Consequences of Doge

Floor Speech

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Mr. MIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak about Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and the deadly and devastating consequences of their illegal actions, which will reverberate long after they are gone. The theme of today's Special Order hour is that the Musk is gone, but the stench remains.

Elon Musk supposedly has left the Federal Government. I just want to remind people that when President Trump issued his executive order creating the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and appointed Elon Musk in the role related to DOGE, DOGE was created as a temporary organization.

Elon Musk was appointed as a special government employee, and this was to avoid having any kind of Senate confirmation or congressional creation of the agency or any confirmation of Elon Musk.

Mr. Speaker, I will remind you that the entire time that Elon Musk was in office or as a Federal employee, he was, in fact, exercising powers that were far greater than any special government employee would be allowed to have. He was exercising powers that would be at the highest levels of government, higher than an agency or department head, in effect, exerting powers that the President himself does not hold.

He violated the law every single day he was a special government employee. DOGE employees continue to remain today. Even though Elon Musk is gone, there are something like a hundred or more DOGE special governmental employees and other employees scattered around the Federal Government that are in a position to continue the wreckage that Elon Musk created.

I know that Elon Musk and Donald Trump have created a lot of news with their catfighting earlier today, but I will just remind folks, again, that the damage Elon Musk did is going to take a long time to repair. What he did, essentially, was try to upend the Constitution.

Elon Musk, as a special government employee, purported to be able to undo acts of Congress, to illegally impound funds that Congress had appropriated, to undo laws we have created, and to undo agencies we have created. There is a long list of stuff that he did, that DOGE did, including illegally deleting or ending the Department of Education, ditto with USAID, the U.S. Institute for Peace, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Importantly, most of these were institutions created through acts of Congress, funded with appropriations authorized by Congress. Even my children know that the Constitution is clear on this point: Congress and only Congress has the power to enact laws. Congress and only Congress has the power to appropriate funds.

It is very clear in our Article I authorities. The President does not have the authority to try to undo our laws or to impound funds that we have appropriated. Certainly a special government employee like Elon Musk does not have that authority.

This is about a core tenet of the Constitution of the United States that every single one of us in Congress swears to support and defend when we take office. Yet, too many on the other side of the aisle during this entire time pretended like this wasn't happening, pretended like Elon Musk was not violating the law every single day.

Now he is apparently gone from the Federal Government, but the vast amount of wreckage that he did during his time with DOGE is something that we are going to have to analyze and understand because there has been a complete lack of oversight from Congress, including from the Oversight Committee that I sit on, over these past few months.

There had been reports that Elon Musk and DOGE were given complete God-level access to the Federal Government's top systems: including private and sensitive data for all Americans, classified information, budget information, and payment systems, et cetera.

From a conflict of interest standpoint, Elon Musk has vacuumed up many billions of dollars in Federal contracts for his companies and enriched himself. Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink have all profited under Musk's time as a Federal employee. At the same time, he went out of his way to kill several enforcement actions that were underway by different Federal agencies against his businesses, allowing his companies and himself to evade oversight. He was able to help place key personnel in agencies that now are looking to benefit his companies financially.

Mr. Speaker, going back to the data privacy point, Elon Musk and DOGE have allegedly used Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, within Federal agencies. This model has likely been trained on nonpublic data by incompetent DOGE workers. DOGE has also sought access to sensitive government data for millions and millions of Americans, while likely violating the Privacy Act of 1974 repeatedly.

This is not just a matter of our information being out there, potentially being used by Musk's AI systems in violation of all laws; it is also a major national security concern. Bad actors will now have a much easier time siphoning off U.S. data due to the cybersecurity vulnerabilities that Elon Musk has created.

Earlier this morning, the Oversight Committee held a hearing on how artificial intelligence has been integrated into the Federal Government by Elon Musk and DOGE. Entrusting DOGE with our personal data is not only a terrifying thought but one that will have terrible consequences for Americans throughout the country. Trying to automate the Federal Government through AI without a true plan or any data privacy safeguards, while firing haphazardly many of the technology support workers who understood those systems, is going to have a massive negative impact on Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I see that I have here with me a fellow Member, and I will concede in just a few moments.

