SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah congressman raised eyebrows in the last few days by saying Elon Musk exaggerated the savings he could find with the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Still, the congressman clarified those remarks Tuesday on KSL NewsRadio’s Inside Sources.
Rep. Blake Moore told reporters outside the U.S. Capitol on Friday that “most everyone knows” Musk had exaggerated “what he could do,” as reported by the Deseret News.
Related: Rep. Blake Moore speaks to frustration surrounding DOGE and mass layoffs
But on Tuesday, Moore told Inside Sources hosts Greg Skordas and Holly Richardson he still believed the ideas behind the Department of Government Efficiency could do a lot of good.
Musk recently resigned as the head of DOGE. Moore serves as one of the co-leaders of the House’s DOGE Caucus, a bipartisan group meant to support the work of the department.
“There’s so many things within the DOGE world that should actually garner a lot of bipartisan support,” Moore said. “They tackled things like software programs, where there’s a lot of duplicative work done in government software systems. … The Treasury Department has payment systems that go out. And sometimes there’s not even descriptions required under these payment systems, and so fixing those types of processes can actually do a lot of good to save a lot of money.”
Moore said he thought that encapsulated the Department of Government Efficiency’s original mission.
“We were excited about some of those things that they were uncovering,” he said.
Moore: Political rhetoric interfered with DOGE goal
But he said political rhetoric kept DOGE from that original goal.
“In order for these changes to get enacted, they have to pass legislation that meets the 60 vote threshold in the Senate — about sustaining change going forward. There’s some things we can pull back [on] that only require a simple majority, and we’ll be doing some of that in the next little while” Moore said.
The DOGE Caucus will keep looking for ways to find cost savings along with common ground, Moore said.
“And if we can uncover more of it and work together better, that would be great,” he said.
You can listen to the full conversation with the congressman on the Inside Sources podcast.