When Elon Musk arrived in Washington to strip the federal government for parts, he brought a time-honored tradition from the tech world: around-the-clock hustle.
DOGE-supporting lawmakers are excited about Musk’s praise of the 120-hour work week and installation of beds in the Office of Personnel Management to facilitate late-night work sessions. Recent reports of sleeping pods getting delivered to DOGE offices show that for Musk, Washington is no different than a Tesla factory, where he basically lived for years, or X headquarters, where he converted offices into sleeping quarters.
Republicans in Congress told NOTUS they would welcome Musk’s work style on the hill.
“When you’re trying to reflect the values of what happened on Nov. 5 and what the American people voted for, they’re asking for a really hard work ethic,” Sen. Ted Budd, a member of the Senate’s DOGE caucus, told NOTUS. “Nobody’s better than Elon Musk to set the tone for how taxpayers should be rewarded, by hard work in Washington on their behalf.”
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Republicans have long wanted the federal government to reflect the private sector more closely, and many of them think Musk should be a model.
“If it does influence the culture, I think that would be good. I think we need to blow up the culture of waste, fraud and abuse in the federal budget,” Rep. Brandon Gill said, adding he thought all federal employees should work longer hours. “We need a culture of hard work, and that is the standard in the private sector, and we need to apply that same standard in the public sector.”
Rep. Dan Meuser, a DOGE caucus member, said his office already works late — and long hours, too. But he said Congress could use more of Musk’s Silicon Valley energy.
“We could sure benefit by a lot that happens in the private sector,” he said, adding that Musk’s work habits reflected a “serious approach of being all in on work, not just on holding a position for show.”
Most lawmakers said they hadn’t heard about Musk and his aides installing sofa beds in the federal personnel office, but there have been multiple reports of Musk and his allies staying at federal buildings overnight — Musk told several people he’s living out of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where DOGE is headquartered, according to Wired. The New York Times reported a small group of coders has stayed overnight at OPM fueled in part by Red Bull and Doritos.
For elected officials, living where you work isn’t an entirely new concept.
Lawmakers have long used their offices as bedrooms — in 2017, House members estimated that more than 100 of their colleagues bunked in their offices, including some members of Republican leadership.
But Washington began shifting away from that in the wake of the #MeToo era, when the blurred lines between work and personal lives were getting a closer look. Since House lawmakers made changes in 2023 to allow for more generous reimbursement for living expenses, talk of the practice had nearly faded away.
But it never disappeared altogether.
Rep. Tim Burchett told NOTUS that he still sleeps in his office because it helps him stay productive and get to meetings early. He was unsure that the trend would catch on with other lawmakers and offices now that Musk’s team is promoting it.
“I hope it does. But I don’t see Congress doing a lot of work, no matter who’s in power. They’ll say they are. But you go back to Tennessee, people laugh. I mean, ain’t nobody digging a ditch up here,” Burchett said.
Rep. Scott Franklin said he also doubted that triple-digit hour work weeks would become a trend on Capitol Hill.
“I don’t think there’s any danger of that coming, but I guess [Musk] figures there’s a lot to get done, so,” Franklin said.
It might not catch on for every office — after all, days before Trump was inaugurated, progressive Capitol Hill staff asked for a 32-hour workweek before backing down. But members of the congressional DOGE caucus were largely open to lawmakers and staff in offices embracing the work behavior that Musk incessantly posts about, even if some doubted it could truly take off.
Rep. Pat Fallon told NOTUS that while spending more time in their districts and less in D.C. would leave legislators less time to get into “mischief,” he said he thought more lawmakers taking Musk’s approach would not be “a bad thing” because “the people who excel tend to work more than 40 hours a week.”
“I remember when I was in the military, we would sometimes [be deployed on] 24-hour days, and just worked around the clock and got very little sleep,” he said. “Certainly, I don’t know if that’s necessary, but I think Americans would love to make sure their passports get to them on time and their social security checks.”
Some lawmakers argued that clocking above the standard 40-hour work week is already typical in Washington. Sen. Roger Marshall told NOTUS that he’s worked “100 hours a week” his whole career and that nothing has changed since he was sworn into the Senate in 2021.
“I think that you’re seeing us work weekends now. We may do an all-nighter tonight,” Marshall said on Wednesday when Democrats held the floor to protest Russell Vought’s confirmation as Office of Management and Budget director. “So, we’re not modeling after [Musk’s team].”
Sen. Rick Scott, another DOGE caucus member, said he wouldn’t mind more lawmakers following in Musk’s footsteps.
“I can tell you, there’s a lot of people here that work a lot of long hours, and they work really hard,” Sen. Rick Scott, another DOGE caucus member, told NOTUS. “But I’m always appreciative of the people that want to put in extra hours to help improve the country.”
However, Rep. David Schweikert told NOTUS that the “office beds” of Musk’s workers should be the last thing on anyone’s mind and that he’d prefer the media focus on DOGE aides’ expertise.
“The fact of the matter is, [are you] bringing in people that can actually do the data mining that’s required to understand what’s going on in this government,” he said. “If that’s the [news peg] that you need, that someone sleeps on a couch, that’s really where you’re taking this. It’s embarrassing.”
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Emily Kennard and Torrence Banks are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows.
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