Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk held his first meeting with members of the US Senate and House to discuss his initiative for slashing federal spending in Washington on Thursday.

US President-elect Donald Trump has named Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to head a new organization to be called the Department of Government Efficiency.

Ahead of the meeting, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said, "It is the first, again, as I said, of a long series of meetings that will be held as we're laying the groundwork for the new year and the new Congress."

In a social media post after the meeting, Musk called on federal workers to switch to the private sector. He wrote, "To improve the TRUE economy, which is output of useful products & services, we need to shift people from low to negative productivity jobs in government to high productivity jobs in the private sector!"

In each chamber of Congress, lawmakers have launched a caucus to work with the planned department.

Johnson said efforts to cut government spending will be bipartisan. He added that some Democrats, in both the Senate and the House, had expressed intent to join the caucuses.