Republican senators vented their concerns about tech billionaire Elon Musk’s aggressive approach to freezing federal spending and cutting government jobs during a private meeting with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles on Wednesday.

Gathered in the historic Mansfield Room outside the Senate chamber, some GOP senators complained about what they view as a lack of transparency about what Musk and his team of engineers are doing at federal agencies.

They flagged cuts at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which fired 1,400 employees Monday, and said Musk’s team hadn’t responded to their requests for information, according to sources familiar with the meeting.

“Every day’s another surprise,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said of the daily bombshells from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

“It would be better to allow Cabinet secretaries to carefully review their departments and then make surgical, strategic decisions on what programs and people should be cut and then come back to Congress for approval,” she said.

Collins argued a methodical approach to reforming government would be better than what she called Musk’s “sledgehammer approach.”

A second GOP senator said colleagues raised concerns about Musk’s leadership of DOGE and shared stories about how funding freezes and firings have impacted constituents.

“They were presenting some of the compelling stories and some of them shared about terminations at VA hospitals and how it impacted constituents and how there was no answer” from........

© The Hill