I will continue by saying that many of my constituents right now are complaining about some of the effects we are already seeing from the haphazard and illegal cuts to personnel made by Elon Musk and DOGE, including many who are complaining now that they are having difficulty accessing their Social Security benefits because of the mass cuts in SSA.

These are real people that are not getting their benefits. They can't get anyone on the phone when they try to call Social Security. The reality is that Elon Musk, again, illegally fired a bunch of workers, even though he had no such authority to do so.

I will emphasize that this body, Congress, has refused to engage in any oversight to date over Elon Musk, and the only reason that we may be able to do so right now is because Elon Musk, apparently, is in a tit for tat with Donald Trump.

I suspect some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will finally wake up to some of the wrongdoing, some of the illegal actions that Elon Musk has been engaged in since January 20.

I will also point out that this has never been about waste, fraud, and abuse. It has certainly never been about efficiency. You don't eliminate entire agencies and departments as Elon Musk has done, you don't get rid of 50 percent of the personnel at Social Security, or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration if you are simply trying to improve efficiency and get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse.

This was always about finding enough cuts to try to partially pay for the massive $7 trillion tax cuts for billionaires that House Republicans, Donald Trump, and Senate Republicans want to pass right now. That is what this is about.

There is a slash-and-burn attitude to firing many thousands of Federal employees. They have attempted to fire hundreds of thousands of Federal employees, including those at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Labor, and other critical agencies.

We have seen this firing be so haphazard that they have had to hire some of them back, including the decision to fire all the National Nuclear Security Administration personnel responsible for overseeing our U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile and then having to rehire them once they had realized who they had actually fired. He fired key scientists and pandemic experts, as well, and he repeatedly miscalculated and misrepresented the savings that DOGE cuts had made to our budget.

They have also made the Federal Government much more bureaucratic and less efficient. I have a lot of burgeoning life sciences industry in my district, lots of companies doing medical devices and innovative drugs. They have all reported to me that they are deeply concerned about the massive cuts at the Food and Drug Administration because those cuts mean that they can't get anyone on the phone. They can't find people to try to prove their drugs and devices, and this has created additional red tape and hurdles that made it very difficult.

There is a lot of uncertainty right now. These are companies that, again, are creating thousands and thousands of jobs, providing billions of dollars in collective impact to the southern California area. We are seeing this story writ large across the board right now.

Mr. Speaker, I will talk some more about the enormity of DOGE's illegal cuts, as well as how they have fared in the legal system.

Since DOGE was stood up by President Trump and Elon Musk, it has cut: About $6.5 billion for the U.S. Agency for International Development; $502 million from the Department of Education; $232 million from the Social Security Administration; $192 million from the General Services Administration; $173 million from the Department of Agriculture; $152 million from the Department of Health and Human Services; $133 million from the Department of Transportation; and $119 million from the Department of Commerce.

We didn't have any transparency into what these cuts were justified on, what they were meant to do. These were in addition to the attempts to shutter USAID, the Department of Education, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the U.S. Institute for Peace, and many other critical agencies, departments, and programs.

Mr. Speaker, I will note that the courts have continued to find that these cuts were, by and large, illegal, that Elon Musk did not have any authority to undo acts of Congress, and that Congress and only Congress can shut down agencies that we have created. Congress and only Congress can defund agencies from funds that we have previously appropriated.

Stansbury), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee's Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency.

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Mr. MIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Congresswoman for her comments. It has indeed been a messy day. I think that prices are getting too high at this moment in time. Elon Musk is, I believe, really inflating the price of popcorn right now. This is something that is going to affect my household.

Mr. Speaker, I want to continue back to Elon Musk. Whatever side is taken in this debate, we cannot forget that Elon Musk, again, repeatedly violated the law. He made illegal spending cuts. He tried to eliminate agencies created by Congress. This was not jaywalking. We are talking about serious crimes against the Constitution of the United States.

His actions were characterized not only by their illegality but also by their immorality and incompetence, the three I's.

