CHRG-119hhrg60814 (LOCKING IN THE DOGE CUTS: ENDING WASTE, FRAUD, AND ABUSE FOR GOOD)

Summary

Transcript of the hearing Locking in the DOGE Cuts: Ending Waste, Fraud, and Abuse for Good, before the Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives, on June 24, 2025 (Serial No. 119–35). Opening statements are listed for Chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ranking Member Melanie Stansbury. Witnesses were Mr. Matthew Dickerson, Director of Budget Policy (EPIC), Mr. David Burton of The Heritage Foundation, Mr. Dan Lips of the Foundation for American Innovation and minority witness Ms. Emily DiVito of Groundwork Collaborative. The index lists news articles submitted by Rep. Crockett, and the subcommittee adjourned at 12:02 p.m.

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“CHRG-119hhrg60814 (LOCKING IN THE DOGE CUTS: ENDING WASTE, FRAUD, AND ABUSE FOR GOOD).” Original at www.govinfo.gov. Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/chrg-119hhrg60814-locking-in-the-doge-cuts-ending-waste-fraud-and-abus-2156a6e5f7/, SHA-256 210f74b16901395f51347d9a2cafc2afcc22b54e52ecca9d532bcdd1835efefa.

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LOCKING IN THE DOGE CUTS: ENDING
WASTE, FRAUD, AND ABUSE FOR GOOD

HEARING
BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON DELIVERING ON
GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY
OF THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND
GOVERNMENT REFORM
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION

JUNE 24, 2025

Serial No. 119–35

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

(
Available on: govinfo.gov, oversight.house.gov or docs.house.gov

U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
60–814 PDF WASHINGTON : 2025
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
JAMES COMER, Kentucky, Chairman
JIM JORDAN, Ohio ROBERT GARCIA, California, Ranking Minority
MIKE TURNER, Ohio Member
PAUL GOSAR, Arizona ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina Columbia
GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI, Illinois
GARY PALMER, Alabama RO KHANNA, California
CLAY HIGGINS, Louisiana KWEISI MFUME, Maryland
PETE SESSIONS, Texas SHONTEL BROWN, Ohio
ANDY BIGGS, Arizona MELANIE STANSBURY, New Mexico
NANCY MACE, South Carolina MAXWELL FROST, Florida
PAT FALLON, Texas SUMMER LEE, Pennsylvania
BYRON DONALDS, Florida GREG CASAR, Texas
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania JASMINE CROCKETT, Texas
WILLIAM TIMMONS, South Carolina EMILY RANDALL, Washington
TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee SUHAS SUBRAMANYAM, Virginia
MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE, Georgia YASSAMIN ANSARI, Arizona
LAUREN BOEBERT, Colorado WESLEY BELL, Missouri
ANNA PAULINA LUNA, Florida LATEEFAH SIMON, California
NICK LANGWORTHY, New York DAVE MIN, California
ERIC BURLISON, Missouri AYANNA PRESSLEY, Massachusetts
ELI CRANE, Arizona RASHIDA TLAIB, Michigan
BRIAN JACK, Georgia Vacancy
JOHN MCGUIRE, Virginia
BRANDON GILL, Texas

MARK MARIN, Staff Director
JAMES RUST, Deputy Staff Director
MITCH BENZINE, General Counsel
PETER WARREN, Senior Advisor
LISA PIRANEO, Senior Professional Staff Member
MALLORY COGAR, Deputy Director of Operations and Chief Clerk
CONTACT NUMBER: 202–225–5074
JAMIE SMITH, Minority Staff Director
CONTACT NUMBER: 202–225–5051

SUBCOMMITTEE ON DELIVERING ON GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY
MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE, Georgia, Chairwoman
MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas MELANIE STANSBURY, New Mexico, Ranking
PAT FALLON, Texas Member
WILLIAM TIMMONS, South Carolina ELANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee Columbia
ERIC BURLISON, Missouri STEPHEN LYNCH, Massachussetts
BRIAN JACK, Georgia GREG CASAR, Texas
BRANDON GILL, Texas JASMINE CROCKETT, Texas
Vacancy

(II)
C O N T E N T S

OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Hon. Marjorie Taylor Greene, U.S. Representative, Chairwoman ...................... 1
Hon. Melanie Stansbury, U.S. Representative, Ranking Member ...................... 3

WITNESSES

Mr. Matthew Dickerson, Director of Budget Policy, The Economic Policy Inno-
vation Center (EPIC)
Oral Statement ........................................................................................................ 6
Mr. David Burton, Senior Fellow in Economic Policy, Thomas A. Roe Institute
for Economic Policy Studies, The Heritage Foundation
Oral Statement ........................................................................................................ 8
Mr. Dan Lips, Senior Fellow, Foundation for American Innovation
Oral Statement ........................................................................................................ 9
Ms. Emily DiVito (Minority Witness), Senior Advisor for Economic Policy,
Groundwork Collaborative
Oral Statement ........................................................................................................ 11
Written opening statements and bios are available on the U.S. House of
Representatives Document Repository at: docs.house.gov.

(III)
INDEX OF DOCUMENTS

* Article, ‘‘Donald Trump Approval Rating New polls show shakeup over
Iran bombing’’; submitted by Rep. Crockett.
* Article, Newsweek, ‘‘Donald Trump’s Approval Rating Plunges in Multiple
Polls’’; submitted by Rep. Crockett.
* Article, CAP, ‘‘How the Trump Administration’s DOGE Cuts Are Harm-
ing Women’’; submitted by Rep. Crockett.
* Article, CNN, ‘‘How Trump’s DOGE Cuts Package Could put GOP in
a Bind’’; submitted by Rep. Crockett.
* Article, Brookings, ‘‘How will we know if DOGE is succeeding’’; submitted
by Rep. Crockett.
* Article, CNN, ‘‘Trump Admin Scrambles to Rehire Key Federal Workers’’;
submitted by Rep. Crockett.
* Article, USA, ‘‘Today Trump Pivots to Distractions as Polls Show Col-
lapsing Support’’; submitted by Rep. Crockett.
* Article, CREW, ‘‘DOGE’s Big Illusion’’; submitted by Rep. Crockett.
* Article, TipRanks, ‘‘Trump’s Approval Rating Drops to Term-Low amid
Israel-Iran War’’; submitted by Rep. Crockett.
* Article, ProPublica, ‘‘Internal VA Emails Reveal How Trump Jeopardizes
Veterans’ Care’’; submitted by Rep. Lynch.
The documents listed above are available at: docs.house.gov.

(IV)
LOCKING IN THE DOGE CUTS: ENDING
WASTE, FRAUD, AND ABUSE FOR GOOD

TUESDAY, JUNE 24, 2025

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
SUBCOMMITTEE ON DELIVERING ON GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:03 a.m., Room
HVC–210, U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, Hon. Marjorie Taylor
Greene, [Chairwoman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Greene, Cloud, Fallon, Timmons,
Burchett, Burlison, Jack, Gill, Stansbury, Norton, Lynch, Casar,
and Crockett.
Also present: Representative Subramanyam.
Ms. GREENE. This hearing of the Subcommittee on Delivering on
Government Efficiency will come to order.
Welcome, everyone. Without objection, the Chair may declare a
recess at any time.
I recognize myself for the purpose of making an opening state-
ment.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRWOMAN
MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE
REPRESENTATIVE FROM GEORGIA
Ms. GREENE. Good morning, and welcome to today’s hearing. I
would like to begin by showing a video of what the Department of
Government Efficiency (DOGE) is all about.
I certainly wish that my Democrat colleagues felt the same as
their former Democrat leaders felt and worked to try to reduce our
deficit and reduce the size of our government. Unfortunately, these
former Democrat leaders failed at what they were saying they were
trying to do, but today’s DOGE and DOGE Subcommittee is actu-
ally delivering on those exact promises, and we are delivering the
results.
It is too bad that my Democrat colleagues constantly mock
DOGE, attack DOGE, criticize DOGE, and criticize the hard-
working people in DOGE. They also attack this Committee and at-
tack what we are all about, but that is today’s Democrat Party.
They are for big government, big spending, and doing nothing for
the American people. They are America last.
This Subcommittee has highlighted where DOGE has staunched
the flow of waste, fraud, and abuse in Federal spending. DOGE
(1)
2

drove the Administration to turn off the spending faucet that was
pouring out billions of dollars to corrupt anti-American Non-Gov-
ernmental Organizations (NGO)s; to illegal Diversity, Equity, and
Inclusion (DEI) programs; and to a vast array of wasteful, unneces-
sary Federal grants, contracts, leases, and personnel. President
Trump drove this massive effort by creating DOGE via executive
order on Inauguration Day. He then issued a series of White House
directives empowering DOGE teams to work with agency leaders
governmentwide in an unprecedented effort to root out wasteful
spending using all means at their disposal.
And that effort has borne fruit. The DOGE website identifies
$180 billion in savings achieved in just a matter of months. We
need to make sure we lock in those savings. It should be the first
installment we pay on our Nation’s $37 trillion debt. We need to
tackle that debt on behalf of our children and future generations.
That is why Congress needs to act.
DOGE has shown how our government can cost less and deliver
more. It has shown how we can turn off the faucet. It has shown
we do not need to spend all the dollars that Congress appropriated
for this year. Congress can reverse that unnecessary spending by
rescinding dollars it has appropriated. That is why the Administra-
tion recently sent a $9 billion rescission request to Congress.
By the way, you just saw Democrats on that video talking about
saving $9 billion. Republicans just delivered on that.
Our $9 billion rescission would prevent dollars from going to cor-
rupt international organizations, to woke NGOs, to National Public
Radio (NPR), and to Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The House
adopted the legislation earlier this month, H.R. 4, the Rescission
Act of 2025. But we need to do more, much more. Nine billion is
just the tip of the iceberg of the waste that DOGE has identified
and of the spending that the Administration has paused or shut off,
so Congress needs to work with the Administration and DOGE to
rescind billions more of dollars it has appropriated for agencies to
spend.
DOGE is also creating savings that will lower the cost of govern-
ment for years to come. For instance, the Administration is right-
sizing the Federal bureaucracy by eliminating several hundred
thousand staff positions. That reduces discretionary spending costs
for the next year and every future year by tens of billions of dol-
lars. So, we need to adjust those levels of new appropriations to
align with the streamlined government DOGE is creating.
That is why the President proposed last month when he sub-
mitted to Congress a budget for next year that reduces nondis-
cretionary spending by $163 billion. If we lower the spending base-
line in that way, we can save $2 trillion in that portion of the budg-
et over the coming decade. We need to lock in DOGE savings for
the taxpayers, and we should also be thinking about locking in the
DOGE process that has produced these savings.
DOGE has attracted enemies because it has taken on Washing-
ton’s culture of spending and the money laundering schemes that
have been embedded in this institution. We should make that a
permanent battle. We should institutionalize the battle against
waste, fraud, and abuse in government. I hope that is something
with which my Democrat colleagues can at least agree on.
3

