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DOGE follows longtime Musk pattern — and turns attention to Social Security Administration [1]

['Https', 'Www.Semafor.Com Author Shelby-Talcott']

Date: 2025-02

Elon Musk’s DOGE shuttered USAID. It has searched Medicare payments and gained access to a sensitive Treasury Department payment system. Its initial Labor Department presence prompted a lawsuit.

And it’s just getting started.

The Social Security Administration is an upcoming focus of the Department of Government Efficiency, a source with knowledge of its work told Semafor, and one person involved in DOGE is currently preparing to work with the agency that provides benefits to the elderly and disabled.

Led by Musk and a group of young engineers, DOGE is migrating around the government in search of cuts with an intensity that has demoralized federal workers and become a defining early mark of Donald Trump’s second term. Democrats are citing DOGE as they shift from early divisions over how to handle Trump to more full-throated resistance.

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DOGE’s drastic actions have also prompted legal challenges that, combined with growing political heat surrounding its work, have made it nearly impossible for Musk and his group of software engineers to stay behind the curtain. The more attention DOGE gets, the more questions swirl about what its central goal is, exactly.

Those involved and familiar with DOGE, however, say they’re not confused about their mission: They’re empowered to slash government spending and remodel agencies to fall in line with the president’s agenda. What’s more, they appear undisturbed by the drama they’ve caused.

“There’s a lot of disruption, but I would argue that that disruption was needed to be able to go in and scrutinize the record, scrutinize expenditures to fully understand what’s going on,” Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, told Semafor.

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Ernst, the head of the Senate’s DOGE Caucus, added that Musk’s team would keep moving through federal programs and spending: “If it’s expenditures that the majority of American people don’t agree with, that the president doesn’t agree with, we’re glad to see it gone.”

DOGE’s early action to shut down the US Agency for International Development, where thousands of workers will be put on leave as of Friday, may end up as the most severe example of its shock-and-awe strategy.



The person with knowledge of its work said DOGE saw starting with USAID as a simple decision, because “it was the most obvious” target for cutting perceived waste.

The blunt treatment of USAID won’t be a model for DOGE’s approach to every agency, according to the person and two others with knowledge of its work. Some areas of the government, like the Border Patrol and veterans’ services, are likely to be treated more carefully.

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But DOGE’s interest in trying to root out fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, and perhaps soon in cutting at the Social Security Administration, suggests that government programs once seen as untouchable may be on the table.

Notably, the views among DOGE supporters differ when it comes to where to draw the line: The first of the three people with knowledge of its work told Semafor the “entire federal government” is up for grabs. The second person suggested the line would be drawn at areas affecting national security and initiatives providing direct benefits.

Ernst said “it’s quite possible” every part of the government will face scrutiny at some point.

While Musk has mentioned a goal of cutting $1 trillion from the federal government, the group isn’t operating with many specific targets or end goals.

“It’s going to depend on what we find,” the second person said. “There’s going to be reworks across the government, every agency.”

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[1] Url: https://www.semafor.com/article/02/06/2025/inside-doges-march-with-the-social-security-administration-soon-to-come

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