We saw the immorality as he continued to cut programs that were meant to help our poorest and most vulnerable.

Social Security is a lifeline program for all the seniors around the country, including the ones in the district I represent. He called it a Ponzi scheme.

He cut so much of the workforce. Again, I have many constituents now complaining they can't get access to their benefits. They can't get anyone on the phone when there is a mistake. It seems deliberate in its scope. They have been incompetent.

I have mentioned many of the things they have done as far as firing the nuclear inspectors and miscalculating DOGE's savings.

They granted a DOGE staffer access to edit sensitive Treasury systems, prompting an internal forensic investigation.

They gutted the CFPB, only to unsuspend staffers and uncancel contracts after it became apparent that CFPB could no longer perform its legally mandated functions.

They inadvertently canceled funding for Ebola prevention. They uncanceled lease terminations after agency and congressional pushback. This could go on and on.

The point is that this, again, was never about efficiency. It was never about finding waste, fraud, and abuse. That was always the big lie. What Elon Musk was trying to do was reshape government illegally against the express will of Congress.

Unfortunately, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle failed to stand up to this abuse of law and this direct attack on our Constitution and our authorities.

The courts, thankfully, have stepped up. Right now, the Trump administration and DOGE are embroiled in over 252 lawsuits. They have lost almost all of these at various stages at the district court and appellate level, including several in the Supreme Court. They are continuing to appeal.

Even as this has happened, many of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, rather than stand up for Congress' authority under the Constitution, have tried to go after judges. They have threatened judges. They have tried to take away some of their authority.

We saw that most recently in the big, beautiful bill, which I think Republicans are now realizing was actually a Frankenstein-level monstrosity of extreme provisions that many of them did not realize were in there.

One such provision was the one in that bill that would effectively neuter the judiciary's power to hold any administration official in contempt. This provision is a little wonky. In essence, it prohibits Federal courts from enforcing contempt citations which a judge can issue for noncompliance of a court order.

Now, what this would do is effectively shield the Trump administration from wrongdoing and that no judge could enforce any penalties against the Trump administration for failing to respond to court orders, for failing to obey the Constitution or the law.

What is concerning about this that is we have found an increasing number of Republicans who are publicly admitting now that they didn't realize that this provision was in the big, beautiful bill that they passed. Of course, we all remember a couple weeks back this bill was pushed through in the dark of night, after 1 a.m. It was clear that it was rushed through so quickly that most of our colleagues did not have time to read it, did not understand what was in it, and did not have time to have their staffs review what was in it.

This was an unconscionable process that is leading to outrageous results.

We are also seeing other examples of provisions that my Republican colleagues were not aware was in the bill. Just earlier this week, Marjorie Taylor Greene, whom I serve with on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, noted that she did not realize that there was a 10-year moratorium on artificial intelligence regulations created as part of this big, beautiful bill and said explicitly that she would oppose it.

She had a chance to oppose it when the bill was on the floor but didn't read it. I would suggest to my Republican colleagues that maybe reading the bills that we are passing is a good idea before they decide to vote on them, particularly when they are rushing it through on a partisan line vote.

I come from a legal background. I started my career turning down Wall Street to go work at the SEC to crack down on corporate fraud, and to uphold the rule of law. I have continued fighting for the rule of law my whole career, including as a law professor at UC-Irvine.

What we are seeing right now is deeply offensive to the rule of law. What we saw this last election cycle is Elon Musk spending $290 million on behalf of Donald Trump and other Republican candidates. Mr. Speaker, $290 million is a lot of money. That has paid off very well, a very good return on investment for Elon Musk because his wealth has gone up $100 billion with a b since he took office.

Despite all the disasters we have seen, and despite the massively declining sales of Tesla, his net wealth has gone way the hell up. That is because he uniquely, even as other spending gets cut--willy-nilly because a 21-year-old coder named Big Balls decides to delete a line of code--Elon Musk is getting massive new government contracts including an $8.5-billion contract for Tesla from the GSA for electric vehicles; a $2.4 billion contract for SpaceLink--which was originally meant for Verizon but which was canceled and mysteriously then transferred over to SpaceX which happens to be conveniently owned by Elon Musk--and on and on and on.