DOGE is working with agencies to reduce the rampant fraud
that Government Accountability Office (GAO) says costs taxpayers
as much as a half trillion dollars annually. To enhance fraud detec-
tion, agencies are now providing the Treasury Department more in-
formation about financial awards, and they are making more use
of Treasury’s Do Not Pay data base to avoid funding fraudsters.
DOGE is also lowering the barriers that prevent agencies from
sharing data to identify duplicate awardees.
What is more, DOGE has pioneered what the President calls rad-
ical transparency concerning wasteful spending. The DOGE
website and individual Federal agency sites continually update, for
public view, the specific grants, contracts, leases, and other pay-
ments that they are flagging for termination. This is how you
change the culture of spending.
And with that, I yield to Ranking Member Stansbury for her
opening statement.
Ms. STANSBURY. All right. Well, good morning, everyone. Wel-
come to the DOGE Subcommittee.
OPENING STATEMENT OF RANKING MEMBER
MELANIE STANSBURY
REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW MEXICO
Ms. STANSBURY. Notwithstanding the abject failure of the DOGE
enterprise inside the Federal Government and the epic breakup of
Elon Musk and Donald Trump, here we are again, once again, in
this Committee.
I am grateful that the Chairwoman showed, again, one of my fa-
vorite videos, which she showed on the first day of this Sub-
committee. I am grateful because it highlights the work that we
have been doing for decades to root out waste, fraud, and abuse,
including work that I was intimately involved in as a budget exam-
iner in the Office of Management and Budget, in which we actually
eliminated waste, fraud, and abuse.
But unfortunately, as my friends across the aisle in the GOP and
their Heritage Foundation witnesses are still trying to make DOGE
happen yet again, and the American people are over it. In fact, you
do not have to take my word for it. A poll, from just two weeks ago,
found that 67 percent of voters believe DOGE has done a bad job.
That was just two weeks ago.
In fact, when I told one of my friends that we were having an-
other DOGE Subcommittee hearing, they asked, really, is that still
happening? Because literally the American people are over it. Ex-
cept that it is not funny because DOGE has been used to wage a
chaotic, destructive, and ideological war against the American peo-
ple and the vital programs that they depend on. But I am going
to turn to that in just a moment here.
Given everything that is happening in the world right now and
with this Administration, I do not think we can sit here and pre-
tend like everything is normal because just four days ago, the
President launched an unauthorized military attack in Iran with-
out the consent of Congress, putting our troops and our bases in
harm’s way, as we saw just last night with the retaliatory bombing
of one of our largest bases.
4

And, Madam Chair, I have actually been extremely grateful and
wholeheartedly agree with your outspoken advocacy against this
war. But like so many in this Administration, so many days and
weeks, this follows weeks of chaos here at home. As the President
has deployed U.S. Marines and National Guard on our own soil
against our own people, his Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) Secretary and Federal officials shoved a U.S. Senator to the
ground, DOJ indicted a sitting Congresswoman in this House for
doing her job, and tried to arrest a New York city official in a Fed-
eral courthouse. This is not only not normal, it is dangerous, it is
anti-American, and it is anti-democratic.
And so, we are not going to sit here today and pretend like what
this Administration is doing is normal. And we are not going to sit
here and pretend like DOGE is just some normal government pro-
gram. It is a scam in service of a political agenda.
While we came to the table at the beginning of this whole process
in good faith, with real ideas, bipartisan ideas that folks have been
working on for years, and a desire to actually fix and modernize
the Federal Government, what we have seen from DOGE is the
exact opposite. It has so failed in its stated mission of saving
money that even the President asked if it was bullshit as Elon
Musk was exiting the building.
And if they want to talk about fiscal responsibility, while we are
sitting here, they are still trying to pass a reconciliation bill across
the aisle that would saddle taxpayers with $2.5 trillion in deficit
spending. And in the last few weeks, reports have revealed that
DOGE may actually have cost the Federal Government more than
it actually saved because of the mass firings, dismantled agencies,
stolen data, lawsuits, agencies in chaos, agencies that are not able
to do their basic operational duties. This is not efficiency. This is
a scam.
And that is not even to mention the completely reckless and
needless suffering that DOGE has caused. We are talking about
millions of children and people across the planet who no longer will
have access to food and medicine because of the very $9 billion re-
scission package that was just discussed. Thousands of veterans
and public servants here at home whose lives have been shattered
and millions of Americans who have been impacted by the gutting
of vital programs, including staffing at Social Security. And now
they are here today to try to make the case for making it perma-
nent. Are you serious? Really? Are you serious? I cannot even be-
lieve my ears.
So, why are they actually trying to make DOGE permanent?
Well, I think you have to look no further than the witnesses that
they have called over the last several hearings, including today. We
have got the Heritage Foundation and other authors and architects
of Project 2025. And so, we have to be real about what this is actu-
ally about. It is not about efficiency. It is about a political agenda,
an ideological agenda, about remaking the U.S. Government, about
remaking our economy and our society in line with a hyper-con-
servative worldview that is so unpopular that even Donald Trump
tried to distance himself from Project 2025 during the campaign,
and now he has hired over 70 officials to try to enact it, and now
they are trying to use this Committee to make the case.
5

Now, they like to try to claim that they are taking on cancel cul-
ture and a woke agenda, but let us be clear, DOGE and the folks
who want to make it permanent are the actual cancel culture be-
cause they want to cancel anything that they do not like or they
do not agree with, including your democratic rights and your free-
doms; economic opportunity and education; lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) rights; rolling back the
clock on civil rights; canceling the history of Black, Chicano, and
indigenous communities; and stripping protections from our fami-
lies and the healthcare, housing, and food people depend on so that
they can give more tax breaks to their friends.
But this is all part of a wider agenda that is now seeking to
apply political purity tests to government programs and services,
including both Federal employment and, yes, veteran services. Let
me repeat that again. Even veteran benefits. They want to apply
political purity tests to your VA benefits.
Folks, this is not about efficiency. This is about eroding and
privatizing our institutions, gutting programs that keep our people
and our country safe. It is about rewriting history and remaking
society to take us back decades, if not centuries. In short, it is
about making this country less free, less democratic, less pros-
perous, and, frankly, consolidating power under Trump and his al-
lies who are becoming increasingly dangerous, ideological, and, yes,
autocratic.
So, we have to be clear-eyed about what is actually going on be-
cause this Administration and its allies, if they are willing to arrest
and indict elected officials who are just doing their jobs, including
a U.S. Senator and a U.S. Congresswoman, what will they do if we
let them get away with it? We cannot and we will not remain si-
lent. We have to continue to speak up, to speak out, and continue
to stand together.
I yield back.
Ms. GREENE. Without objection, Representative Subramanyam of
Virginia is waived onto the Subcommittee for the purpose of ques-
tioning the witnesses at today’s Subcommittee hearing.
I am pleased to introduce our witnesses today. Matthew
Dickerson is the Director of Budget Policy at the Economic Policy
Innovation Center. He is recognized as an expert on fiscal policy
issues, including the budget, appropriations, and entitlement re-
form and served as a senior policy advisor on the House Budget
Committee.
David Burton is a Senior Fellow in Economic Policy at the Herit-
age Foundation’s Thomas A. Rowe Institute for Economic Policy
Studies. He is widely regarded for his deep knowledge in issues
such as entrepreneurship, financial privacy, tax matters, and regu-
latory and administrative law.
Dan Lips is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for American In-
novation. He has more than 20 years of experience in public policy,
including with the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. His
current work is focused on enhancing government efficiency.
Emily DiVito is the Senior Advisor for Economic Policy at
Groundwork Collaborative.
Again, I want to thank you for being here to testify today.
6

Pursuant to Committee Rule 9(g), the witnesses will please stand
and raise their right hand.
Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you are
about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth, so help you, God?
[Chorus of ayes.]
Ms. GREENE. Let the record show that the witnesses answered
in the affirmative.
Thank you, and you may take a seat.
We appreciate you being here today and look forward to your tes-
timony. Let me remind the witnesses that we have read your writ-
ten statement, and they will appear in full in the hearing record.
Please limit your oral statement to 5 minutes. As a reminder,
please press the button on the microphone in front of you so that
it is on and the Members can hear you. When you begin to speak,
the light in front of you will turn green. After 4 minutes, the light
will turn yellow. When the red light comes on, your 5 minutes have
expired, and we would ask that you please wrap it up.
I now recognize Mr. Dickerson for his opening statement.
STATEMENT OF MATTHEW DICKERSON
DIRECTOR OF BUDGET POLICY
THE ECONOMIC POLICY INNOVATION CENTER (EPIC)
Mr. DICKERSON. Chairwoman Greene, Ranking Member
Stansbury, and all the Members of the Committee, thank you so
much for inviting me to testify today.
The fiscal state of our Nation is deteriorating, and unsustainable
spending is the problem. Government spending that grows faster
than the economy is inherently unsustainable. That is just basic
math. Annual spending is now 50 percent higher than it was in
2019 before the pandemic. The national debt held by the public is
now equal to the size of the entire economy.
For context, in 1944, the year of D-Day and the Battle of the
Bulge, the debt as a percentage of GDP was 86 percent. After we
went into debt to save the world, the Federal budget and the debt
shrank while the economy grew in the post-World War II decades.
But on our current trajectory, the debt is only projected to keep
growing.
This growing debt risks evaporating the government’s fiscal
space, which is its capacity to borrow, without undermining debt
sustainability or risking a loss of market confidence. This fiscal
limit can be considered the government’s true debt limit.
The fiscal situation was made much worse by four years of reck-
less spending under the Biden Administration. The policies of the
Biden-Harris Administration increased Federal spending by $4.7
trillion over just four years, compared to the projections made by
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) immediately prior. Presi-
dent Biden’s executive actions added more than $2 trillion in
spending, without explicit approval from Congress. The Biden Ad-
ministration spent hundreds of billions of dollars transferring stu-
dent loan debt to the taxpayers from borrowers, they unilaterally
increased food stamp benefits, they gutted Medicaid eligibility
verification, and many other policies that increased spending.
7

