Elizabeth Warren Takes Aim at Elon Musk's DOGE: 'A Venue for Corruption'

Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren is going hard after Elon Musk and his cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE—yes, like the meme coin—claiming that the new body “appears to be a venue for corruption.”

In a letter to the world’s richest man and a key President Trump ally, Senator Warren suggested a long list of reforms which she says could save $2 trillion over a decade without cutting essential programs or raising middle-class taxes.

Tesla and SpaceX boss Musk now runs DOGE thanks to President Trump, who gave him the position last year. The department will work to cut bureaucracy and spending according to Musk. He was set to co-run the agency with Vivek Ramaswamy, but Musk’s fellow billionaire and Bitcoin advocate has already departed to run for Ohio governor.

DOGE has already been criticized by some politicians—and was hit with a lawsuit the day Trump was inaugurated. 

Senator Warren hit Musk and the department with a scathing letter on Thursday, saying she had “very serious concerns about both the DOGE process and the policies that you have publicly discussed to date.”

“As a result, the committee appears to be a venue for corruption, allowing well-connected billionaires to put government policies in place that enrich them while hurting ordinary Americans,” she wrote. 

Warren claimed that DOGE could save the United States government and taxpayers a huge amount of money by exploring other means of cutting wasteful spending. In fact, she shared 30 ideas, all detailed in the extensive letter.

The Senator said that improving contract defense negotiations, cracking down on pharmacy benefit managers, clawing back tax expenditures, and closing loopholes for the wealthy could all save cash. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Musk’s DOGE hasn’t revealed a great deal about how it will save money aside from trimming budgets and cutting staff, but this week suggested via X (formerly Twitter) that the government could stop producing the penny, citing JM Bullion figures that it cost taxpayers over $179 million in production costs in 2023 alone.

Arguably the digital asset industry’s most hostile American politician, Senator Warren has long criticized the space, going after tax-dodging crypto users—along with the billionaire elite. 

DOGE appears to be named after Dogecoin, which trades with the ticker DOGE, as it’s Elon Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency. Trump even began selling t-shirts featuring himself, Musk, and a Shiba Inu dog after the agency was officially announced in November.

Musk has repeatedly claimed that the original meme coin could be used for payments, and the cryptocurrency has experienced a surge in value in recent months as Musk took to the campaign trail to support Trump ahead of his agency appointment.

Edited by Andrew Hayward