Now this looks like a quid pro quo. This looks like something that should not be allowed to exist, particularly when you have a man, Mr. Speaker, who is repeatedly, flagrantly, and knowingly violating the law every single day and upending the Constitution. The damage to this country that we are going to see over the next several decades, that we are seeing already happen right now, is going to be devastating.

Just earlier last week, I had a townhall at UC-Irvine which I represent. As many people around the country are beginning to realize, a lot of what is happening right now is threatening our economic present but also our economic future.

There are massive cuts being made to science and research funding for universities which have long been the basis for our innovation economy. Whether in California, Boston, Atlanta, or around the country, we know that high-end research creates jobs. It leads to innovation that leads to new companies. It is what has made America great over time. Yet, right now, those cuts are massive. Right now we have seen NSA, NIH, and other agencies in the Trump administration illegally refuse to spend and allocate research funding that Congress has appropriated.

That, in turn, has led already to firing of many grad students of programs' innovations.

Also, concerningly, we are starting to see the compounding effects of the attacks on legal immigrants here, people here on student visas.

Mr. Speaker, you may recall that just a few weeks back, the Trump administration announced that they would be rounding up a whole posse of students who had minor run-ins with the law. In the University of California system alone, there were something like 165 students here on valid student visas who have been arrested with no due process and put into deportation proceedings. In one case it is because they ran a stop sign. In another case it was because they were in a domestic dispute. Their partner called the police. When the police arrived, they actually found that the immigrant, the person here on a student visa, was not the abuser but actually probably had been abused. They decided not to proceed with this. However, because there is a police report, even one that falsely accused this immigrant, that immigrant was put into deportation proceedings.

The Trump administration did reverse that policy after public outcry. We are seeing that the best and brightest foreign students who have traditionally come to this country, to places like Harvard, MIT, UC-San Francisco and Stanford, are not coming here. They are going to other countries right now.

That cumulative effect is draining our future right now. We are talking about entire industries predicated on technology, on research, and on life sciences that we expect to see massive declines in in 10, 15, or 20 years.

We are robbing our future right now, and for what?

I don't know, to give Elon Musk a little bit more?

The damage is going to be incalculable across the board. However, I think the biggest damage that we are going to see is to our public trust in our institutions.

Right now we are seeing corruption on a scale we have never seen before in the history of this country. A $400 million Qatari gift of a palace in the sky to Donald Trump was just the thing that made the news. Meanwhile, he is having dinners with massive donors who are giving billions and billions of dollars to his meme coin. We are seeing bribes happen across the board. We are seeing emoluments over and over and over to the President and his family. Mr. Speaker, yes, we are seeing Elon Musk getting a ransom from the Federal Government as far as new contracts that have personally benefited him to no end.

We have to start enforcing the rule of law in this country. As someone who has always believed in the rule of law and who has stood closely side by side with our law enforcement officers, with our prosecutors, and with those who are trying to uphold the rule of law in this country and the Constitution, I would urge my colleagues on the other side of the room to start thinking about that oath that we took when we took this office to support and defend the Constitution.

Those are not just words. They are the foundation of what it means to serve in Congress, of what it means to serve in the Federal Government, and of what it means to be a patriotic American.

Mr. Speaker, if you are not enforcing the Constitution of the United States and if you are not enforcing the rule of law and standing up for the authorities of Congress, which is a coequal branch of government and not a lackey of the President, then what do we stand for?

What are we doing here?

I know that many of my colleagues on the other side are scared of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, frankly, too, but that should be no excuse for not standing up and doing what is right.

We have to stand up and have an accounting of all the damage that Elon Musk did during his time at DOGE. Again, he is a special government employee who never disclosed his conflicts of interest and who illegally exerted his authority that an SGE should never have and that the President of the United States does not have.

We need a real accounting of what happened, the damage that has been done, as well as all of the laws and Constitutional provisions that he and every other member of DOGE has done. This is the time to do it. I would urge my colleagues to actually start stepping up for the Constitution.

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