Hegseth welcomes in Elon Musk’s DOGE for ‘long overdue’ DOD spending overhaul

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is welcoming Elon Musk’s DOGE into the agency to streamline processes and “cut tail to put it to tooth,” he said Sunday on the Fox News Channel. 

“We know in a world where America’s $37 trillion in debt, resources will not be unlimited, so every dollar we can find that isn’t being spent wisely is one we can put toward a warfighter, so we welcome DOGE at DOD,” he told “Sunday Morning Futures” anchor Maria Bartiromo. 

“We will partner with them, and it’s long overdue. The Defense Department’s got a huge budget, but it needs to be responsible.”

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The former “Fox & Friends Weekend” host took the helm at the DOD last month after a deadlocked Senate confirmation vote ended with Vice President JD Vance’s tiebreaker. 

Since then, he has overseen overhauls of Biden-era policies, including DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiatives within the agency. Now, President Trump and DOGE leader Elon Musk are eyeing spending overhauls of government agencies.

In a special Super Bowl Sunday interview with Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier, Trump pinpointed the Education and Defense Departments as likely next targets.

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“The president is right. He’s setting the pace, and he is also correct that American taxpayers deserve to know exactly how and where their money is spent. The fact that I have to commit to an audit being done in four years is bad enough. The Pentagon should be able to pass a budget right now. Thankfully, the Marine Corps has passed a clean audit for two years in a row, and I applaud them, but that needs to go across the entire department, so that will be a focus where we spend dollars,” Hegseth continued. 

“We need to know when we spend dollars, we need to know where they’re going and why that simple accounting and that has not existed at the Defense Department. We’re going to fix that.”