The point of the American system of government, based on hun-
dreds of years of experience under the British crown, was to re-
strict the ability of the unilateral expenditure of funds. By assert-
ing the prerogative to spend the taxpayers’ money unilaterally
without authorization from Congress for this new spending, it can
be said that Biden attempted to act as a king.
In contrast, President Trump has focused on reducing taxpayer
costs and reducing the power of government. This is the whole
point of DOGE. Trump’s discretionary budget would multiply to
about $1.8 trillion of savings over the 10-year budget window, but
that is only if Congress implements and continues these common-
sense savings. And that is why it is so important that you are hold-
ing this hearing today, Madam Chairman, so thank you.
To paraphrase Madison in Federalist 58, the power to levy taxes
and provide spending authority and the power to withhold funds
from the executive, that is the most effective way for the elected
representatives of the American people to provide for the vital and
appropriate services of the Federal Government, as well as to pre-
vent abuse by the government using the people’s funds.
Congress has many tools at its disposal to carry out this vital re-
sponsibility. The most straightforward way to control waste, fraud,
and abuse is by controlling agency budgets in the annual appro-
priations process. You can reduce the size of the Federal bureauc-
racy. I estimate that reducing the Federal workforce by ten percent
would allow discretionary appropriations for salaries and other
benefits to be reduced by $559 to $608 billion over the next decade.
The scope of authorized agency activities should also be properly
limited. You can work with the Administration, as you are cur-
rently doing, to rescind unneeded, unobligated funds. And of
course, one of the most important tools at Congress’ disposal to
achieve budgetary savings is through the reconciliation process.
America’s current fiscal trajectory is unsustainable, but it is not
irreversible. DOGE has demonstrated that meaningful savings are,
in fact, achievable. By exercising its constitutional power of the
purse, controlling appropriations, implementing workforce reforms,
rescissions, and reconciliation, Congress can lock in the DOGE
cuts, safeguard taxpayers, and avert a fiscal crisis.
Thank you, and I yield back.
Ms. GREENE. The gentleman yields.
I now recognize Mr. Burton for his opening statement. Mr. Bur-
ton?
Mr. BURTON. Oh, excuse me.
Ms. GREENE. Can you turn it on, thank you.
Mr. BURTON. I apologize.
Ms. GREENE. And make sure when you talk, your microphone is
close to your mouth.
Mr. BURTON. Yes.
Ms. GREENE. Yes, thank you.
8
STATEMENT OF DAVID BURTON
SENIOR FELLOW IN ECONOMIC POLICY
THOMAS A. ROE INSTITUTE FOR ECONOMIC POLICY STUDIES
THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION
Mr. BURTON. President Trump deserves tremendous credit for es-
tablishing the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. It
is the first effort in a generation to provide comprehensive govern-
mentwide oversight of Federal spending and management. There
has been no similar effort since the 1990s during the Clinton Ad-
ministration. President Clinton and Speaker Gingrich controlled
Federal spending and improved government administration. Before
that, you have to go back to President Reagan’s Grace Commission
to observe anything similar.
Currently, the Federal Government, most assuredly, is not a
good steward of the tax dollars taken from hardworking Americans
and is poorly managed. It is time for that to change, and DOGE
is an important part of making that change. Under President Clin-
ton in 2000, Federal spending fell to 17.7 percent of GDP, the low-
est level since 1966. The Federal Government ran its last surplus
in Fiscal Year 2001, which began during President Clinton’s final
term. In Fiscal Year 2025, Federal spending is expected to be about
23.3 percent of GDP. Thus, the share the government now con-
sumes of the economy is 32 percent greater than it was under
President Clinton.
The budget deficit is expected to be six percent of GDP this Fis-
cal Year and continue at that level for a decade. The Federal debt
is now $29 trillion and is expected to increase to $52 trillion, or 119
percent of GDP, over the next decade. And it is projected to reach
a crushing 156 percent of GDP by 2025. In context, at the final
year of President Reagan, it was 39 percent, and the final year of
President Clinton’s term, it was 33 percent.
Federal Government is on an unsustainable path. The path will
lead to sustained suffering among the American people, economic
dislocation, and a declining standard of living unless Congress
changes that path. No matter what, it is going to end. It can either
end by making Congress make dramatic changes to the current fis-
cal path, or it can end in fiscal calamity.
DOGE represents an effort to return to fiscal sanity and mean-
ingfully alter our fiscal path. But DOGE, by itself, is not enough,
although it is a major step forward toward American renewal. Most
of the personnel reductions, grant reductions, and other forms initi-
ated by DOGE will not result in actual savings unless Congress
takes action through appropriations bills and the accompanying ex-
planatory statements. DOGE and the Administration can, within
certain limits, reprogram spending, implement administrative effi-
ciencies, and rely on statutes authorizing the withholding of ex-
penditures. But ultimately, the Congress is going to have to ad-
dress entitlements.
Let me talk for a second about improper payments. The GAO has
estimated since Fiscal Year 2003 improper payments have been
$2.8 trillion, which is nearly 1/10 of the national debt. In Fiscal
Year 2024, it was $162 billion from at least 16 different agencies,
and many commentators think these are gross underestimates.
This is a massive amount of money, and seemingly no one in the
9

executive branch cares or is able to solve this problem. Certainly,
that is a focus of what Congress and the Administration should be
about, and ultimately, if the Federal executives in charge of these
improper payments cannot change it, they need to be replaced.
Let me just talk for one second about the overall Federal situa-
tion and the need to address entitlement reforms. You could abol-
ish the entire Federal Government and all appropriated spending,
and it would not get rid of the Federal deficit, right? You could
abolish the Pentagon and each agency, and it will not get rid of the
Federal deficit. We need to address entitlement spending.
And there is a host of things that we can do. We can obviously
address the improper payment problem. We can also adjust the en-
titlement program, so they reflect tremendous increases in life ex-
pectancy since they were created. We can adjust it so that they no
longer are transferring hundreds of billions of dollars a year from
working young Americans to relatively wealthy old seniors. Pro-
grams can be consolidated, and that includes Social Security, Medi-
care, Obamacare, and the literally dozens of programs designed to
address poverty.
If these things are not done, then the United States will eventu-
ally suffer a Greek-style meltdown, inflation that will make our lat-
est round of inflation look like child’s play, or a gradual squeeze
like what happened to Great Britain in the 1960s and 1970s or
Japan.
Ms. GREENE. Mr. Burton?
Mr. BURTON. Thank you.
Ms. GREENE. We have got to wrap. Thank you. Thank you.
I now recognize Mr. Lips for his opening statement.
STATEMENT OF DAN LIPS
SENIOR FELLOW, FOUNDATION FOR AMERICAN INNOVATION
Mr. LIPS. Chairwoman Greene, Ranking Member Stansbury, and
Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to
testify. My name is Dan Lips, and I am a senior fellow with the
Foundation for American Innovation. Our mission is to advance
technology, talent, and policy ideas that support a freer and more
prosperous future.
Earlier in my career, I served on the staff of the Senate Home-
land Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where I
worked on bipartisan government reform legislation and oversight.
In my testimony, I offer you three points. First, the United
States is on an unsustainable fiscal path. The Treasury Depart-
ment and the Government Accountability Office have both warned
that our growing national debt poses serious economic, security,
and societal challenges. Last year, the Federal Government spent
$882 billion just on interest payments. That is more than it spent
on Medicare or national defense.
At the same time, the government is losing hundreds of billions
of dollars each year to fraud and waste. GAO has estimated that
the Federal Government annually loses between $233 billion and
$521 billion due to fraud. That is up to $4,000 per American house-
hold per year. And as we just heard, last year, the Federal Govern-
ment reported making $162 billion in improper payments. And over
the last four years, improper payments totaled more than $900 bil-
10

lion. Better oversight and financial controls could save hundreds of
billions of dollars every year.
Second, the Trump Administration’s focus on government effi-
ciency builds on decades of bipartisan government reform efforts.
From the Reagan Administration’s Grace Commission to the Clin-
ton-Gore National Performance Review to President Obama’s fiscal
responsibility initiatives, including a 2009 executive order that ini-
tiated Treasury’s Do Not Pay system, there is a history and a bi-
partisan tradition of executive action to root out inefficiency in the
Federal Government.
President Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency is
working to reduce Federal spending, shrink the size of the Federal
workforce, and streamline operations. DOGE has already identified
$180 billion in savings and reduced regulatory burdens by elimi-
nating over 1.7 million words from the Federal code. The Adminis-
tration has also issued several executive orders informed by
DOGE’s efforts, such as to reduce fraud and improper payments by
centralizing payment systems under the Treasury Department and
modernizing financial transactions. But the executive branch can-
not do this work alone, which brings me to my final point.
Congress should use its legislative and appropriations powers to
implement lasting reforms to increase government efficiency and
reduce waste, fraud, and abuse. And this should be a bipartisan ef-
fort. Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs Committee, where I used to work, have a tradition of pass-
ing bipartisan government reform legislation.
For example, bipartisan legislation has been enacted and intro-
duced in the past to reduce improper payments and prevent fraud.
Key reforms to strengthen the Treasury Department’s Do Not Pay
system, consistent with President Trump’s executive orders, have
been included in recent bills sponsored by Democratic and Repub-
lican lawmakers. These reforms would serve as a good starting
point for legislation aimed at improving government efficiency.
In my testimony, I discuss other opportunities for government re-
form legislation that could achieve substantial savings. For exam-
ple, GAO has identified more than 200 open recommendations for
Congress and more than 5,000 open recommendations for Federal
agencies. These are nonpartisan good-government reforms. If ad-
dressed, the Federal Government could save hundreds of billions of
dollars.
More broadly, Congress should consider creating an annual legis-
lative vehicle, similar to the National Defense Authorization Act,
which moves every year, focused specifically on government reform.
This would ensure consistent legislative oversight and give the
American people’s Representatives greater input into ongoing re-
forms to government operations.
In closing, improving government efficiency should not be a par-
tisan issue. It is a fiscal necessity. The 119th Congress has a his-
toric opportunity to reduce waste, prevent fraud, end misspending,
and begin addressing our long-term fiscal challenges.
Thank you, again, for the opportunity to testify. I look forward
to your questions.
11

Ms. GREENE. I now recognize Ms. DiVito for her opening state-
ment.
STATEMENT OF EMILY DIVITO (MINORITY WITNESS)
SENIOR ADVISOR FOR ECONOMIC POLICY
GROUNDWORK COLLABORATIVE
Ms. DIVITO. Chairwoman Greene, Ranking Member Stansbury,
and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity
to testify today. My name is Emily DiVito, and I am the Senior Ad-
visor for Economic Policy at Groundwork Collaborative, an eco-
nomic thinktank based in Washington, D.C. I have previously
served as a policy advisor at the Treasury Department.
Americans deserve a government that works for them, a govern-
ment that makes their lives easier. By that standard, DOGE has
failed. It has led to higher costs and more confusion and com-
plexity. It has undermined consumer protections for families, all
while the ambitious savings Elon Musk promised failed to mate-
rialize.
Americans are not impressed with these results. Consistent poll-
ing shows strong disapproval of DOGE and deep concerns about
the haphazard and reckless cuts DOGE is making across the Fed-
eral Government. Americans also believe, as do I, that the govern-
ment can do more to deliver for workers and families. As the Sub-
committee considers the future of DOGE and improving govern-
ment efficiency and accountability, I would like to highlight several
ways DOGE has done the opposite.
First, DOGE cuts make it harder and more expensive for families
to access the basic needs programs for which they are eligible.
DOGE’s interventions at the Social Security Administration have
disrupted access to critical monthly benefits for the nearly 74 mil-
lion Americans, including 52 million retirees who rely on them.
New policies, such as restrictions on updating bank account infor-
mation by phone, will force seniors to collectively spend over one
million hours annually on unnecessary travel just to receive bene-
fits. Staff departures increase the risk of system outages, and bene-
ficiaries face longer wait times and poorer service at understaffed
field offices.
The Department of Veterans Affairs, which serves over nine mil-
lion veterans annually, has also seen interrupted service. The im-
pact of DOGE firings and buyout initiatives has been devastating.
One rural Illinois hospital was forced to close its acute care unit
due to nurse resignations. Orlando-area veterans faced a backlog of
over 2,000 unread radiology exams, and over 1,000 veterans in
Pennsylvania were denied treatment for life-threatening diseases
like cancer.
Additionally, sweeping cuts are degrading consumer protection
safeguards and empowering bad actors. DOGE has targeted the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has put over $21 bil-
lion back into the pockets of more than 200 million consumers
since its founding. Eliminating this key consumer protection agen-
cy will enable exploitative companies and financial firms to profit
at the expense of consumers.
DOGE has also gutted the IRS enforcement teams that ensure
billionaires and corporations pay their fair share. As of early
12

