Here’s how DOGE is holding government accountable

By U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn
R-Tennessee

Today, after four years of reckless spending and decades-high inflation under the Biden-Harris administration, our national debt sits at $36.4 trillion. 

In many ways, this number represents one of the biggest threats to our nation, as interest payments on the debt now eclipse our country’s total defense spending. 

Unfortunately, this problem is only getting worse. During the last few months of the Biden administration – October to December of last year – our country ran a deficit of $710.9 billion, up 39.4 percent from the same time period in 2023.

The American people know our fiscal path is unsustainable – which is a big reason why they returned President Trump to the Oval Office with a mandate to restore government accountability. And since Inauguration Day, the President has been hard at work. 

In one of his first acts back in office, President Trump established the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), formerly called the United States Digital Service.

Led by Elon Musk, the agency has worked to uncover and eliminate waste, fraud and abuse across the federal government. And to no one’s surprise, DOGE has found a lot of waste, especially with programs that should have never existed.

In recent weeks, the agency has cut $33 million in Education Department grants to groups that push far-left ideas like critical race theory; $44.6 million in canceled leases for unused federal office space; $45 million in scholarships for students in Burma; $182 million in Department of Health and Human Services contracts that had nothing to do with health, including a $168,000 museum exhibit for Anthony Fauci; $1 billion in DEI programs, and on and on. 

In addition, DOGE has worked to reform the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which has used its $40 billion budget to support left-wing and anti-American causes around the world, including terror-tied extremist groups in the Middle East.

As DOGE uncovers the Left’s abuse of taxpayer dollars, Washington Democrats have tried desperately to paint the agency as unaccountable to the American people. But the exact opposite is true: DOGE, which reports directly to President Trump, is restoring government accountability by helping rein in the federal bureaucracy.

That’s why, last week, President Trump issued an executive order to support DOGE, directing federal departments to work with the agency to reduce the size of the federal workforce, which numbers more than 2.4 million civilian employees and costs taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

To support these efforts, I recently introduced a package of bills called the DOGE Acts, which would hold the federal government accountable for managing taxpayer dollars.

To drain the swamp, the bills would implement a hiring and salary freeze, direct agencies to reduce the size of their workforce by 5 percent within three years, and establish a commission to report to Congress on moving non-national security agencies out of Washington, D.C.

In addition, the legislation would create a pilot program to determine federal employees’ compensation based on merit, not seniority, and require agencies to reinstate their pre-COVID telework policies—a measure that is especially crucial after just 6 percent of federal employees worked in an office full-time during the Biden administration. Perhaps most importantly, the DOGE Acts would cut non-security discretionary spending by 5 percent by fiscal year 2028 and every following year, saving taxpayers billions of dollars.

When it comes to government spending, Tennesseans and Americans across the country demand accountability. With DOGE, Republicans are delivering on it.

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