Rep. Roy: DOGE Will Stop Legislators Using Programs for 'Political Gain'

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said on Friday that incoming heads of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, will help stop legislators from using government programs "for some sort of political gain."

Roy, in an interview with CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Friday, said that legislators have a problem using government programs for "political gain" and predicted that Musk and Ramaswamy will cut down on spending, possibly by restricting food stamps and repealing President Joe Biden's signature bill, the Inflation Reduction Act.

"When the DOGE guys came in, Elon and Vivek, I pointed to my Republican colleagues and I said, 'You know what the problem is, right here in this room,'" Roy said during the interview. "We have Republicans and Democrats who never met a program they didn't want to promote for some sort of political gain."

The congressman, who came out as a strong opponent of President-elect Donald Trump's call to eliminate the debt ceiling in the spending bill that Congress passed last week, also said that he has "certainly been in contact with Mar-a-Lago broadly and with Republican leadership" about the issue, though he declined to specify if he had spoken with Trump himself.

"Politics is a rough-and-tumble business," Roy said. "President Trump knows exactly what he wants. He wants the debt ceiling pushed aside."

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