Elon Musk has promised to take a blowtorch to federal programs in the name of government efficiency, but his fledgling policy chops threaten to undermine his ambitions, lawmakers and other observers say.
President Donald Trump had originally tasked the 53-year-old billionaire and others with slashing spending, regulations and the federal workforce as the leader of the newfound Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
That mission changed somewhat last week with Trump’s formal announcement that DOGE will focus on technology efficiency. But Musk is still poised to be in position to sway the administration and congressional Republicans on a wide swath of government initiatives, and he’ll be doing that all while getting a crash course on how the government works — and the limits of his own agenda.
While many Republicans are enthusiastic that Musk will deliver on his promises, some in leadership positions are pumping the brakes on expectations as they try to bring the brash billionaire up to speed.
“I think what [Musk is] learning is that the rules around here, how you cut the government — there’s political realities,” said Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a Trump ally.
For congressional Democrats, environmentalists and others looking to safeguard programs like renewable energy incentives, Musk’s political naïveté could be a lifeline.
“There are grand promises, and then there is reality,” said Sam Ricketts, a clean energy consultant who served as the first executive director for the Democratic-led congressional Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC).
Lawmakers are scrambling to shape Musk’s reality. One senior appropriator and energy wonk handed Musk a business card with the word “NUCLEAR” on it. House Agriculture Chair Glenn “G.T.” Thompson (R-Pa.) said he was eager to chat with Musk.
“I would welcome Mr. Musk to come and sit down so we can have a really good conversation about agriculture, because I want him to understand American agriculture,” Thompson said. “Maybe he can help me understand the space program.”

Musk is the richest person in the world, having founded companies like Tesla and SpaceX. But he is still honing his understanding of legislation and the political forces behind some programs. That dynamic is apparent in some of his posts on his social media platform, X.
He has amplified false information about important bills like last year’s spending continuing resolution and exposed his own misunderstanding of the way certain programs work. In November, then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg chimed in to clarify how the federal EV charger program works.
DOGE-friendly Republicans in Congress are laying the groundwork for the group’s work, introducing bills to undo regulations and reduce spending based on DOGE’s stated goals. Musk’s agency is supposed to deliver recommendations to Congress before dissolving in July 2026.
“The main thing is I want a work product that we can use,” said Graham about the coming recommendations.
Beyond Musk’s ongoing Washington education, some lawmakers — Republicans included — are uncomfortable with the complex web of government contracts that Musk’s companies have with the federal government and the ways in which Musk could potentially enrich or further entrench himself into government programs. SpaceX alone has gotten more than $15 billion in federal contracts.
“Say you’re the chairman of a committee. … Would you be concerned that Donald Trump at some point would say, ‘Hey, I’ve got this great idea: Elon’s gonna give me $10 and I’m gonna lease NASA to him for the next 50 years’?” said one longtime Republican lawmaker who was granted anonymity to speak freely about Musk’s influence. “You know that kind of shit is possible.”
“You have to wonder about the separation between the best interest of the country and the best interest of Elon,” the lawmaker added.
Neither Musk nor spokespeople for the Trump White House responded to requests for comment.
Despite bold pronouncements from Musk about slashing federal spending and wiping out regulations, his operation has no power to make any new policy or directly reduce costs.
‘Money’s there for a reason’
How DOGE will operate remains murky.
On Jan. 20, Trump established the U.S. DOGE Service as a part of the Executive Office of the President, taking over an already existing entity. But its mission is a seemingly narrow one of “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”
That’s a change from its original mandate, which was to provide “advice and guidance from outside of government.” Such a move could exempt the entity from certain rules and disclosure requirements, ethics experts say. Already, watchdog groups have filed federal lawsuits against DOGE.
One of the original leaders of DOGE, pharmaceutical entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, chose to leave last week to run for governor of Ohio amid reported tension with Musk. On Thursday, the agency’s legal counsel said he was stepping down from his post to return to the private sector, The Wall Street Journal reported.
It is also not clear what official role Musk will take with the agency. He was not named by Trump in the creation of DOGE, though he reportedly has an office in the White House complex and a government email address.
Despite those questions, Republicans, especially those in the new DOGE caucuses, are already talking about the role they will have to play in teaching Musk and his team how the government functions and which programs might be off limits.
Following a series of meetings with lawmakers in December, Musk earlier this month appeared to backtrack from his earlier eye-popping claim that he would be able to slice $2 trillion from annual spending.
“You have a structural problem, which is a failure to grasp that the money’s there for a reason; every dollar is a feature, not a bug, of the system,” said Mike McKenna, an energy lobbyist and former Trump administration energy adviser. “I think that’s something they haven’t figured out yet.”