March, the IRS has lost 11 percent of its total workforce and 31
percent of the revenue agents who conduct audits. This is projected
to reduce U.S. revenue up to $350 billion over ten years.
Further, the Federal science enterprise is being stripped of the
tools and talent needed to develop and deliver the next generation
of lifesaving treatments. Recent estimates suggest that DOGE’s se-
vere cuts to scientific research funding will reduce GDP and overall
Federal revenues well into the future by inhibiting innovation. Per-
manently cutting non-defense research and development funding
by 50 percent could decrease GDP in the long run by at least seven
percent and Federal revenues by more than eight percent.
Finally, DOGE’s funding disruptions to U.S. aid and global
health programs have already caused widespread deaths. Esti-
mates suggest that the abrupt termination of public health pro-
grams will be responsible for over 360,000 deaths, including
200,000 children.
DOGE did not generate the $2 trillion in efficiencies that Elon
Musk initially called for or even the $180 billion figure that it now
claims. Credible analysis shows that canceled contracts, service
cuts, and layoffs may have saved as little as $12 to $15 billion
while total Federal spending actually increased year over year.
Now that Musk has made his exit, it is clear that DOGE did not
deliver more efficiency, just poorer service.
Congress is at a crossroads. It can learn from DOGE’s mistakes,
redirect, and get back to the important work of ensuring govern-
ment works for people and not special interests, or Congress can
double down on DOGE, cementing the harms that it has caused to
families, communities, and our economy. For me, the choice is
clear. I encourage leaders in Congress to put this dark episode be-
hind us and deliver a government that works for working families.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
Ms. GREENE. I now recognize myself for 5 minutes of questions.
The DOGE website details much of the wasteful spending it hits
the brakes on, and it has an incredible list of top hits. Some of the
spending is not just embarrassing, but it is funding actually the
genital mutilation of our children, forcing the American taxpayers
to pay for it. A $620,000 Health and Human Services (HHS) grant
for hashtag ‘‘transcendent health,’’ adapting an LGBT+ inclusive
teen prevention program for transgender boys. $620,000 from HHS.
It is absurd. This is disgusting, and it facilitates a lie.
Here is another one. A $2,000 National Institutes of Health
(NIH) grant for cross-sex steroid therapy and cardiovascular risk in
transgender females. This is another absurd grant that was handed
out. A $120,000 NIH grant for personalized 3D avatar tool develop-
ment for measurement of body perception across gender identities.
Here is another absurd grant that, again, tells the lie that there
is more than two genders. There are only two, male and female.
That is it.
Something else that the American people should know about,
these radical extremist judges that are playing politics from the
bench, a judge ruled that this has to be protected. This is an HHS
program for gender-affirming care in young people. Again, the only
thing that affirms gender is the fact that there are only two sexes,
13

male and female, and the American people should never have to
pay for that lie.
Ms. DiVito, in your testimony, you talk about so-called failures
of DOGE, in your opinion, but do you support the Federal Govern-
ment funding HHS and NIH studies that promote the genital muti-
lation of children? Do you support forcing Americans to pay for
genital mutilation of children? Yes or no, Ms. DiVito.
Ms. DIVITO. Thank you for your question. I think we all agree
that the government should work for people.
Ms. GREENE. No, I asked you do you support genital mutilation
of children and the American people having to pay for it. That is
a yes or no question.
Ms. DIVITO. I think government research is responsible for all
sorts of innovations that we employ today.
Ms. GREENE. So, for the record, you do support the American
people paying for top and bottom surgeries of children?
Ms. DIVITO. I think——
Ms. GREENE. Cutting off the breasts of young girls, teenage girls,
and castrating teenage boys, you support the American people pay-
ing for that?
Ms. DIVITO. I think government research is incredibly important
to our overall innovation.
Ms. GREENE. That is not research, Ms. DiVito. That is mutilating
kids’ bodies before they are old enough to vote, before they are old
enough to join the military, before they are old enough to even be
adults. That is what you are saying the American people should
pay for.
Just so you know, Ms. DiVito—and I am very proud to announce
that I have a bill called Protect Children’s Innocence Act that will
criminalize sex changes on children, and that bill will see a vote
on the House floor, and I look forward to my Republican colleagues,
and hopefully Democrats that come to their senses, voting yes for
that bill because it is absolutely repulsive and disgusting, and
America voted against that this past election. Sick.
Mr. Dickerson, how do we implement cuts and appropriations
moving forward to prevent these agencies from ever being able to
fund these studies that promote the mutilation of children’s bodies
ever again?
Mr. DICKERSON. I think what you need to do is ensure those rid-
ers are included in the appropriations bills that are passed to clar-
ify to the agencies that even though they have never actually re-
ceived authorization for these, so they should not have actually
done it in the first place, but if they need that funding rider to re-
strict American taxpayer funds for going to those terribly divisive
and harmful things.
Ms. GREENE. Yes, permanently, right?
Mr. DICKERSON. Exactly.
Ms. GREENE. Thank you. Other egregious abuses of funds, a $10
million Department of Education grant to the Virginia Common-
wealth University for faculty workshops on decolonizing the cur-
riculum. A nearly $700,000 National Science Foundation grant to
the University of Tennessee for Black and Latinx parents leading
reform and advancing racial justice in elementary mathematics, a
project that can provide a model for other communities and schools
14

seeking to advance racial justice in mathematics and education.
This is insane, absurd, and it is racist in itself. Math is math.
A $500,000 EPA grant, green jobs, growing a new generation of
environmental justice problem solvers. All of this stuff is far left
ideology, and the American people should not be paying for it.
It looks like my time is up, so with that, I will yield to the Rank-
ing Member Stansbury for 5 minutes.
Ms. STANSBURY. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
As we get started here, we would like to show a brief video.
Ms. STANSBURY. Now, I want to start by describing what we just
saw there. For any of the American people out there who have not
seen this video yet, that is United States Senator Alex Padilla
being handcuffed in a Federal building after self-identifying as a
United States Senator at a Cabinet Secretary’s DHS public press
conference. This happened two weeks ago.
A few days later, they tried to arrest a New York city official in
a Federal courthouse. A few days after that, there was a politically
motivated assassination of a state legislator in Minnesota. This is
not normal. This is the sign of an authoritarian approach to gov-
ernance that is threatening our democracy and our people.
So, we can sit here today and debate government efficiency. We
can sit here and listen to lies from both our colleagues and from
witnesses about what has been done by former and current admin-
istrations. But what is happening in this country right now is not
normal. What they are trying to do through the budget is not nor-
mal. The rescissions package that they are trying to shove down
your throats right now, with $9 billion in cuts, is not normal.
It is not the programs that they are describing. They want to dis-
mantle the United Nations. They want to defund NATO. They
want to defund programs that keep children fed across the world.
They are trying to defund programs that have saved literally hun-
dreds of thousands of lives of people in countries across the planet.
And we just heard witnesses here just a few moments ago say
that they are not satisfied with what they have already done and
the damages that they are already doing. They want to go after en-
titlement programs. That means your Social Security. That means
Medicare. That means they are going to come for your programs,
the programs that are lifesaving, that sustain people as they age,
the lifesaving programs that make it possible for people with dis-
abilities to live with dignity in this country. They are coming for
those programs.
So, we are not going to sit here and pretend like what is hap-
pening in this hearing is normal at a time when this Administra-
tion is using DOGE to enact an ideological agenda against the
American people while they are out there trying to arrest U.S. Sen-
ators and Members of Congress because this is not okay. This is
not okay.
We all agree the government should be more efficient. We all
agree that we should cut waste. We all agree that there should be
bipartisan pathways forward to make the government operate in a
modern manner. But that is not what this enterprise is all about.
This enterprise is about consolidating power and endangering the
lives of people that they disagree with, including people who ask
questions, doing their jobs in public settings. And if they will do
15

that to a United States Senator, what will they do to the rest of
us?
So, we are not going to sit here today and normalize this behav-
ior. We are just not. We are just not going to do that.
And with that, I yield back.
Ms. GREENE. I strongly support law enforcement for protecting
the Secretary of Homeland. I would not recognize Senator Padilla
if he walked in this room.
I now recognize Mr. Timmons from South Carolina for 5 minutes.
Mr. TIMMONS. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
We have $37 trillion in debt. We have a $1.8 trillion annual def-
icit. The fact that this is a partisan issue and the fact that my col-
leagues across the aisle are not taking this seriously is really frus-
trating. It is really, really frustrating.
We have not even talked about Social Security, which goes into
austerity measures. My constituents and your constituents all over
this country will receive 21 percent less if we do not save Social
Security. These are just facts. This is just math. So, we have to do
our job here. We have to do our job here.
And some of the most important work DOGE has done in the last
six months is just simply on increasing transparency. Their website
shows the public how taxpayer funds are actually being distributed
and justified on a daily basis. The DOGE initiative has shown that
enhanced payment tracking and upfront verification can eliminate
billions in waste. And we must make these practices standard, not
exceptional.
Tens of billions of dollars are lost each year to improper pay-
ments across Medicaid, unemployment insurance, SNAP, housing
assistance, and more. Most people do not realize that there are 17
means-tested social safety nets that total more than $1.5 trillion in
annual government spending. And a good portion of these are im-
proper payments, and it is simply due to lax or outdated income
verification processes.
So, all these different social safety nets that we appropriately
provide to Americans, they require that you have an income
threshold that you do not meet. And we tell the states that they
have leeway in how to do that, but it is a patchwork framework,
and it is all antiquated. Certain states require paystubs, W–2s,
other income documents to the IRS. It is just simply not enough.
This is 2025. Technology can solve this problem.
We should be leveraging all income sources, in real time and con-
tinuously, to verify eligibility for Federal benefit programs, no more
pay-and-chase, no more hoping the paperwork matches up months
later, and no more guesswork. Shockingly, in the Big Beautiful Bill,
the House proposal to simply require states to confirm eligibility
twice a year instead of only once resulted in $11 billion in savings.
What if we confirmed income eligibility in real time?
That is why I introduced H.R. 1755, the Timely and Accurate
Benefits Act, or TABS Act, to require states to adopt enhanced in-
come verification across their Federal benefits programs to get peo-
ple the benefits they deserve faster and to stop payments to those
who no longer qualify, immediately.
Now let us zoom out. Income verification is one example of a
broader problem. Federal agencies are swimming in waste, fraud,
16

abuse, and redundancy, and thanks to DOGE, we now have a pub-
lic-facing receipt book of over $180 billion in identified savings.
From unnecessary grants to absurd leases to Federal offices with
no measurable output, DOGE is shining a light on the insane bloat
of our frivolous spending. And again, this is critical work that must
be done. We have $37 trillion in debt and run a $1.8 trillion annual
deficit. Our social safety nets will fail if we do not make appro-
priate changes to save them.
Mr. Lips, DOGE is attempting to overcome barriers to data shar-
ing among and within agencies to enhance fraud detection. Isn’t
the inability to cross-check data bases a problem historically in
identifying fraudsters?
Mr. LIPS. Absolutely, and thank you for the question, Congress-
man. It is important to look at the history around improper pay-
ments. There was an executive order issued by President Obama
establishing the Do Not Pay system that the Treasury Department
has been using to try and increase verification and tighten controls
over Federal payments. But that was more than 15 years ago, and
we have seen hundreds of billions of dollars in improper payments
reported annually over those past 15 years.
It is important to know that the Treasury Department has been
asking for help, asking for the ability to share information. A long
time ago, the Social Security Administration could not share infor-
mation about deceased Americans with the Treasury Department.
That stopped for a few years. They can now do that. There is a lot
more that can be done to share information between agencies to
stop fraud and prevent improper payments. There have been bills
introduced both in the Senate and the House to do that, bills by
Republican Members and Democratic Members.
Mr. TIMMONS. I am running out of time.
Mr. LIPS. Sorry.
Mr. TIMMONS. Let me finish. So, this is not a ‘‘maybe.’’ This is
a ‘‘must’’ piece of legislation. We cannot continue down this path.
My bill came from a Missouri pilot program that resulted in 17 per-
cent savings. Seventeen percent of just Medicaid is $140 billion an-
nually, annually. Seventeen percent across all social safety nets
that are means-tested is $250 billion. We are running out of time.
We have got to pass these pieces of legislation. We have got to use
technology to make sure that we are being efficient with our tax
dollars.
With that, Madam Chair, I yield back.
Ms. GREENE. The gentleman yields.
I now recognize Ms. Norton of Washington, D.C., for 5 minutes.
Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Federal workers are essential not just to the fabric of the District
of Columbia but to the functioning of the Federal Government and,
in turn, to the well-being of every American. Federal workers make
sure that Social Security checks go out on time. They provide
healthcare to our veterans. They make sure planes land safely.
They make sure food and drinking water is safe. Their work is crit-
ical to the functioning of the government and making sure people,
families, and communities get the services and resources they need.
The so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s gutting of
the workforce has meant the senseless, tragic, and irreparable loss
17

