Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) incoming co-leader Vivek Ramaswamy laid out the new agency's vision during an exclusive interview with Fox News' Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, telling the "Sunday Morning Futures" host the aggressive cost-cutting strategy will begin with executive action and lay the groundwork for Congress to do its part.
"The failures of the executive branch need to be addressed because the dirty little secret right now is the people we elect to run the government, they're not the ones who actually run the government. It's the unelected bureaucrats in the administrative state that was created through executive action. It's going to be fixed through executive action," he said.
"Think about the Supreme Court's environment. Over the last several years, they've held that many of those regulations are unconstitutional at a large scale. Rescind those regulations, pull those regs back, and then that gives us the industrial logic to then downsize the size of that administrative state. And the beauty of all of this is that can be achieved just through executive action without Congress. Score some early wins, and then you look at those bigger portions of the federal budget that need to be addressed one by one," he continued.
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Ramaswamy pledged to bring "sweeping change" "as early and as quickly as possible."
Earlier this month, President-elect Donald Trump tapped Ramaswamy and business magnate Elon Musk to lead the newfound DOGE, aimed at suggesting ways to dismantle government bureaucracy and restructure federal agencies from an outside-the-government perspective.
Since DOGE is not an official government agency, neither Musk nor Ramaswamy are considered official cabinet members nor will they be federal employees.
Their work is expected to conclude no later than July 4, 2026 – on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence's signing.
According to Ramaswamy, the sweeping changes expected to come from the initial executive actions will lay the groundwork for Congress to "take meaningful steps" in budget reductions going forward.
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"This is about restoring self-governance and accountability in America as well. Elected leaders, if they make the wrong decisions, voters have a great choice. You can vote them out and remove them. Most of the people making these decisions from health care to the Department of Defense are failing on effectiveness because they have no accountability. Historically, it's been the view of many scholars to say that those people could not even be fired. Now we take a different view with the environment the Supreme Court has given us in recent years, and we're going to use that in a pretty extensive way to move quickly," he explained.
After Trump announced his appointment, Ramaswamy withdrew himself from consideration for the Ohio Senate seat vacated by Vice President-elect JD Vance.
Ramaswamy and Musk both threw their support behind Trump during the 2024 election cycle, campaigning for the president-elect in key battleground states that largely determined the outcome of the race.
They also flanked the president-elect alongside a number of his other key allies and nominees at UFC 309 at New York City's Madison Square Garden on Saturday night.
Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris on Nov. 5, walking away with a landslide victory after sweeping all seven swing states.
Fox News' Sarah Rumpf-Whitten contributed to this report.