That could spell trouble for a potential push by DOGE to work with the administration to repeal clean energy spending from the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate law that Democrats passed in 2022.
Musk has said he wants to “get rid of all credits” in the IRA, which would include gutting manufacturing incentives for batteries, solar panels and other technologies. Electric vehicle credits are among the most imperiled.
Much of the IRA’s funding for clean energy manufacturing, however, is flowing to Republican-led states, and GOP leaders dealing with razor-thin majorities will face blowback from within their own ranks if they try to eliminate it through the budget reconciliation process, making Musk’s proposition politically and logistically perilous.
Advocates say repealing those subsidies could hurt American manufacturing under Trump’s watch — after Trump promised a resurgence.
“That part I don’t think is well known by DOGE,” said Ricketts, the former SEEC director. “I don’t think it’s well understood inside the administration yet, but I think it’s going to become a rude awakening as these policies get kicked around in Congress.”
Musk built much of his fortune by taking advantage of state and federal incentives for clean energy and emissions reductions, such as carbon credits and EV tax incentives. A number of climate-minded lawmakers said Musk’s desire to now end many of those programs is a warning sign that they cannot trust him.
“He’s in a honeymoon phase” with many lawmakers, McKenna said. “But folks in the energy and environment space … will maintain their skepticism longer than anybody else, and they will be probably the first ones off the boat.”
Musk says Tesla would be fine without EV subsidies. Indeed, a repeal may hurt competitors.
GOP happy to help

Musk’s habit of weighing in on matters about which he is misinformed is rankling lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who fear that good legislation, such as spending bills and the farm bill, could implode at the whim of the powerful tech mogul who is still figuring out Congress but owns a loud microphone.
Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig, the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, was furious last month when Musk began swaying House leaders’ thinking on the stopgap spending bill, which contained tens of billions of dollars for struggling farmers. That funding ultimately stayed in the package.
“I mean, clearly this isn’t a guy who has to worry about borrowing the money to put crops in the ground for the next growing season, and he’s coming in and … trying to influence this,” she said, exasperated.
As Democrats take their shots at Musk, Republicans say they plan to help him better understand Congress and how he can best work with committees and individual members.
Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah), co-chair of the House DOGE Caucus, said Musk has acknowledged to lawmakers that he is not an expert while indicating that he is ready to collaborate with members to achieve results. Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) has similarly said that Musk has been “deferential” to members and Congress’ lawmaking authority.
“What I gathered from our first meeting was actually a humility” from Musk, Moore said, adding that Musk will “have to make the executive-level decisions on some of this stuff, but we want to provide really good input and data.”
Others have pointed to Musk’s status as a relative outsider in Washington as one of the key strengths of the DOGE initiative, allowing him to approach issues with a different perspective.
Asked whether it would be useful for members to help educate Musk on policymaking, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), chair of a new House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee that will oversee DOGE, quipped that she thought that was irrelevant because “many members of Congress don’t really know how the policymaking works here.”
Still, some members say they would jump at the opportunity to sit down with Musk to teach him about their personal policy interests.
Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), chair of the House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, said he recently gave Musk his business card and wrote “NUCLEAR” on the back, offering to fill him in on Congress’ efforts to boost the popular energy source. He said earlier this month that Musk has not called him back.
Thompson said, “This is a place where you don’t know what you don’t know and it’s not your fault, it’s just [that] this is a complex place.”
Reporter Garrett Downs contributed.