of more than 100,000 public servants so far, each of whom has had
their own life upended. Ms. DiVito, what do we lose when we push
qualified experts out of their roles serving the American people?
Ms. DIVITO. Thank you for the question, Congresswoman.
DOGE’s widespread staff cuts represent a huge loss of potential
and talent from the Federal workforce. As you said, many of these
workers are located in D.C., but most are not. They are the people
who make sure food is safe to eat, that Medicaid applications are
processed in a timely way, that Social Security benefit checks go
out the door. So far, we have lost thousands of these workers, and
their loss is devastating not just to the communities in which they
live and serve, but to the American public as a whole.
Ms. NORTON. And Ms. DiVito, what are the effects of the Depart-
ment of Government Efficiency driving early career employees from
Federal service?
Ms. DIVITO. Young and probationary employees are people who,
by definition, are just tending to start out in their careers in public
service. Some of them might have had decades ahead of them dedi-
cated to making sure that the government works for people, and
DOGE firing probationary employees guts a generation of that tal-
ent from the workforce.
Ms. NORTON. President Trump is also working to steadily politi-
cize the Federal workforce by attacking civil service protections, re-
placing nonpartisan Federal employees with partisan loyalists, by
reclassifying Federal positions as political jobs, and introducing loy-
alty tests to the Federal hiring process. Ms. DiVito, how does the
gutting and politicization of the Federal workforce hurt everyday
people, reduce access to the services and protections they are enti-
tled to, and generally harm committees?
Ms. DIVITO. For the government to work for people, it needs peo-
ple, workers, behind the scenes making sure that all of the vital
functions of the Federal Government are happening in a timely
manner that best serves the population. When you gut the Federal
workforce, you obviously lose that talent. You undermine the re-
sources, programs, functions of the Federal Government, and politi-
cizing certain agencies undermines the overall effect of those agen-
cies, so you see a lot more politicization of things like apolitical reg-
ulators, people who are trained and focused on making sure that
they are serving the interests of the public and not one particular
person or administration.
Ms. NORTON. In April, Department of Government Efficiency offi-
cials, including a 25-year-old with no Federal Government experi-
ence, recklessly purged 15,000 employees of the Consumer Finan-
cial Protection Bureau. That is about 90 percent of the Agency’s
workforce, which had been dedicated to protecting Americans from
deceptive and abusive financial practices like predatory lending.
Ms. DiVito, what impact does the hollowing out of the civil service
from Federal Government agencies and regulatory bodies like the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have on consumers and the
broader economy?
Ms. DIVITO. The CFPB and other financial regulators do not just
make sure that consumer interests are protected, but they keep the
economy stable. They keep our financial system safe and secure,
and that benefits businesses and families across the country.
18

Ms. GREENE. The gentlelady’s time has expired.
I now recognize Mr. Burlison from Missouri for 5 minutes.
Mr. BURLISON. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, every-
one, for being here today. I, like everyone, my constituents, are fed
up with watching Washington squander their money on frivolous
programs and bloated bureaucracies, which is why the Department
of Government Efficiency was the most exciting thing that when I
went back home and talked to constituents about, it is the most ex-
citing thing that was happening with this Administration.
And look, this is an example of what private sector can do when
it is evaluating a bloated public sector system that seems to be re-
sistant to everything. When I spoke with Mr. Musk, I warned him.
I said, you know, this place is a swamp for a reason, and you can-
not rely on the politicians and the people in this town to help you
in evaluating or determining places to cut. They will only deliver
what they want, right? There is a reason why Congress, it being
in our hands, we are at $37 trillion in debt, and we have all of
these wasted expenditures.
So, Mr. Dickerson, I am going to ask you three the same ques-
tion. If you had anything to say to the DOGE efforts, to the DOGE
team, and to Mr. Musk, what would you say?
Mr. DICKERSON. I would say keep up the—it has been a good
start so far, and keep up the good work.
Mr. BURLISON. Mr. Burton.
Mr. BURTON. Excuse me. I think there is a need for them to get
beyond just canceling grants and starting to work with you to draft
legislation to make these changes permanent. If Congress ulti-
mately does not act, either through appropriations bills or rescis-
sions, it is going to be ephemeral. There is also the need to make
changes on the regulatory front. There is need to change various
secretary directives. They need to take it to the next step to bring
it home, and they have not done that.
Mr. BURLISON. Thank you. Mr. Lips.
Mr. LIPS. I agree with that point. I think the most important
thing they could do now would be to work with the Members of this
Committee and the Congress on government efficiency reforms,
many of which I think should have broad support among law-
makers.
Mr. BURLISON. Ms. DiVito, let me ask you this. You have seen
a lot of the DOGE cuts in the programs. Is there a single one that
you would have agreed with, a single one?
Ms. DIVITO. Part of the problem, I think, with DOGE——
Mr. BURLISON. The answer is yes or no. Do not eat up my time.
Is there a single one that you would have agreed with?
Ms. DIVITO. I do not think there is a yes or no answer to that
question.
Mr. BURLISON. Okay. Well, I am not going to waste my time. I
want to dive into Mr. Burton and what you said. So, the question
is what should happen to force Congress to actually make these
cuts that have been identified?
Mr. BURTON. Congress needs to legislate, and it has not been. I
mean, the GAO has made countless proposals. The improper pay-
ments have been around for decades and literally involve trillions
of dollars. No one has fixed that. That is one of the few things,
19

though, that the Administration has the ability, through adminis-
trative changes, to do on their own because they are legally re-
quired not to spend that money, and yet it is going on. Congress
needs to appropriate the appropriators. There needs to be changes
in the authorizing committee. A lot of the grants that the Chair-
woman was referencing could be prohibited through authorizing
legislation. Congress needs to legislate, and at some level, it sort
of has forgotten how to do so.
Mr. BURLISON. Do you think that we could?
Mr. BURTON. Yes.
Mr. BURLISON. You do?
Mr. BURTON. In fact, I am old enough to remember when you
guys did.
Mr. BURLISON. Well, I may be just above being black-pilled at
this point, so you are giving me a little bit of hope here. But, Mr.
Dickerson, if you could make one significant change, what would be
the most significant change or policy change that we could do that
would save taxpayers’ dollars?
Mr. DICKERSON. I think one of the most important things you can
do is exactly what you are doing in the One Big Beautiful Bill rec-
onciliation package, which is reform our welfare programs that lit-
erally pay people to stay out of the workforce and have the entirely
the wrong disincentives so that we can actually preserve benefits
for people who are actually needy, right? Things like income
verification that Mr. Timmons was talking about, that is so essen-
tial to do.
Mr. BURLISON. Mr. Lips, if you could change one thing, if we
passed one thing, what would we do?
Mr. LIPS. I would recommend strengthening the Do Not Pay data
that is available to the Treasury Department. This is a bipartisan
measure that could be, I think, passed through the House and Sen-
ate. It would provide access to Treasury to stop improper payments
and end fraud.
Mr. BURLISON. Thank you. I yield back.
Ms. GREENE. The gentleman’s time has expired.
I now recognize Mr. Casar from Texas for 5 minutes.
Mr. CASAR. Good morning. Today, Republicans have called this
DOGE hearing called ‘‘Locking in the DOGE Cuts: Ending Waste,
Fraud and Abuse for Good,’’ and I am deeply concerned about the
cuts that DOGE has made to services for our veterans.
So, I want to ask our pro-DOGE witnesses today some questions
about those cuts. So, Mr. Lips, ProPublica reported that DOGE
cuts have stalled lifesaving clinical trials for our veterans with
head and neck cancer, otherwise known as throat cancer. Can you
tell me, are lifesaving clinical trials for our veterans waste or are
they fraud or are they abuse?
Mr. LIPS. I think that is an area of government that is certainly
vital and that there is many things that can be done to improve
VA services. I do not know all that DOGE has done for the VA, and
I think that if there is anywhere where you could repurpose funds
from these wastes that we are talking about, hundreds of billions
of dollars misspent——
Mr. CASAR. But if they cut the clinical trials that are helping our
veterans with throat cancer, do you agree with those cuts?
20

Mr. LIPS. No.
Mr. CASAR. Thank you. Mr. Dickerson, leaked documents re-
vealed that a VA hospital in rural Illinois was just forced to close
its acute care unit to new patients due to the DOGE cuts. Can you
tell me, is closing the doors of a VA acute care unit waste or is it
fraud or is it abuse?
Mr. DICKERSON. I do not know all the details about that par-
ticular instance, but I think that——
Mr. CASAR. Would you say it is a big problem if DOGE cuts cause
the closing of an acute care facility in a VA hospital?
Mr. DICKERSON. Like I said, I think if funding that facility is a
priority, we are running a $2 trillion annual deficit——
Mr. CASAR. I think it is a priority.
Mr. DICKERSON [continuing]. So, we can repurpose funds to
something if it is a priority.
Mr. CASAR. So, you think that if it is not a priority, that it is
waste?
Mr. DICKERSON. I think that is for Congress and the Administra-
tion to work together to determine.
Mr. CASAR. Exactly. It is for Congress to work on, and the Ad-
ministration should not be calling our acute care veterans facilities
waste and closing the doors of an acute care facility without Con-
gress. And frankly, it is a priority, I believe, of the American people
to care for our veterans.
Mr. Burton, Trump recently eliminated the VA Services Pur-
chasing [sic] program, which just last year helped more than
33,000 veterans make sure that they do not get behind on their
mortgage and they do not get thrown out of their home. Can you
tell me, is this program that DOGE cut, is it waste, is it fraud, or
is it abuse?
Mr. BURTON. That is highly fact-dependent, and I am not that fa-
miliar with that program. I will tell you one thing about——
Mr. CASAR. And I will tell you, Mr. Burton——
Mr. BURTON. Yes.
Mr. CASAR [continuing]. I am familiar with it. It helped 33,000
of our veterans not lose their homes. And in my view, our veterans
are not waste, fraud, or abuse, nor are they a piggybank for billion-
aires’ tax cuts like Elon Musk. And so——
Mr. BURTON. I doubt anyone thinks that.
Mr. CASAR. This is my time, Mr. Burton.
Mr. BURTON. Yes, fine.
Mr. CASAR. I am deeply concerned that President Trump will
take reckless action to risk sending more American troops into end-
less wars in the Middle East. But back at home, he is breaking the
sacred promise to our veterans to care for them when and if they
come back.
Donald Trump has already tried to fire thousands of people at
the VA, and recent reporting shows that there are plans to try to
fire 80,000 people at the VA. These reckless DOGE cuts have
thrown VA hospitals into chaos, and in my own district, I have got-
ten reports of veterans waiting months for basic services like a
wheelchair.
I represent San Antonio, Texas, military city USA, where we
honor the service of our men and women in uniform. And if we
21

want to honor our veterans, we honor it with more than just words.
We take actions to care for them when they come home. We do not
needlessly send people into harm’s way, and we do not cut their
services for when they come home. This Committee should not be
holding hearings on locking in DOGE cuts. We should be holding
hearings about restoring services for our veterans.
And while DOGE is screwing over our veterans, the Administra-
tion is also stealing from seniors. We just learned about a huge
new scandal that every senior in America needs to hear about.
After Trump and Musk made massive cuts to the staff at the Social
Security Administration, they have scrubbed government websites
of information about how long it takes to get your phone call an-
swered. They have erased from the websites the delays that it
takes to process benefit claims. They have wiped away what used
to be publicly available about how long it takes to respond to a 1–
800 call at the Social Security Administration. This is a coverup.
And why are they covering it up? Because wait times have ex-
ploded. A brave whistleblower just estimated that Trump’s changes
and Elon Musk’s cuts have doubled the amount of time it takes to
process a Social Security claim. Everybody needs to hear about it.
Social Security is not Elon Musk’s piggybank. I yield back.
Ms. GREENE. The gentleman yields.
Ms. STANSBURY. Madam Chair?
Ms. GREENE. No one loves veterans more than President Trump,
and he is made that apparent. That is why he is working for peace.
Ms. STANSBURY. Madam Chair?
Ms. GREENE. Right now——
Ms. STANSBURY. Madam Chairman, I mean, it is not your time
right now.
Ms. GREENE. I am the Chair of this Committee.
Ms. STANSBURY. That is not how——
Ms. GREENE. I am the Chair.
Ms. STANSBURY [continuing]. Parliamentary procedure works,
Madam Chairwoman.
Ms. GREENE. You are not recognized, Ms. Stanbury. You are not
recognized.
Ms. STANSBURY. You are not recognized either. You cannot just
speak any time you want. That is not how the——
Ms. GREENE. I am the Chair of this Committee.
Ms. STANSBURY. That is not how it works, Madam.
Ms. GREENE. Ms. Stansbury, you are not recognized.
Ms. STANSBURY. Madam Chairwoman, that is not how par-
liamentary—you can smash your gavel——
Ms. GREENE. Ms. Stansbury, you are not recognized.
Ms. STANSBURY [continuing]. All day, but that is not how par-
liamentary inquiry works.
Ms. GREENE. Ms. Stansbury, you are not recognized.
Ms. STANSBURY. We are going to get you a Robert’s Rules of
Order and put it in——
Ms. GREENE. Ms. Stansbury, you are not recognized.
Ms. STANSBURY. [continuing]. The Committee so that you can——
Mr. LYNCH. Point of order.
Ms. GREENE. Ms. Stansbury, you are not recognized.
Ms. STANSBURY [continuing]. So that you can understand——
22

