Iowa Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst has embraced the goal of cutting $2T
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There is $1 trillion in government spending ripe for the cutting, Iowa Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst said this week in a letter to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Tech billionaire Musk and former GOP presidential candidate Ramaswamy are heading the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, an advisory body to President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration. Ernst has embraced the department’s goal of cutting $2 trillion in government spending.
Ernst late last week formed a DOGE caucus of Senate Republicans to involve Congress in discussions of spending cuts with Musk and Ramaswamy.
Federal spending is determined by Congress and then approved by the president.
Ernst earlier this week sent a letter to Musk and Ramaswamy in which she detailed what she believes are options for up to $1 trillion in federal spending cuts.
“Washington has been gobbling up tax dollars and asking for seconds and thirds for far too long,” Ernst said this week in a Thanksgiving-themed statement. “The DOGE team has our knives out, and we are ready to trim the fat on the overstuffed budget and billion-dollar gravy trains to nowhere. It is time to make the federal government go cold turkey on waste.”
Ernst’s targets for spending cuts, as identified in her letter, include:
- Selling unused government buildings and consolidating others, especially with many government employees now working from home.
- Firing IRS agents who owe back taxes.
- Defunding the federal electric vehicle infrastructure program.
- Recouping fraudulent spending of federal pandemic relief funds.
- Defunding federal assistance to California public transportation projects.
- Changing the composition of pennies and nickels.
- Stopping “out-of-this-world” bonuses to government employees and contractors.
- Cutting unemployment payments for millionaires.
- Consolidating federal agencies’ cloud computing licenses.
- Addressing “bloated bureaucracy and inefficiency” in the Department of Defense.
- Stopping $1 billion in monthly erroneous SNAP payments, including to ineligible recipients and individuals receiving benefits from multiple states.
- Implementing basic management systems like establishing goals and scopes for government projects.
In her letter to Musk and Ramaswamy, Ernst evoked the “Make ’em squeal” proclamation from her first U.S. Senate campaign in 2014 and said that her fight to cut government waste has been lonely because, “Democrats and Republicans always come together in agreement over one issue: living high off the hog.”
“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,” Ernst said in the letter.
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