(The Hill) – Several members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) made their first public appearance as a team to make the case for their cost-cutting efforts amid growing pushback.
The tech billionaire and seven DOGE staffers sat for an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier on Thursday, discussing their push to slash $1 trillion of government spending.
Here’s who’s on the DOGE team:
Steve Davis
Steve Davis, who has worked alongside Musk for years, is serving as the “chief operating officer” of DOGE, Baier said. Davis described DOGE as an “inspiring mission” that was “worth doing.”
He has previously worked at several of Musk’s companies, including SpaceX, the Boring Company and X, the social platform.
Joe Gebbia
Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia is running DOGE’s Digital Retirement Project. He said he has been working to digitize millions of retirement documents housed in a mine in Pennsylvania.
“The retirement process is all by paper, literally, with people carrying paper and manila envelopes into this gigantic mine so they can’t retire more than a certain number every month, about 8,000 a month,” Gebbia said.
He said DOGE discovered this limit amid a push to encourage voluntary retirements among employees as Musk’s team seeks to shrink the federal workforce.
Aram Moghaddassi
Aram Moghaddassi, a software engineer with DOGE, said he is working on Social Security, trying to help protect people from fraud and improve their experience.
Brad Smith
Brad Smith, a health care entrepreneur who served in President Trump’s first administration, is working for DOGE at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
“There’s a couple things we’re really committed to in our work at HHS,” Smith explained. “No. 1, making sure we continue to have the best biomedical research in the world.”
“And No. 2, making sure, which President Trump has said over and over again, that we 100 percent protect Medicare and Medicaid,” he added.
Anthony Armstrong
Anthony Armstrong, a Morgan Stanley banker, is working for DOGE at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). He argued there are numerous “duplicative functions” in the government and suggested money is “sloshing out the door.”
“This is not about the employees,” he said. “There’s many, many, hardworking, well-meaning people who took these jobs. … It’s just that they’re duplicating the effort of 40 offices.”
“Once those decisions are made, there’s a very heavy focus on being generous, being caring, being compassionate, and treating everyone with dignity and respect,” Armstrong added.
OPM has largely been leading the effort to slash the federal workforce, directing agencies to fire probationary employees and prepare for mass layoffs.
Tom Krause
Tom Krause, the CEO of Cloud Software Group, is working for DOGE at the Treasury Department.
“As an ex-CFO of a big public tech company, really what we’re doing is, we’re applying public company standards to the federal government, and it is alarming how the financial operations and financial management is set up today,” he said.
Krause has faced scrutiny for his role in DOGE’s push to gain access to a sensitive federal payment system housed at the Treasury Department known as the Fiscal Service. The system handles some 90 percent of federal payments.
In the face of several lawsuits, Krause and other DOGE staff have been blocked from accessing the system.
Tyler Hassen
Tyler Hassen, a former oil executive, is working at the Interior Department for DOGE. Politico’s E&E News reported earlier this month that he was promoted to acting assistant secretary of policy, management and budget at the agency.
He alleged Thursday there was no departmental oversight at the Interior Department “whatsoever” under the Biden administration.
“We are now reviewing every single contract, every single grant, and when things come to my attention that don’t make sense, I’m bringing them to Secretary [Doug] Burgum,” Hassen said.