Mr. LYNCH. Point of order.
Ms. STANSBURY [continuing]. Parliamentary procedure.
Ms. GREENE. Point of order.
Ms. STANSBURY. Okay.
Mr. LYNCH. Point of order.
Ms. STANSBURY. All right. Madam Chair, calm down. Let us
move on.
Ms. GREENE. Ms. Stansbury, you are not recognized.
Point of order.
Mr. LYNCH. Madam——
Ms. CROCKETT. Madam Chair, I have got a—oh, I am sorry, you
had a point of order.
Mr. LYNCH. So——
Ms. CROCKETT. Go ahead.
Mr. LYNCH. Madam Chair, can we decide who is going to speak
first, and when we are going.
Ms. GREENE. Absolutely. I am the Chair of this committee, and
Mr. Gill——
Mr. LYNCH. I know that, but——
Ms. GREENE. Mr. Gill from Texas is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. LYNCH. There you go.
Ms. CROCKETT. But, Madam Chair, I had unanimous consent I
was trying to——
Ms. GREENE. Without objection.
Ms. CROCKETT. Thank you so much. This is from Citizens for Re-
sponsible Reporting [sic]. ‘‘DOGE’S big illusion, the heavy cost of
Trump administration’s so-called cuts.’’
I have another one. ‘‘Trump Administration scrambles to rehire
key Federal workers after DOGE firing.’’ That is four hours ago.
I have another one. ‘‘How will we know if DOGE is succeeding?’’
I have another one. ‘‘How the Trump Administration’s DOGE
cuts are harming women.’’
I have another one. ‘‘How Trump’s DOGE cuts package could put
GOP in a bind.’’
I have more, but I will do them later. Thank you.
Ms. GREENE. Without objection, so ordered.
I now recognize Mr. Gill from Texas for 5 minutes.
Mr. GILL. Thank you, Madam Chair. It never gets boring in here.
I would like to say thank you to the witnesses for being here and
for taking the time.
Ms. DiVito, thank you for coming here. In your testimony, you
said that Americans deserve a government that works for them, a
government that makes their lives easier and more secure. Is that
correct?
Ms. DIVITO. Yes, sir.
Mr. GILL. Great. I would like to read through a couple of the
grants that DOGE has pulled back, and I would like to get your
take on them. They pulled back a $1.5 million NIH grant to More-
house College. It was called ‘‘the center to advance reproductive
justice and behavioral health among Black pregnant/postpartum
women and birthing people.’’ Do you think that that makes Ameri-
cans’ lives easier and more secure?
Ms. DIVITO. I think that medical and scientific research of all
types——
23

Mr. GILL. Do you think that that constitutes critical research?
According to your testimony, NIH grants are critical research.
Ms. DIVITO. I think that government research of all types in the
medical——
Mr. GILL. Including birthing people?
Ms. DIVITO. I think bench research of all types plays a funda-
mental role——
Mr. GILL. What is a birthing person?
Ms. DIVITO. Sir, I am here to talk about the DOGE impacts to
working families.
Mr. GILL. I am asking you about this grant, and you are defend-
ing it. So, I am asking you, who is birthing people?
Ms. DIVITO. I am not familiar with this grant. I take a position
that all kinds of government research—medical, pharma-
ceutical——
Mr. GILL. Is a birthing person a woman?
Ms. DIVITO [continuing]. Biological——
Mr. GILL. Is that another word for female?
Ms. DIVITO. That is outside the scope of my expertise.
Mr. GILL. Seems like erasure language to me. I have been told
that that type of vernacular constitutes erasure language.
How about another one? How about the conference, ‘‘Gender eq-
uity in the mathematical study of commutative algebra?’’ Do you
think that that is a valid form of government spending?
Ms. DIVITO. I think mathematical research of all types is deserv-
ing of government——
Mr. GILL. What about studying—and this is directly from the Na-
tional Science Foundation’s website—women and non-binary math-
ematicians?
Ms. DIVITO. Again, I think all kinds of government investment
should be dedicated toward mathematical, scientific——
Mr. GILL. All kinds of government investment. You do not have
any kind of limit on what we are spending our money on, just ev-
erything? Is that your testimony?
Ms. DIVITO. I am talking about DOGE. You brought up a grant.
Mr. GILL. So am I. This is a grant that DOGE cut.
Ms. DIVITO. I am not familiar with this particular grant, but I
think government investment in mathematical, biological——
Mr. GILL. Okay. Let us do another one. This one is called
‘‘Hashtag: Transcendent Health, adapting an LGB+ inclusive teen
pregnancy prevention program for transgender boys.’’ I cannot even
say this without laughing. Do you think that that is a, you know,
useful form of our tax spend?
Ms. DIVITO. I am not familiar with that grant, but I think bench
research, government investment in scientific and pharmaceutical
research——
Mr. GILL. Teen pregnancy for transgender boys, do you think
that that is a useful spend of our tax dollars?
Ms. DIVITO. I think government investment in all kinds of sci-
entific research is of the utmost importance.
Mr. GILL. Including pregnancy prevention for transgender boys.
Okay. Let me ask you—we can come back to this later, maybe. Do
you support abolishing the filibuster still?
Ms. DIVITO. I am here to talk about DOGE, respectfully.
24

Mr. GILL. Right. We could abolish the filibuster and get a lot of
DOGE cuts through. And you have written at length on your Twit-
ter about abolishing the filibuster. I am just curious if you think
that we should do that still.
Ms. DIVITO. I did a lot of previous work on different topics be-
cause I am an economic policy expert, and respectfully, I am here
to talk about DOGE cuts.
Mr. GILL. Okay. But we could abolish the filibuster and get
DOGE cuts. This is totally germane here. Do you think we should?
Ms. DIVITO. I am here to talk about DOGE cuts, not strategies
for achieving more of them, but the harms that they have produced
for working families.
Mr. GILL. That is a convenient change of opinion. I notice that
most of your comments about the filibuster were during the Biden
Administration.
But we can move on. Let us go back to some more of these
grants. Do you think that we should be spending money on ‘‘the
racialized basis of trait judgments from faces’’?
Ms. DIVITO. I am not at all familiar with that grant.
Mr. GILL. It is a $500,000 NSF grant.
Ms. DIVITO. Okay. I am not familiar with the subject matter or
the particular grant.
Mr. GILL. But you are defending these.
Ms. DIVITO. I am saying that I think the government has——
Mr. GILL. You are pretty adamant against DOGE cuts, and I am
asking you if you support the cuts——
Ms. DIVITO. I think that there is——
Mr. GILL [continuing]. That DOGE has found.
Ms. DIVITO [continuing]. Economic and medical public health
communal benefit to the government investing in——
Mr. GILL. What about cross-sex steroid therapy and cardio-
vascular risk in the transgender female?
Ms. DIVITO. Again, I think government investment in scientific
research is important.
Mr. GILL. Great. Thank you for your testimony. I appreciate it.
Ms. GREENE. The gentleman’s time has expired.
I now recognize Ms. Crockett from Texas for 5 minutes.
Ms. CROCKETT. Yes, Madam Chair. I would actually like to sub-
poena the former head of DOGE if we could subpoena Elon Musk.
Can we take a vote on that?
Ms. GREENE. This hearing will suspend.
Ms. CROCKETT. Is the clerk in place? Do we have a clerk? Can
I make a motion that we subpoena Elon Musk right now?
Ms. GREENE. The hearing has suspended.
[Pause.]
Ms. CROCKETT. Point of order, Madam Chair.
Ms. GREENE. We are suspended.
Ms. CROCKETT. Point of inquiry? I am trying to ask a question.
Ms. GREENE. The hearing is suspended. If you can have some pa-
tience, we are suspended.
The hearing will now resume.
Ms. Crockett, do you have a motion?
25

Ms. CROCKETT. I did not have a motion. I had a point of order.
I was trying to determine how long it was going to take for us to
call the roll. I can call it if need be.
Ms. GREENE. Well, if you are not making a motion——
Ms. CROCKETT. I already made the motion.
Ms. GREENE [continuing]. Then you can continue with your 5
minutes of questioning.
Ms. CROCKETT. The motion was to subpoena Elon Musk, who was
heading DOGE, who is the one that made the recommendations for
these cuts, yet he has yet to come before this Committee. And last
time I checked, none of the witnesses sitting here know anything
about DOGE, except for what they read on the internet. I want to
talk to the person——
Ms. GREENE. You have made your motion.
Ms. CROCKETT. Okay. Well, you were asking, so I wanted to
make sure you understood.
Ms. GREENE. You made your motion.
Ms. CROCKETT. Okay. Thank you.
Ms. GREENE. Mr. Burchett.
Mr. BURCHETT. Chairlady, I would like to make a motion to table
that motion.
Ms. GREENE. The motion is not debatable. As many as are in
favor of tabling the motion, signify by saying aye.
[Chorus of ayes.]
Ms. GREENE. All those opposed, signify by saying no.
[Chorus of noes.]
Ms. GREENE. In the opinion of the Chair, the yeas have it, and
the motion——
Ms. CROCKETT. Madam Chair, we would ask for a recorded vote.
Ms. GREENE [continuing]. To table is agreed to.
A recorded vote is ordered. The clerk will call the roll.
Ms. CROCKETT. Yes, call it.
Ms. GREENE. Okay. The clerk will prepare for the vote, and then
we will go from there.
The hearing is suspended.
[Pause.]
Ms. GREENE. The hearing will resume.
A recorded vote is ordered. The clerk will call the roll.
The Clerk. Mr. Cloud.
Mr. CLOUD. No. Yes, yes, yes to table.
The Clerk. Mr. Cloud votes yes.
Mr. CLOUD. Yes to table.
The Clerk. Mr. Fallon.
[No response.]
The Clerk. Mr. Timmons.
Mr. TIMMONS. Yes.
The Clerk. Mr. Timmons votes yes.
Mr. Burchett.
Mr. BURCHETT. Aye.
The Clerk. Mr. Burchett votes aye.
Mr. Burlison.
[No response.]
The Clerk. Mr. Jack.
Mr. JACK. Aye.
26

