OMB deputy director nominee defends Elon Musk, DOGE’s ‘outstanding effort’
The work of Elon Musk and his DOGE underlings to overhaul the federal government represents “an absolutely outstanding effort” to shake up “the status quo,” President Donald Trump’s nominee to fill the Office of Management and Budget’s No. 2 role said Wednesday.
Dan Bishop, a former Republican congressman from North Carolina nominated to serve as Russell Vought’s deputy director at OMB, told lawmakers on the Senate Budget Committee that the work by Musk and DOGE — which has so far consisted of mass firings and supposed spending cuts — is part of a process that is actually all about “empowering employees.”
“You hear a lot of ad hominem attacks on Elon Musk, but people rarely want to engage with the merit of what he’s actually saying,” Bishop said. “What Musk has done in his businesses … is he has shown that by being ready to make significant change, you actually bring out the most, the superlative employment or performance out of people, and they actually can improve things beyond that you might expect by just adding numbers.”
Bishop was questioned repeatedly by Democratic lawmakers about “indiscriminate” job cuts across the federal government that have triggered scores of lawsuits and subsequent reversal of Office of Personnel Management policy on certain firings. The OMB nominee largely sidestepped those questions, saying he hasn’t been privy to the specifics in his pre-confirmation role as a senior adviser at OMB.
Bishop, who at one point during the hearing falsely referred to the 2020 presidential election as “rigged,” also stuck up for Vought when asked about his future boss’ comments to put federal workers “in trauma.”
“It’s been used in a misleading way,” Bishop said of Vought’s comments, which were unearthed by ProPublica. “Federal employees are making the comment that they see underperformers continuously among their colleagues … [but] that their processes will not allow [them] to be removed. Those are federal employees. I’ve seen the way Russ Vought works with the people at OMB, the career officials there. He has extraordinary respect for their skill, but he expects them to perform, and they do.”
Bishop’s defense of the Trump administration’s large-scale workforce reduction came a day after two top House Democrats introduced a resolution of inquiry into what they called the “Trump-Musk attacks on federal employees.”
The resolution from Reps. Gerry Connolly of Virginia and Kweisi Mfume of Maryland — the ranking members of the House Oversight Committee and Government Operations Subcommittee, respectively — requires the Trump administration to provide to Congress any documents, communications or other information on Musk or DOGE recommendations that led to agency workforce cuts. The resolution also seeks information on OPM’s handling of cuts to DEI offices and staff and details on the removal of agency inspectors general.
“I encourage Republicans to remember their duty as a co-equal branch of government and ensure the Administration answers for the chaos they’ve unleashed,” Connolly said in a statement, referring to Musk and Trump as “co-presidents” who have taken “a wrecking ball” to the government while upending “the lives of hundreds of thousands of federal workers.”
