Should Pennsylvania have its own DOGE? These GOP state senators think so — with a twist.

As Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency upends Washington, D.C., and the federal government, two state senators have their own ideas to make a Pennsylvania version of the radical disrupter.

State Sens. Kristin Phillips-Hill (R., York) and Doug Mastriano (R., Franklin) are preparing to introduce two separate pieces of legislation with different visions for what a “Pennsylvania DOGE” should look like — just one of the many ways President Donald Trump’s influence is trickling into state government, and as Republican lawmakers across the country push for their own version of the department.

Any Trump-inspired proposal is unlikely to get passed by a Democrat-controlled state House, as Democrats in Pennsylvania and nationally figure out their party’s response to a second Trump administration. (The state House is currently tied 101-101, after a Democratic member died in January. It is expected to return to Democratic control after a special election in the late Rep. Matt Gergely’s blue district next month.)

Mastriano’s version of a Pennsylvania DOGE would create a bipartisan oversight committee made up of two lawmakers, two legislative leaders, representatives from the state auditor general and treasurer’s offices, and two Pennsylvania residents. The proposed committee would have the power to immediately suspend or continue funding a state agency based on the new department’s findings.

“This committee will have teeth. That’s something that’s missing from everything else,” Mastriano said, adding that the state departments of education, health, and human services all should be the first state agencies to be reviewed. These are among the federal agencies that the Trump administration has targeted, with efforts to abolish the U.S. Department of Education on the horizon.

Unlike the expansive powers Trump has given Musk’s federal DOGE to review all contracts and grants, neither of the senators’ proposals would give the executive branch unilateral power to cut staff and agency work in Pennsylvania. Mastriano’s version, instead, would give special powers to the bipartisan oversight committee with no input from the executive branch that currently controls state agencies — an interesting position for Mastriano, who also said in an interview Tuesday he was considering another run for governor.

And in Phillips-Hill’s plan, the Pennsylvania DOGE would be strictly advisory.

The proposal is one the York lawmaker has introduced every legislative session since 2015 — now rebranded with Musk’s DOGE terminology — to create a department that would review all of Pennsylvania’s more than 162,000 regulations on the books, and advise the legislature and governor on where overly burdensome regulations are hindering state growth. This would not result in any spending cuts, but rather cut back on regulations that she called a “form of taxation.”

DOGE or no, Pennsylvania already has a number of checks and balances built into its bureaucracy: The state auditor general, a position currently held by Republican Tim DeFoor, is the state’s chief fiscal watchdog, whose office conducts hundreds of audits each year on anything from municipal spending to major investigations into how cyber charter schools spend taxpayer money. The state treasurer’s office, held by GOP Treasurer Stacy Garrity, reviews almost every payment made by Pennsylvania state government to ensure they are correct and cancels those that aren’t.

“In reality, much of what PA Treasury does is DOGE,” Garrity said in a statement. “We are on the front lines of promoting efficiency and preventing the improper use of taxpayer dollars every day.”

» READ MORE: Stacy Garrity on being impatient, Pa.’s unclaimed property problem, and the governor’s race

Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, has also taken steps to eliminate wasteful spending by reviewing all state-owned or -leased properties, a move he said during his budget address earlier this month will save the state $44 million over the next 10 years.

Mastriano, however, said his version of DOGE would be complementary to the existing work state agencies and its row offices are doing.

Both Mastriano and Phillips-Hill applauded the work of the federal DOGE.

“As a taxpayer, I can tell you I’m always grateful when a governmental entity looks to ferret out waste, fraud, and abuse,” Phillips-Hill added, noting some of the other work she’s done as a state House member and later a state senator to increase government transparency and accountability.

Mastriano said he was inspired by Musk’s DOGE actions, but has been interested in weeding out government waste since the myth of the $600 hammer purchased by the Department of Defense in the 1980s that inspired many waste-cutting measures at the time — and have since faded away.

Phillips-Hill, meanwhile, said she worried that a new, permanent state department would create more bureaucracy, leading her to put a five-year sunset period on the legislation so the proposed DOGE would not exist forever.

» READ MORE: A candidate for N.J. governor suggested a Jersey DOGE. The state’s business community booed.

At least 11 states are exploring the creation of their own government efficiency departments, including in Florida, where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis launched a “DOGE tax force” to audit the state’s spending and eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and in Kansas, where the state Senate’s “Committee on Government Efficiency” offers a website portal for residents to submit recommendations on how to improve state government.