stated that they will seek DOGE cuts through that process as well as through “rescission” packages, the first of which is scheduled for next week’s House vote. The first package, which includes foreign aid and public broadcasting cuts, is only $9.4 billion, a small portion of the cost savings Musk initially projected.
Moore remarked, “Yes, it’s kind of over-promising, under-delivering.”.
The tech giant’s criticism of the “Big Beautiful Bill” that Republicans are attempting to push through Congress last week marked the start of Musk and Trump’s public feud.
Although Republicans contend that the estimates do not take into consideration the potential economic growth the bill could stimulate, the bill is expected to increase the deficit by trillions of dollars.
On Tuesday, the two men’s feud reached a boiling point as they engaged in a verbal sparring match on their respective social media accounts.
According to Moore, “it was obvious that something was wrong when I saw Musk start posting, just repeating false claims about the tax reconciliation bill.”. “So, yeah, it got out of hand. It rapidly got out of control. “.”.
