ATLANTA — As Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene enters her third term in Congress, she will also be working alongside the world's richest man and a former presidential candidate tasked to cut government spending and regulations.
The Georgian took to X on Thursday to share she'll be chairing a brand new subcommittee that will work with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy for the Department of Government Efficiency.
"I won't rest until we've rooted out every penny of waste and abuse," Rep. Greene wrote. "The American people deserve a government that works for them, not against them!"
The Associated Press previously reported President-elect Donald Trump's choice to put Musk and Ramaswamy in charge of DOGE. The news organization said this is an outside advisory committee that will work with people inside the government to reduce spending and regulations.
In a separate X post, Greene expanded on her reasons for looking forward to chairing the new subcommittee. She mentioned that she comes from a business background where she runs a construction company. She compared the government to private companies, where she said if one is not doing a good job in their role, they'll be fired.
"But for some reason in government, bad employees -- whether they're failing to do the job they were hired to do or working in roles that are no longer needed -- never get fired," she wrote. "This is incredibly unfair to the hard-working taxpayers of our country, and it's about to change."
Two people told The Associated Press that Greene and Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee, had already met with Ramaswamy. The entrepreneur also took to social media to say he was looking forward to collaborating with Congress on this topic.
"Proper oversight of agencies & public transparency are critical," Ramaswamy wrote.
The news organization also reported Musk and Ramaswamy said they would encourage Trump to make cuts by refusing to spend money allocated by Congress -- a process known as impounding. The proposal goes against a 1974 law intended to prevent future presidents from following in the footsteps of Richard Nixon, who held back funding that he didn't like.
It would be a dramatic attempt to expand his powers when he already has the benefit of a Republican-controlled Congress and a conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court. It could swiftly become one of the most closely watched legal fights of his second administration.
“He might get away with it," said William Galston, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. “Congress’s power of the purse will turn into an advisory opinion.”
Plans for the Department of Government Efficiency are still coming into focus. Still, it has put out a call for "super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting," the AP said. Applicants are encouraged to submit their resumes through X, the social media company that Musk owns.