The Clerk. Mr. Jack votes aye.
Mr. Gill.
Mr. GILL. Aye.
The Clerk. Mr. Gill votes aye.
Ms. Stansbury.
Ms. STANSBURY. No to table.
The Clerk. Ms. Norton.
[No response.]
The Clerk. Mr. Lynch.
Mr. LYNCH. No.
The Clerk. Mr. Lynch votes no.
Mr. Garcia.
[No response.]
The Clerk. Mr. Casar.
Mr. CASAR. No.
The Clerk. Ms. Crockett.
Ms. CROCKETT. No.
The Clerk. Ms. Greene.
Ms. GREENE. Yes to table.
The clerk will report the tally.
The Clerk. Madam Chair, the ayes are six, the noes are four.
Ms. GREENE. The yeas have it, and the motion to table is agreed
to. The Committee will now resume.
I now recognize Ms. Crockett for 5 minutes.
Ms. CROCKETT. Thank you so much. You know what? It is inter-
esting because we sit here in the Department of Government Effi-
ciency Subcommittee, and the most inefficient thing that we have
done since we have had the invention of this nonsense was the fact
that we have decided that we will not do accountability or over-
sight over DOGE because we have failed to bring in the person who
actually runs DOGE.
In fact, we have decided, or actually you all decided, that we
would not even debate why it is that we should or should not sub-
poena Elon Musk. In fact, you all are just trying to get rid of the
musky smell because it was not working out very well for you, and
now you want to pretend as if you are coming in here to do exactly
what your constituents want you to do. But the last time I checked,
you all did not want to go talk to your constituents because if there
was one thing they were complaining about, it was Elon and it was
DOGE. You did not want to hear those.
And listen, if I had time, I would run the tape, but I only got
5 minutes, because there is plenty of video footage of all of you all
getting your butts handed to you when you went home and people
told you how they felt about DOGE.
So, let us talk about it for a quick second. Americans are looking
for help, but instead of offering it to them, the Republicans have
unleashed the most aggressive attack on the working-class families
in American history, and they have been excited to do so. In fact,
they are here today arguing to make all the chaos, confusion, and
destruction caused by DOGE permanent. They want hungry kids to
be permanent. They want sicker Americans to be permanent. They
want homeless veterans to be permanent, shuttered hospitals to be
permanent, disrupted Social Security benefits to be permanent.
They sold out their constituents to give permanent tax breaks to
27

billionaires, and they are doing it, and now they want to have a
victory lap, celebrating the pain of their constituents.
So, Ms. DiVito, let us go through some of the things that the Re-
publicans have done to see if they are helpful or harmful to Ameri-
cans. Helpful or harmful? Stripping healthcare away from 16 mil-
lion people?
Ms. DIVITO. I would say harmful.
Ms. CROCKETT. Laying off hundreds of thousands of Federal
workers?
Ms. DIVITO. Harmful.
Ms. CROCKETT. Disrupting or delaying Federal services such as
Social Security?
Ms. DIVITO. Harmful.
Ms. CROCKETT. Medicaid?
Ms. DIVITO. Harmful.
Ms. CROCKETT. SNAP benefits?
Ms. DIVITO. Harmful.
Ms. CROCKETT. Cutting billions from agencies like NIH?
Ms. DIVITO. Harmful.
Ms. CROCKETT. EPA?
Ms. DIVITO. Harmful.
Ms. CROCKETT. HUD?
Ms. DIVITO. Harmful.
Ms. CROCKETT. FDA?
Ms. DIVITO. Harmful.
Ms. CROCKETT. All right. Seems like you understand the assign-
ment. There is an entire agenda that is attacking the working-class
Americans from start to finish.
And then the thing is, they told us that they were going to do
this, but, you know, they pretended as if they knew nothing about
the playbook that was laid out by good old Heritage Foundation.
All of this talk about lowering costs and reducing waste is abso-
lute BS. Their agenda is about one thing, making the Federal Gov-
ernment so weak that they can exploit it for their personal gain.
They are stealing your data to help their companies. They are tak-
ing away your healthcare and food assistance to fund tax cuts for
billionaires. Their agenda is pro-disinformation, pro-obstruction,
pro-greed, and pro-exploitation. If you did not know, that is what
DOGE actually spells out. D, disinformation; O, obstruction; G,
greed; and E, exploitation.
And congressional Republicans have been complicit in this agen-
da. They have helped this Administration terrorize the public. They
have allowed this Administration to launch the country into a war
without congressional approval. And while we are talking about
saving money, let me tell you, just dropping those few bombs in one
day, that was the beginning of what is going to be a very long bill
for us.
As they talk about being efficient, there was nothing efficient
about doing it. And maybe if there was some consultation, maybe
with those that, say, have constitutional authority, since we care
about the Constitution, then maybe we could have saved the Amer-
ican people not only money, but the lives that are now at risk as
we have to put out warnings for American citizens in this country
and abroad. Maybe we need to start leading with the people at the
28

middle of what it is that is guiding us instead of following one per-
son.
The reason that people like me say things like, you all are in a
cult, is because somehow people are abdicating their duties and ab-
dicating the very people that put them into office. But I got 30 sec-
onds. They have allowed this Administration to steal congression-
ally approved money, money for cancer research and food delivery
to vulnerable communities. They have allowed Elon Musk to infil-
trate your medical records and banking data. They have allowed
this Administration to ignore court rulings. And now Republicans
are here patting themselves on the back, literally arguing to make
this chaos permanent.
So, Americans are going to continue to live through chaos and
destruction that has been occurring ever since he swore in, in Jan-
uary. And I hope you all remember who caused this because it was
not just Trump this time.
Ms. GREENE. The gentlelady’s time has expired.
Ms. CROCKETT. It was also the congressional Republicans——
Ms. GREENE. The gentlelady’s——
Ms. CROCKETT [continuing]. Who do not have a spine——
Ms. GREENE [continuing]. Time has——
Ms. CROCKETT [continuing]. To do what is right.
Ms. GREENE [continuing]. Expired.
I now recognize Mr. Burchett from Tennessee.
Mr. BURCHETT. Thank you, Chairlady. I would remind Members
of both sides of the aisle that President Trump’s approval rating is
soaring. And last I checked, congressional approval is not, and I
think that bears witness.
Mr. Dickerson and Mr. Burton, do you think Congress should
withdraw additional funds other than the $9 billion recently ap-
proved by the House?
Mr. BURTON. Absolutely. The Federal budget is entirely out of
control. There are hundreds of billions of dollars in improper pay-
ments. There are tremendous numbers of agencies whose missions
are not being fulfilled and are wasting money. There is the oppor-
tunity for many, many tens of billions of dollars of additional re-
scissions.
Mr. DICKERSON. Wholeheartedly agree.
Mr. BURCHETT. Just yesterday, we passed unanimously—it was
like pulling teeth, though, and I give a lot of credit to the Chair-
lady for helping me get the bill across the finish line. We were
sending millions of dollars every week to the Taliban, if you can
imagine that, and the NGOs. And that money flows right back to
Washington, dark money or possibly in members of this body’s
pockets or their families, I suspect.
Mr. BURTON. Huge amounts of the money flows to very wealthy
beltway bandits that live around here.
Mr. BURCHETT. Yes, sir, and I would agree with that. What other
programs and activities should be looked at for additional cuts?
Mr. DICKERSON. I think there is a whole host of things that you
can look at to fix the Federal budget. For example, Congress has
allowed the Biden Administration to spend billions of dollars to fa-
cilitate the illegal immigration, for example, in the Migration and
Refugee Assistance account, in the DHS Shelter and Services ac-
29

count. That has helped facilitate open borders and transport illegal
immigrants all throughout the country into your districts across
the country.
We spend hundreds of millions of dollars on abortion providers
to literally kill American citizens. I think that is a terrible thing.
We spend billions of dollars subsidizing green energy research that
makes our grid more inefficient. So, there is lots of great examples
that we could go on about.
Mr. BURTON. The list is extraordinarily long, but the big money
is two places, healthcare and entitlements. The United States
spends twice as much as the percentage of GDP than the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
average on healthcare, which is well over $1 trillion we might as
well burn because we do not get better health outcomes than major
European countries. And then the entitlements, of which there are
three major ones—Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid, but
also Obamacare and dozens of programs, some effective, some not—
meant to alleviate poverty. But there is tremendous waste, duplica-
tion, and opportunities for savings there.
Mr. BURCHETT. Mr. Lips, I see you itching to get on the mic, and
I need to ask you a question, followup, but you go ahead.
Mr. LIPS. Thank you, sir. I think a great area to focus on would
be implementing watchdog recommendations. The GAO has put to-
gether a list of more than 200 recommendations for Congress and
5,000 recommendations for Federal agencies. GAO says that this
could save upwards of $200 billion.
Mr. BURCHETT. What is GAO? We do not use initials in my office.
What does that stand for?
Mr. LIPS. Sorry, the Government Accountability Office.
Mr. BURCHETT. Okay. All right. Do you think Congress should
codify the DOGE or certain aspects of its operations?
Mr. LIPS. I think it is a good question. I do not know if it is nec-
essary. I think that I would recommend codifying and putting
strength behind the executive orders trying to improve program in-
tegrity measures within Treasury. The Do Not Pay system needs
help, it needs more information, and you could save hundreds of
billions of dollars.
Mr. BURCHETT. Mr. Burton, Mr. Dickerson, should we have a
group of people at each agency who are focused on cost savings?
Mr. DICKERSON. Yes. I think everybody at every agency should
be focused on that.
Mr. BURCHETT. You know, as fiscally responsible as the State of
Tennessee is, low-tax state, no debt, I have seen that in the indi-
vidual counties even, they are talking about this, so I think it is
one thing—the residual of this will be hopefully some long-term
savings in elimination of waste, abuse, and fraud.
DOGE is subjecting Federal spending to a higher level of scru-
tiny. What level of spending scrutiny do you think is important?
Mr. BURTON. I am not sure I entirely understand the question.
Mr. DICKERSON. Yes, I mean, I would say——
Mr. BURCHETT. How deep should we go? How about that?
Mr. BURTON. We should—I think a reasonable objective would be
to get back to a level of Federal spending during President Clin-
ton’s term.
30

