Dems say they want to work with DOGE, but Musk and company are making it hard

Democrats have expressed interest in helping Musk and DOGE to reduce waste and fraud. However, Musk is coming off too hard, especially after going after the federal workers. Now, they are torn between showing people that they support what is right and offending federal workers whose votes they need after 4 years.

Democrats lost both the White House and Houses of Congress in November. As expected, every opposition wants to show the mistakes that the government of the day is making. However, their movement of protest against Trump himself isn’t very loud. The best person to target is Musk.

Are Democrats for or against Musk?

They started by praising him. Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from Silicon Valley, compared Musk to the men hired by Franklin D. Roosevelt to assist the country in preparing for war. Next, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) likened him to a Marvel superhero. 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has also said Musk could “count her in” on the DOGE’s plans to cut waste at the Pentagon.

Now, they are not very sure whether they can assist Musk. They have painted him as an unelected dictator who is carelessly upsetting long-standing government agencies. They have even taken him to court for the same. 

Now, it looks like they are choosing certain agendas – anything that can paint them as against the American citizens, they don’t want to get involved with. On the other hand, anything that can paint them as people who support progress, they are all in.

Jason Bresler, a Democratic strategist, said, “Once you start touching things like entitlement programs, it’d be political suicide for a Democrat to touch that.”

What agendas are Democrats not willing to assist Musk on?

Sen. Elizabeth Warren said, “If Musk wants to cut spending, I’ve sent him a list of 30 items where he could start, and I’m still open to working with him on those […] But I am not open to helping him violate the law to shut down government functions that have been authorized by Congress and signed by the president.”

Sen. John Fetterman also said he still supports Musk’s original vision, but he expressed alarm at the way Musk dives into sensitive personal data. Fetterman posted on X about Musk’s DOGE gaining access to private taxpayer data. He wrote, “I want to save billions of your money and make our government more efficient. Rummaging through your personal shit is *not* that.”

Fetterman urged Musk to “slow down, just a little … because you are going to hit nerves that we don’t want to cut.”

Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat from a Trump-won district in rural Maine, said that his office is getting a lot of calls from people who are worried about Musk. In an interview, he said that he is worried Musk might threaten to stop money from social safety net programs.

Rep. Ro Khanna wrote on X that the businessman is attacking American institutions in a way that is “unconstitutional.” This comment prompted Musk to reply: “Don’t be a dick.”

Clearly, Musk is not interested in the democrats’ help.

A lot of other Democrats have said that cutting Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security would be like touching a third rail. They also say that DOGE could affect payments from these programs by accident if they move too quickly.

Lawsuits against Musk’s DOGE

Now, DOGE is looking at 11 cases that claim it gained illegal access to large amounts of Americans’ personal information. All of them say that DOGE has broken the Privacy Act of 1974. This law was made after the Watergate scandal and President Richard Nixon’s resignation. This law puts a lot of limits on what information about Americans government agencies can store and who can see it.

The complaints and privacy claims have quickly turned into real problems for DOGE and its ability to function fully. They are also attempts by critics to slow down DOGE’s actions, if only for a short time. 

In addition to those legal claims, DOGE has also tried to get or already has access to sensitive personal information about people from at least three other departments. Two people who know about the situation say that Michelle King, the head of the Social Security Administration, quit this weekend after turning down a DOGE request for access to personally identifiable information (PII). This includes Americans’ names and financial records.

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