Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) compared buyout offers from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to the actions of “scam artists” and fears they could hurt federal employees who oblige.
“Every scam artist is the same: ‘Rush! Take this offer right now! Expires at midnight!’” Warner, the vice-chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said on MSNBC Thursday. “How many times do we see that?”
“My fear is these folks are going to get scammed and then be the first to be fired because they’ve raised their hands,” he added.
Warner noted that DOGE may not have the legal authority to offer the buyouts—nor the money to do so—and that they could cause a government shutdown. A judge temporarily halted Musk’s offer to federal employees Thursday.
The senator said he also feared the effects of the buyouts on national security.
“Do the DOGE bros—who are, you know, 25-year-old voters—think if we lose our best spies, that some coder is going to come take that job tomorrow? Or at the NSA, where we have the world’s best cyber-hackers?" he said. “If they take this unauthorized offer or put themselves in harm’s way, we are making our country weak.”
