Top Democrat on DOGE subcommittee expects a fight over Medicaid

The Department of Government Efficiency congressional subcommittee will meet for the first time next week, and ranking member Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., is expecting attempts to cut Medicaid and other entitlement programs.

The House Oversight subcommittee is meant to work with the Elon Musk-led DOGE project to cut down government spending. The DOGE subcommittee will be focused on improper payments, Stansbury said. The agenda is set by Committee Chair Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.

“We’ll see how serious they take it. I think that as Democrats, we’re worried that they’re using this hearing to tee up their arguments to further gut Medicaid and other entitlement programs,” Stansbury said.

Stansbury and the billionaire tech mogul are already off to an adversarial start. Stansbury and Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., introduced a bill Friday that would attempt to make Musk financially liable for pending lawsuits related to the DOGE-led effort to downsize federal agencies and offer federal workers a buyout deal with shifting terms and questionable legality. Stansbury expects the Education Department to be next on the chopping block for Musk, she said.

On the other side of the aisle, Greene introduced a bill Friday with Texas Rep. Chip Roy to abolish the U.S. Agency for International Development, the agency for international development that Musk has been working to shrink this week.

“As chairwoman of the DOGE subcommittee, I’ve launched the war on waste — and USAID is a major culprit,” Greene said in a statement.

As part of the DOGE cost-cutting efforts, Musk made headlines this week for gaining access to federal servers that store sensitive information, including payment systems for individual taxpayers and federal aid recipients.

Democratic Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico sent a letter along with 23 of their colleagues Friday asking Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins to secure veterans’ personal information from Musk and DOGE.

“The president has given unfettered access to federal databases and systems to Mr. Musk, an unelected citizen, and a team of colleagues with no formal documented employment agreement with the U.S. government. … We are outraged these unelected, unvetted, and unaccountable individuals now have access to sensitive information,” the letter reads.

On Thursday, Stansbury along with other members of Congress attempted to go to the Environmental Protection Agency headquarters, because a large number of EPA staff have been put on administrative leave, she said. But the congresswoman was denied entry by Homeland Security. On Tuesday, three dozen members of the House and Senate tried to meet with the Treasury secretary, but were denied entry to the Treasury Department by the Secret Service, Stansbury said.

“I have, personally, in my time serving as a congresswoman, with my congressional ID and my congressional pin, never been denied access to a federal facility before. Never. And I’ve been denied three times this week,” Stansbury said.