Cuts to the federal budget are coming sooner rather than later. Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa sent Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) co-chairs Tesla CEO Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy a letter with $2 trillion dollars worth of cuts. That is good news, but there is even better news because these cuts are not a one time thing. Those cuts will be here until the Democrats control the government again which could be at least until January of 2037.
President Trump picked Musk and Ramaswamy as co-chairs of DOGE on Nov. 12. and Ernst will be heading up the committee that will be working with the DOGE leaders to find areas where spending can be cut or cut back. In her 7 page letter to Musk and Ramaswamy she lists cuts of almost 2 trillion dollars. Of course not all of those cuts will be implemented. Personally, I would like to see some kind of increase for Social Security increases which have not kept pace with inflation.
Ernst wrote:
“When faced with proposals to trim the fat from Washington’s budget, members of Congress from both parties act like Goldilocks. It’s too little or too big, always too hard, and never just right. But the real ‘make-believe’ of this fairy tale is that it’s impossible to reduce Washington’s budget without causing pain. Most Americans aren’t even benefitting in any meaningful way from hundreds of billions of dollars being wasted.”
“While you’re seeking ‘super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries’ for ‘unglamorous cost-cutting,’ all that’s really needed is a little common sense. If you can’t find waste in Washington, there can only be one reason: you didn’t look.”
Three rail projects in California with a combined price tag of over $135 billion, $213 million in unemployment payments to millionaires, $31 million in pay to government employees with no assigned duties and $10 billion in inaccurate Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program payments are among the programs Ernst listed as potential cuts. Ernst also said there was over $1.6 trillion in uncommitted COVID relief spending.
Ernst announced Friday she would lead a Senate DOGE caucus to work alongside Musk and Ramaswamy, while Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was named as chair of a House Oversight Committee subpanel called the Delivering on Government Efficiency panel.
“I have a simple message to the bureaucrats who haven’t shown up for work in years and the government contractors and grantees collecting millions to study how fast a shrimp runs on a treadmill – buckle up because accountability is coming,” Ernst said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “My decade-long mission to make Washington squeal has created an exhaustive list of more than $2 trillion worth of waste, fraud, and abuse that I will work with DOGE to cut. We are going to break down the nonsense that has taken over Washington and put in its place a government that actually works for the people.”
Ernst previously questioned USAID over an employee who improperly received “locality pay” for the Washington, D.C. area despite living in Florida, and requested a staff briefing after a second instance of improper locality pay involving another USAID employee living in North Carolina was reported.
In an August 2023 letter requesting a review of the issues involved with telecommuting sent to 24 government agencies, Ernst cited a media account of a VA employee who attended a staff meeting while taking a bubble bath.
Ernst wrote the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), urging the agency to take emergency action in an August 28 letter sent to EPA Administrator Michael Regan about contaminants that built up in the drinking water of federal buildings left unoccupied by a shift to remote work.
Ernst introduced the Stopping Home Office Work’s Unproductive Problems (SHOW UP) Act, in September 2023 as part of a package of legislation to rein in the “administrative state.”
