President-elect Donald Trump's proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), helmed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, has gotten everyone talking, including Representative David Schweikert (R-AZ), who discussed the department's essentiality in bringing "disruptive ideas" into Congress, such as using artificial intelligence (AI) in auditing the Pentagon during a weekend interview with Forbes.
Host Cat Oriel began the discussion by noting that Rep. Schweikert's office has already introduced legislation in line with DOGE's goals, which he called "one of my greatest hopes."
"We run part of our office almost like a think tank where we come up with ideas. We work with our Joint Economic economists, vet the idea, and [ask], 'Can we find a way to do a policy?' We write the legislation, but because these are often disruptive ideas, there is no audience for it. And the current administration, the Biden Administration, we could never get an audience there. The current Senate, held by the Democrats, we could never get an audience there. And then, for a lot of our Republican colleagues, they did not feel that there was a path," Rep. Schweikert continued.
For example, he cited the economic benefit of promoting healthier lifestyles, a significant concern of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. However, "the efficiency that you and I find that is moral, that is good for America, goof for the prosperity, that efficiency is a disruption to someone else's way [that] they make money."
"You would be shocked how you often find out [that] by doing that, you just disrupted the cash flow of certain incoming businesses. That is why we had such battles over telehealth and digital health," the Arizona Congressman added.
The discussion shifted to the Pentagon, which recently failed a clean audit for the seventh time in a row, and what role DOGE could have in producing a clean audit, potentially under the Trump Administration.
Schweikert had previously suggested using AI to audit the Pentagon, which was successfully included in the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) but never passed the Senate.
"But that is an example of work we have been doing in our office now for years of trying to operate like a disruptive thinking, high-tech think tank. How do we get that to Elon Musks of the world and say, 'Look, let's use AI to start to crawl through the asset inventory, spending receipts, invoice lists, all through the government. Let's use technology, not armies of unionized employees.' And it is shocking the pushback you get because either people do not understand the technology or they think these things should just be in employment backstop," Schweikert concluded.
