Musk, Ramaswamy focus on slashing telework and federal employee attrition in initial meetings with Republicans

The leaders of President-elect Trump’s new advisory panel aiming to slash government spending, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, met with Republican lawmakers at the Capitol on Thursday in what leaders pitched as an informational session to share ideas. 

Congressional Republicans and a handful of Democrats have embraced Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, which will function as a non-governmental commission, and on Thursday were eager to share their ideas for identifying areas for cuts. Some Republicans cautioned, however, that the advisory panel must work through the appropriate channels and win congressional support for their initiatives. 

Nearly every House and Senate member that emerged from the various meetings called them productive and suggested a unifying idea supported by both lawmakers and Trump’s designated efficiency czars: recalling teleworking employees back to the office.  

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Musk, Ramaswamy and lawmakers would not publicly share many details from their meetings, which he said was “by design” to allow a “brainstorming session” to unfold. Musk and Ramaswamy held many private meetings throughout the day, including with leadership and key appropriators, before holding larger discussions with “key decision makers” in both chambers and, later, a conference to which all Republican lawmakers were invited. 

“Government is too big. It does too many things, and it does almost nothing well,” Johnson said, adding Musk and Ramaswamy would help usher in change. “We believe it's an historic moment for the country, and these two gentlemen are going to help navigate through this exciting new day.”

Johnson said they were the right people for the job because “they’re innovators and they’re forward thinkers.” 

Return to office

One area of detail with overlapping interest from both the government efficiency commission and congressional Republicans was significantly limiting telework for federal employees. Johnson suggested that setting aside employees who guard federal buildings, 99% of federal workers participate in telework. That conflicts with official data: a recent review by the Office of Management and Budget found about 80% of the federal work hours are currently spent in-person and more than half of federal employees do not telework at all because their jobs are not conducive to it. Of those who do telework, employees on average spent about 60% of their time on site.

“One of the first things that I think you'll see is a demand from the new administration, from all of us here in Congress, that federal workers return to their desks and get back to the work that they're supposed to be doing,” Johnson said. “I think that is common sense.”

Ramaswamy previously predicted that requiring more federal workers to go into their offices more frequently would cause many of them to quit, which the entrepreneur and former presidential candidate said is a noble goal. 

“If you require most of those federal bureaucrats to just say, like normal working Americans, you come to work five days a week, a lot of them won't want to do that,” Ramaswamy said. “If you have many voluntary reductions in force of the workforce in the federal government along the way, great. That's a good side effect of those policies as well.”

Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., who will co-chair the House DOGE Caucus, said a common theme from the meeting was “getting people back to work at their office.” He quoted Musk as suggesting the United States is “no longer a democracy, it’s a bureaucracy” and his commission would work to ensure Congress, not “unelected bureaucrats,” are dictating federal spending and regulation. 

House Majority Leader Steve Scaliese, R-La., said federal buildings in Washington are “almost completely empty” and that the many thousands of federal workers who earn at least $100,000 should report to their offices. 

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., who chairs the House Oversight and Accountability and has long voiced his disdain for federal telework policy, said Musk and Ramaswamy were particularly interested in the issue during their meeting with Republicans and he expects it to “be a big part of their platform.” Comer suggested that some federal employees should be allowed to work remotely, but telework levels should return to pre-pandemic levels. 

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who is chairing the Senate DOGE Caucus, released a report on Thursday that teleworking feds were "fleec[ing] taxpayers out of billions of dollars." She said 90% of federal employees teleworked, though she appeared to be citing an Office of Personnel Management report that found just 45% of the federal workforce is eligible for telework and 90% of those employees did so. She proposed relocating federal workers out of Washington, disposing of unused federal real estate and tracking individual employee productivity before allowing them to work remotely. 

The Trump administration could run into some hurdles as it attempts to implement a return-to-office policy, as telework is allowed for in federal statute and, in many cases, provided for as part of existing collective bargaining agreements. 

Layoffs coming? 

Ramaswamy has also called for widespread layoffs of federal employees, though that could also face implementation difficulties due to provisions of federal appropriations and other statutes. In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Musk and Ramaswamy also suggested the Trump administration would lean on separation incentives to get federal workers to retire early or accept buyouts.  

Lawmakers who met with the pair gave mixed reports on how much federal workforce cuts came up, though they agreed that widespread layoffs were not yet part of the conversation. Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., did suggest right-sizing federal agencies was part of the conversation. 

“What I hear is things like attrition, looking at what agencies have the right amount of people, what agencies don't,” Lankford said. 

He added a governmentwide hiring freeze, as Trump implemented when he took office in 2017, would not make sense.  

“You can't just do it across-the-board everywhere,” Lankford said. “You've got issues on federal law enforcement and all the different aspects there that you can't just do a hatchet shot.” 

His colleague, however, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said on X after the meeting she would introduce a bill called The DOGE Act to freeze federal hiring, relocate agencies outside of Washington and shift federal workers toward a merit-based pay system. Musk quickly responded to the post with, "Thank you!!." 

Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, the other DOGE Caucus co-chair, stressed that federal employee layoffs did not come up. 

“It is not going to just cut or lose people,” Sessions said. “It's going to make things work better.” 

Scalise suggested that reducing the size of the federal workforce would “clearly be a big part” of what Musk and Ramaswamy try to do, though he said the focus was on reducing telework. 

Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., said there was some discussion of making sure federal employees can fulfill their missions. 

“People have talked about the need to make sure that we've got a federal workforce that has the tools they need to succeed and also isn’t necessarily married to any kind of an antiquated bureaucratic size or set of practices,” Johnson said. 

Working with, not around, Congress

Nearly all of the lawmakers who met with Musk and Ramaswamy said the businessmen repeatedly stressed they want to empower Congress to make changes. 

Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee and chairs its panel on the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies, said Musk and Ramaswamy wanted to work with congressional appropriators and other lawmakers. They have some ideas for executive action, he said, but there were many areas that would require congressional action. 

Sessions and Bean, the DOGE Caucus leaders, said Musk saw his commission’s role in part as keeping those ideas on the frontburner to build a groundswell of support for them. They noted the potential elimination of the Education Department was one idea that came up. 

South Dakota's Johnson said the efficiency panel leaders recognized that they needed their reforms to get passed into law if they wanted them to stick on a permanent basis. He and several other lawmakers said both sides were presenting ideas back and forth, and the proposals from Republicans were varied. Over the next several months, he said, the commission would start sorting through what ideas are good and which are possible. 

“I think there is an acute understanding, not only with Elon and Vivek [but] every member in that room, that some of these ideas are going to threaten the kind of traditional, conventional, entrenched power centers,” he said. “That doesn't mean the ideas are backwards.”

Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, implored Musk and Ramaswamy to work with her panel to cement their proposals. 

“In order for things to be sustainable, you've got to have the different pieces, different people, different perspectives, different committees at the table to ensure that sustainability, because what we don't want to do is put a band aid on something,” Britt said. 

Trump has vowed to sidestep any efforts to block his agenda, in part by fighting in court or Congress to revoke the 1974 Impoundment Control Act. That law prohibits the executive branch from withholding Congressionally appropriated funds for policy reasons. Lawmakers noted that Musk and Ramaswamy voiced their support for impoundments, though not all Republicans were on board with the proposal.