If Elon Musk is serious about cutting government waste, fraud, and abuse, he may find help in an unusual place: Elizabeth Warren.
While many Democrats in Congress want nothing to do with the billionaire who spent a fortune to help elect Donald Trump, the Massachusetts Senator says she wants to find common ground with Musk in his new role leading the White House's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In a letter she sent him Thursday morning, Warren proposed 30 recommendations for eliminating $2 trillion in federal spending over the next decade, according to a copy of the letter obtained by TIME. The list includes several of the progressive icon’s long-held policy fixations: renegotiating Department of Defense (DOD) contracts that independent analysts have found waste billions each year; reforming the Medicare Advantage insurance program and allowing Medicare to negotiate lower costs of prescription drugs; and closing tax loopholes for corporations and the wealthiest earners.
It’s not clear how Musk will respond—but he’s in need of suggestions. Earlier this month, he walked back his pledge of finding $2 trillion in federal savings. That may be due to political constraints. Because Trump vowed on the campaign trail not to touch Medicare and Social Security, and Republicans refuse to cut military spending, DOGE will have to find less conventional ideas to fulfill Musk’s budget-slashing fantasy.
For years, Democrats and Republicans alike have wanted to curb wasteful government spending. While much of Washington recoils at Trump’s disruptive, norm-shattering second-term agenda, some see an opportunity for strange bedfellows to emerge. “In the interest of taking aggressive, bipartisan action to ensure sustainable spending, protect taxpayer dollars, curb abusive practices by giant corporations, and improve middle-class Americans’ quality of life,” Warren writes to Musk, “I would be happy to work with you on these matters.”
That may be easier said than done. Many of Warren’s proposals won’t go far with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, and Musk himself may bristle at many of them. Her missive may do more to make a point than spur an improbable collaboration. Equally significant will be the chorus of deficit hawks who insist the only way to remedy a bloated federal government is to restructure entitlement programs at risk of collapse in 10 years. “There's no way to meaningfully improve the deficit and debt situation without meaningful reforms to entitlements, which we also need to do to avert insolvency for Social Security and Medicare,” says Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Still, Trump won the election after campaigning on cutting federal spending. For a cross section of Americans, it’s an issue of serious concern. To that end, Warren’s outreach stands to serve as an early test for whether there are areas of bipartisan agreement over where taxpayer money is being squandered, or whether it’s the first round of a four-year clash of competing visions and priorities.
The biggest cost-saving idea in Warren’s letter is to preserve $200 billion by renegotiating Defense contracts. She points to an Inspector General report from 2011 that found contractors regularly hike prices for the military. One egregious example includes the Air Force overpaying 7,943% on soap dispensers. To rectify the problem, she urged passing legislation she previously introduced with Mike Braun, the former Republican Senator from Indiana, that would close loopholes to prevent defense contractors from price gouging the DOD. “There is a huge problem of the government being able to supervise these contractors carefully enough to be able to make sure we're getting our money's worth,” says Don Kettl, an expert on government administration and former dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.
Kettl recently wrote an essay in the Washington Monthly arguing that the federal government needs more and better skilled civil servants to oversee contractors and that Musk and Trump’s plans to massively reduce the federal workforce will perversely lead to higher, not lower, government spending. “The argument is that the market can do the government's work better and cheaper,” Kettl says. “The problem is that that's not always the case, and contractors often get higher wages.”
One area ripe for bipartisan cooperation may be tackling wasteful spending and abuse in the healthcare industry, such as ending or overhauling the Medicare Advantage insurance program, which non-partisan analysts estimate overcharged taxpayers in 2024 by more than $83 billion last year alone. Warren also wants to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, an idea for which Trump has previously expressed support. At the same time, Warren proposed cracking down on Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs), which Trump once castigated as “famous middlemen” who “rip off Medicare patients.” There has already been some movement in Congress. Last year, Warren introduced legislation with Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri that would prohibit the parent company of a PBM from owning a pharmacy—a form of market domination that allows them to charge higher prices with impunity.
But not all of Warren’s proposals enjoy the same level of budding support across the aisle. In her letter, she calls for boosting the Internal Revenue Service’s budget—an expense that she argues would be offset by collecting more in taxes—and changing the tax code to close loopholes for corporations and the highest income earners. Both ideas are anathema to Republicans, and one of Trump’s main domestic priorities is to extend his 2017 tax cuts and embark on a deregulatory crusade.
Warren also wants to eliminate or substantially reduce funding for the Charter Schools Program, which was designed to provide federal grants for charter schools but which the Government Accountability Office has found mismanages and wastes most of its funding. Warren estimates that cuts to this program could save up to $400 million from being frittered away each year. Another target in the educational sector includes for-profit colleges, which have a long history of ripping off students. Warren wants to make them ineligible for federal aid grants.
It’s still not clear how DOGE plans to operate. Katie Miller, a spokeswoman for the operation, did not respond to questions. Watchdog groups have already sued the Musk commission for allegedly violating federal transparency requirements. Many also fear the apparent conflict of interest in Musk overseeing the agencies that regulate his companies that have contracts with the government.
In a December letter to Musk that went unanswered, Warren asked how he would avoid self-dealing. In her latest letter, she offered the chance to cooperate on achieving his larger objectives. “Your broad point—that the federal government spends trillions of dollars on wasteful spending is correct,” she writes. “And if you are serious about working together in good faith to cut government spending—in a way that does not harm the middle class—I have proposals for your consideration.”
Whether those proposals can go anywhere remains to be seen. Many doubt Musk’s true intentions in taking the reins of DOGE. Others see the possibility of him proposing technological innovations that can save the U.S. money. But for some of Washington’s most strident voices arguing for government spending reforms, it represents a chance for ideas usually relegated to white papers to finally get a full airing. “At this moment,” says MacGuineas, “I'm a fan of what Elon Musk is doing and I’m a fan of what Elizabeth Warren is doing.”
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