Ernst says DOGE initiative isn’t a ‘passing fancy’

» Ernst says DOGE initiative isn’t a ‘passing fancy’


Ernst made the remarks during the podcast Standpoint with Gabe Groisman released on Tuesday. The senator created the Senate DOGE Caucus shortly after President Donald Trump was elected.

“What I want people to recognize in the thought of government efficiency and DOGE is that this is not a passing fancy,” Ernst said. “This is not just the latest shiny bright object, it is something that we care about and there are a number of us that have worked very hard on these issues for the past decade.”

“We are going to continue working in this direction,” she added.

DOGE became a nationally recognizable slogan from tech magnate Elon Musk as President Donald Trump promised to cut government spending if he was elected. Musk was later chosen as head of the agency, which is not an official government department and has only advisory powers. Members of the GOP latched onto the government efficiency trend following the election, with the Republican governors of New Hampshire and Iowa announcing their own government efficiency initiatives.

Republicans have historically sought to cut government spending and reduce taxes. Ernst sought to cut government spending with solutions such as capping former presidents’ allowance and annual pensions to $200,000 in one of her first Senate bills in 2015. “It is critical that we stop talking and start cutting wasteful spending,” she said then.

She has continued her government-slimming ways.

“It is something that we need to be very serious about as we look at our overwhelming debt that is burdening our taxpayers now in this nation,” she said on Tuesday. “We have to be serious about not just making a tiny little cut here and there but doing a deep dive into our federal budget, close up that deficit spending, let’s balance the budget, and then we need to figure out how we are going to tackle in the longterm our overwhelming debt to the American taxpayer.”

The federal government has racked up a roughly $711 billion deficit in fiscal 2025. The government hasn’t been in a surplus since 2001.

Elon Musk’s newly minted DOGE aims to cut $2 trillion in government spending. Musk has some Democratic support for the initiative, but they’ve expressed skepticism and believe he may order cuts to critical government services such as Social Security.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) sent a letter to Musk urging him instead to cut defense spending and to go after for-profit health insurance companies. “I crunched the numbers and found $2 trillion that we could cut over the next 10 years by focusing on the guys who are getting rich off our government,” she added.

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President Donald Trump has made cutting government spending a clear priority of his second term in office. On Tuesday, reports came out detailing Trump’s plans to send an email to nearly the entire federal workforce asking them if they would like an 8-month severance package in exchange for resigning.

Up to 10% of the workforce is expected to accept, saving the government an estimated $100 billion per year, according to the administration.



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