Elon Musk arrived on Wednesday at Senate Republicans’ weekly luncheon on Capitol Hill ready to field questions about the work he is doing for President Trump at the Department of Government Efficiency, the office he formed that has taken a hatchet to the federal bureaucracy with no input from Congress.
They had plenty.
Republican senators have raised few public complaints about Mr. Musk as he has undertaken mass firings across the government without consulting or informing them. But during the nearly two-hour closed-door meeting, the senators gently questioned him about how they might share feedback, minimize blowback from their constituents and, perhaps, eventually get to vote on the cuts he is making.
At one point during the largely friendly exchange, Mr. Musk, who made no presentation of his own, shared his personal phone number with senators and encouraged them to reach out directly with any concerns.
“We’re getting feedback, and we want to respond to our constituents — how do we work most effectively to do that?” Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota said after the meeting, in characterizing the tenor of his colleagues’ questions.
Other Republicans said they were simply trying to figure out how they could help Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump succeed.
“There was just a general discussion about how we can make his cuts permanent,” said Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana. “There was general discussion about how we, as senators, can do a better job of explaining clearly what he’s doing.”
The gathering highlighted the conundrum that DOGE’s slash-and-burn approach has created for a number of Republican lawmakers. Many of them genuinely believe the federal government and work force should be scaled back, and most are exceedingly reluctant to criticize Mr. Trump or Mr. Musk, who has a penchant for using his social media platform X to unleash a barrage of abuse against his critics, including Republican lawmakers.
But they are also facing intense pushback from constituents at home affected by sprawling cuts and layoffs.
In some cases, that has fueled an awkward two-step for Republicans, who have simultaneously praised the work DOGE is doing while also quietly seeking exemptions and special consideration for funding that helps their own constituents.
“People were eager to have more feedback opportunities,” said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who praised Mr. Musk’s efforts on the Senate floor ahead of the meeting.
Mr. Musk took a largely deferential tone toward senators, according to lawmakers who attended. When one senator stood and asked whom to contact with questions about the group’s efforts, one of Mr. Musk’s senior advisers volunteered her contact information. Mr. Musk interjected and said senators could contact him directly, a person who witnessed the exchange said.
While he told senators a major target was waste at the Pentagon — typically a place where Senate Republicans have refused to entertain spending cuts — he made a point of relaying an anecdote that Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, had shared with him. In recounting that story, which he has previously discussed, he said Ms. Collins gave the Navy money for more submarines, but no new submarines were produced.
Senators said they were interested in trying to codify the cuts Mr. Musk’s group has already targeted — a move that would endorse DOGE’s actions while also reclaiming Congress’s power of the purse.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky suggested that lawmakers ultimately should vote on the cuts DOGE has ordered using the recission process, which allows the president to ask Congress to cancel certain funds lawmakers have appropriated.
Mr. Paul suggested that the Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday in which a majority of justices rejected Mr. Trump’s emergency request to freeze nearly $2 billion in foreign aid indicated that using the recission process would be more fruitful than unilateral attempts by the executive branch to halt funding.
“This is a bigger argument than just one person,” Mr. Paul said in an interview.
He added: “Either the cuts and all the great things I think Elon is finding evaporate — they’re ephemeral — or we put them into a rescission package, they send them back to us, and we vote up or down on getting rid of them.”
Mr. Musk appeared supportive of the idea, according to several senators who attended.
“He said at one point, ‘You guys are going to have to act here to make any of this permanent,’” Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri said.
Mr. Musk also briefed House Republicans at the Capitol later on Wednesday night, in another closed-door meeting that lasted roughly two hours. The message lawmakers sent him, according to Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina: “Speed up, don’t slow down.”
