WASHINGTON — White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles worked to alleviate concerns by Senate Republicans Wednesday over Elon Musk’s dismantling of the federal bureaucracy, as lawmakers increasingly raise questions about the Department of Government Efficiency’s work.
“Everybody’s concerned when you have people cutting out of your state,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said. “But we all understand, it’s — that’s just part of it, you know, we’re way over, bloated we got to cut back.”
Wiles met with the lawmakers during a visit to Capitol Hill for a lunch with members of the Senate Republican Steering Committee, a group that includes many of the party’s most conservative senators.
Senate Republicans who attended the meeting said Wiles fielded several questions regarding the Musk-led operation, and even senators who are supportive of Trump’s agenda requested more transparency regarding DOGE cuts to federal agencies.
“We would like a bigger scoreboard of how it’s going,” Tuberville said.
Tuberville, a staunch Trump ally, said Wiles described DOGE’s procedures and staffing and indicated that Musk’s role in the organization was to provide oversight for the “young people” running the operation.
The meeting underscored the growing concern and questions that members of the president’s own party have about how Trump’s cuts are affecting their constituents — and potentially their own re-election prospects.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who has been critical of the way the DOGE cuts have affected federal workers, said Wiles told Republicans they should reach out to her office if they are not getting the answers they need from agencies.
“They’ve given us different avenues to pursue,” Murkowski said. “If we’re trying to unstick some funding somewhere and we’re not getting an answer over here, then we’ve got a couple other phone numbers to call.”
“People have questions about what DOGE is doing. Who should they contact? It was, you know, kind of nuts and bolty types of stuff,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said of the meeting.
Republican senators leaving the meeting with Wiles on Wednesday said Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., who chairs the Republican Steering Committee, indicated that he is trying to find a time for Musk to speak to Republicans at a future lunch.
A spokesperson for Scott said an appearance from Musk has not been locked down.
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.
The meeting with Wiles came after several Republican lawmakers faced pushback from constituents at town hall events over DOGE’s moves to drastically reduce the size of the federal workforce. The pushback grew so intense that party leaders have encouraged lawmakers to host virtual events in order to limit the potential for disruptions — or shelve the events altogether.
Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., for example, was confronted by several attendees last week over the “chainsaw approach” the organization was taking to organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which is based in Georgia.
Roughly 1,300 probationary CDC employees were removed from their roles.
“Why is the supposedly conservative party taking such a radical and extremist and sloppy approach to this?” one attendee asked McCormick during the town hall event.
Following the town hall, McCormick called for Musk to be more judicious in carrying out cuts.
“I’m all for trimming the government but I am all for also doing it in a deliberate manner that allows people to adjust in their lifestyle,” McCormick said during a conference meeting on Tuesday. “We have to be careful how we message this so it doesn’t come across as discompassionate.”
That message was shared by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., who on Tuesday said any reductions to the federal workforce “need to be done in a respectful way.”
“We want to do everything we can, and I think this has been long overdue, to try and figure out how we can make government work more efficiently,” Thune said. “But I would also argue that in anything that they do, they need to be respectful of people that are involved in these agencies and departments of government.”
Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Wis., echoed calls for greater transparency into DOGE’s work after facing criticism from constituents, including one who called for Musk to be subpoenaed.
“It would be better, I think, for members to have real specific information because we don’t have it. I don’t have it,” Fitzgerald said on Monday. “I’m learning about this when I see a broadcast as much as anyone else right now because we haven’t been briefed on it.”