Mr. BURCHETT. And I am out of time.
Mr. BURTON. We would balance the budget at that point.
Mr. BURCHETT. I would just like to see us go back to pre-COVID-
level spending.
Thank you, Chairlady.
Ms. GREENE. The——
Ms. CROCKETT. Madam Chair, I have a unanimous consent.
Ms. GREENE. Without objection.
Ms. CROCKETT. Thank you so much. This is just from a couple
of hours ago. ‘‘Trump pivots to distractions as polls show collapsing
support for his agenda.’’
Ms. GREENE. Without objection, so ordered.
Ms. CROCKETT. The next one is ‘‘Donald Trump’s approval rating
plunges in multiple polls.’’
Ms. GREENE. Without objection, so ordered.
Ms. CROCKETT. The next one, ‘‘Donald Trump’s approval rating,
new polls show shakeup over Iran bombing.’’
Ms. GREENE. Without objection, so ordered.
Ms. CROCKETT. The next one, ‘‘Trump’s approval rating drops to
term low amid Israel-Iran war.’’
Ms. GREENE. Without objection, so ordered.
I hope you are not reading the same thing from your phone,
which it looked like.
I now recognize——
Ms. CROCKETT. So, for clarification——
Ms. GREENE. I now recognize Mr. Lynch from Massachusetts for
5 minutes.
Ms. CROCKETT. I just want to clarify. I can give you the sources
because——
Ms. GREENE. Mr. Lynch is recognized.
Ms. Crockett, you are rudely interrupting Mr. Lynch’s 5 minutes.
Ms. CROCKETT. Well, Ms.——
Ms. GREENE. I have already said without objection, so ordered.
Ms. CROCKETT. Okay. Then there we go.
Ms. GREENE. Mr. Lynch is recognized, Ms. Crockett, for 5 min-
utes. Thank you.
Mr. LYNCH. Madam Chair, first of all, I want to be the first to
congratulate my friend and colleague, the gentleman from Cali-
fornia, Mr. Garcia, on becoming our new Ranking Member on the
full Committee, on this Committee, Oversight and Government Re-
form. I am sure he will enjoy not only my own support, but the full
support of all of our Members, and we will all work to help him
in his new role.
Mr. GARCIA. Thank you.
Mr. LYNCH. Thank you. Ms. DiVito, in the past, veterans’ bene-
fits in this country have been separate and apart from everything
else we do. They are different because veterans’ benefits, for the
time that I have been in Congress over the last 25 years, they are
regarded as special because they are earned by courageous service
to our Nation previously rendered by a very narrow segment of our
society.
And we, as a Nation, both Democrat and Republican, through
every President so far, made a promise that if a young man or
woman puts on that uniform for our country, serves our Nation,
31

and they come home from war with the scars of that war, either
invisible or visible, we make a promise that we will take care of
them and their families. And that has happened for every—we
have been proud that every administration has honored that prom-
ise until now.
On January 20, Trump laid off 6,000 employees at the VA. He
even laid off the workers at the suicide helpline in the middle of
a suicide crisis among our returning veterans. It is an epidemic.
And after that, DOGE and Donald Trump have laid off—2,700 of
those people that they laid off were veterans themselves. So, now
we are looking at a 250,000 case backlog at the VA, so veterans are
waiting longer and longer to get their care. You know, we still have
World War II veterans, Korean War veterans, Vietnam veterans
who are older, and the delay in care to those veterans is a denial,
a denial of those benefits they are owed.
I have a UC, Madam Chair, request, unanimous consent request
from ProPublica magazine, which the headline is, ‘‘Internal VA
emails reveal how Trump cuts have jeopardized veterans’ care, in-
cluding that of lifesaving cancer trials.’’
Ms. GREENE. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. LYNCH. Thank you. The email itself, these are VA internal
emails, and it notes that this is between folks at the VA talking
about the cuts. The email says that more than 1,000 veterans will
lose access to treatment for diseases ranging from metastatic head
and neck cancer to kidney disease to traumatic brain injuries. And
it goes on further, and this is a quote from the internal emails, that
‘‘the enrollment in those clinical trials is stopping,’’ meaning that
these veterans lose access to those therapies. Ms. DiVito, can you
talk about that, the delivery of services to our veterans?
Ms. DIVITO. Thank you for the question. Unfortunately, what we
are seeing across the country is that veterans’ healthcare is being
held up and interrupted because of the DOGE cuts. I, and I think
most of the panel, agreed that that should never be the case when
dealing with our servicemen and women. They deserve, at the very
least, quality and timely healthcare through the VA. But DOGE
has announced the goal of firing over 80,000 VA staffers. They
have already lost 200 doctors, 1,700 nurses, and almost 900 ad-
vanced medical support assistants, in addition to some of the cuts
to grants that funded various programs, including the suicide pre-
vention hotlines. Veterans are facing much longer backlogs and dis-
rupted service. And in many instances, it can be life and death.
Mr. LYNCH. How important is it, you know, so we have got this
hotline, and these veterans, in many cases, are isolated. They are
isolated from their families, their communities. How important is
that suicide hotline?
Ms. DIVITO. Oh, it is of critical importance. Veterans are a popu-
lation that are at heightened risk for suicide, so making sure that
they have all kinds of resources at their disposal is of the utmost
importance.
Mr. LYNCH. Thank you. Madam Chair, I yield back.
Ms. GREENE. The gentleman’s time has expired.
I now recognize Mr. Jack from Georgia for 5 minutes.
Mr. JACK. Thank you, Madam Chair.
32

And first, I would like to acknowledge our colleague, Mr. Lynch,
for his hard-fought campaign.
And I would like to, at the same time, spend a little bit of my
time today working with Mr. Dickerson and Mr. Burton. First, Mr.
Dickerson, I want to congratulate you and EPIC for all that you
have accomplished. I worked with both Paul and Zoe at the White
House in the President’s first term and commend you all for your
work.
Mr. Burton, if you could, I was reading through your testimony,
I would love for you just to walk this Committee through the his-
tory of impoundment and recissions. It started, as I understand, in
Thomas Jefferson’s Administration. I would love for you to walk us
through the history.
Mr. BURTON. The earliest impoundment that I know of was by
Thomas Jefferson. The Congress appropriated money to build some
gunboats. Peace broke out, and he chose not to build the gunboats.
So, he, in effect, impounded the money and sent it back to Con-
gress. That has been going on for a very long time. In older appro-
priations bills, particularly in the 19th century, it generally read
not to exceed X dollars, so Presidents often did not because they
did not think you needed to spend that much money. And Presi-
dent Roosevelt impounded money, and so did President Nixon. And
at that point, there was serious objection by the Congress, and the
Impoundment Control Act was enacted, which establishes an expe-
dited procedure for rescissions but has very broad prohibitions on
impoundment. There is certain reprogramming permitted and
things of that sort. Obviously, if the, as with improper payments,
if you cannot spend the money, that is fine. The President should
do that.
So, the rescissions process, however, is somewhat cumbersome,
as you probably just discovered. It could be streamlined and made
better, but nonetheless, that is the general requirement today.
Mr. JACK. And, you know, one thing that stood out to me in your
opening testimony and your testimony throughout this hearing is
you mentioned the work that Speaker Gingrich and President Clin-
ton undertook.
Mr. BURTON. Yes.
Mr. JACK. So, in your estimation, is our Committee’s work an ex-
tension of what was successfully done in the 1990s to rein in
spending?
Mr. BURTON. Yes and no. I mean, the effort in the 1990s was
very broad. The Clinton Administration was serious about improv-
ing government administration. They resisted some of what the
Gingrich Congress wanted to do, but ultimately, there were seri-
ous, very hard negotiations, and they reached an agreement. Presi-
dent Clinton signed legislation that substantially reduced Federal
spending.
And there was a tremendous amount of legislating going on
throughout the Congress, not just in one committee, but committee
by committee by committee by committee. There was a lot of legis-
lating done, a lot of markups, a lot of investigations, a lot of hear-
ings. It was not just one hearing like here. There was systematic
throughout the Congress and in government and the executive
branch.
33

Mr. JACK. Thank you. Mr. Dickerson, if we could spend a little
bit of time in the remaining time we have left talking about im-
proper payments. The first hearing our Chairwoman convened was
on the troublesome improper payments we discovered over the last
four years of the Biden Administration. I would love for you to
touch on some of the challenges we face with respect to verifying
identity, with respect to payments that are going out the door,
would love for you to comment on that.
Mr. DICKERSON. Absolutely. Improper payments is a huge issue.
In one program alone, Medicaid, for example, spent $1.1 trillion
over the last decade on improper payments. And that is incredibly
harmful because it is a waste of taxpayer money, but it is also
funds that are not going to people who are truly vulnerable and
truly needy. And so, this waste, fraud, and abuse is rampant
throughout the Federal Government.
And so, one of the major sources of that is the lack of ability to
identify the people who are claiming money, and checks are going
out the door to, are actually eligible. For example, the Do Not Pay
registry is supposed to be a data base of accounts that the Federal
Government is not supposed to write checks to. But in many cases,
those checks go out the door and then they ping the registry. And
in many cases, that registry does not have access to all the data
bases that it is supposed to, so it is a huge problem, and we really
should be fixing it.
Mr. JACK. And I recall in our first hearing, we talked about the
amount of payments going out the door that are still done by hand,
not by computer or electronically. Is that something you all have
uncovered in your work?
Mr. DICKERSON. Yes, I think it is something that we should be
using new technology, using AI, to actually look at what we have
across the government to ensure that only people who are actually
eligible for benefits are receiving it, nobody else.
Mr. JACK. Thank you. Madam Chair, in my closing, just a point
of clarification. The poll behind you, behind our Ranking Member,
it adds up to 110 percent. Just wanted to clarify, is it meant to add
up to 110 percent or is that an error?
Ms. STANSBURY. Do you yield?
Mr. JACK. Yes, I do.
Ms. STANSBURY. This is from a Quinnipiac poll that was held two
weeks ago, and this is the data that was provided. There is a
wealth of information, including information about Donald Trump’s
falling poll numbers, so you should take a look. Thanks.
Mr. JACK. I yield back.
Ms. GREENE. The gentleman yields. And it still adds up to 110
percent. That is a fake poll right there.
I now recognize Mr. Subramanyam from Virginia for 5 minutes.
Mr. SUBRAMANYAM. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Before I get started on DOGE, Mr. Burton, you are one of the
coauthors of Project 2025. Is that correct?
Mr. BURTON. Yes.
Mr. SUBRAMANYAM. And is this Administration trying to imple-
ment Project 2025, yes or no?
Mr. BURTON. In some respects, yes.
34

Mr. SUBRAMANYAM. Okay. Because last year, we kept hearing
about how they wanted nothing to do with Project 2025. That must
have hurt your feelings, I bet. But are you saying that they are try-
ing to implement all parts of Project 2025?
Mr. BURTON. I just said in some respects, yes.
Mr. SUBRAMANYAM. Okay. Thanks. I just wanted to get that out
of the way. I am glad there is someone being honest these days.
But let us talk about DOGE. So, DOGE promised us $2 trillion
in cuts back in January. And so far, we have a report card now out,
and it has actually cost us billions of dollars, maybe over $100 bil-
lion by one estimate. It is actually costing taxpayers money. And
it seems like, you know, they are cutting a lot of things, how is this
possible? Well, the reason it is possible is because they are cutting
the very people who are actually there to help get rid of waste,
fraud, and abuse. And they are cutting people who do essential re-
search and run really important programs that save taxpayer
money long term.
And so, the dashboard that we are talking about, the so-called
transparency, was riddled with errors. There has been article after
article about this. And so, we know now that that dashboard can-
not be trusted.
What can be trusted is that we are not anywhere close to $2 tril-
lion. In fact, there is another bill that this House just passed that
adds $3 trillion to the debt. And so, even if we did all these cuts,
even if you cut every single Federal employee in the entire govern-
ment, you still end up with a situation where you are adding to the
debt in this Administration because of the $3 trillion in the bill
that was passed a couple weeks ago that is being added to our
debt.
And, you know, the examples that I have heard are things like
cutting meteorologists at the Weather Service, cutting essential re-
searchers at NIH. People who are doing groundbreaking research
that will spur entire industries are being cut. Sometimes the gov-
ernment does research and funds research because the money just
is not there in the private sector. The private sector mandate is not
there. And so that actually, you talk about the internet, for in-
stance. That was a DoD project at one point. And DoD funded
ARPANET, which became the internet. And so, we are basically—
we will never know all of the things that we missed out on because
of some of these cuts.
And I have heard a lot about, you know, we heard earlier about
these cuts to veterans’ benefits. There is PFAS inspectors, nuclear
scientists fired although they tried to rehire them. There has been
a lot of firings where they tried to roll them back.
But, you know, I think I, you know, Ms. DiVito, I just want to
know if you were to do this—is DOGE doing what they are trying
to do here? And why is DOGE so unsuccessful right now? Why has
it been such a failure?
Ms. DIVITO. Thank you. I believe that DOGE has been a lose-
lose. It has failed to find the sizable savings, as you mentioned, and
has only made life harder and more expensive for working families.
You mentioned a lot of the mistakes. Those do not just cost—
there is not just an opportunity cost to loss potential and loss im-
pact from those mistakes, but there is also a cost to correct for
35

them, so rehiring and retraining all of the Federal workers that
are——
Mr. SUBRAMANYAM. So, is DOGE on track to save us money? Is
it going to save taxpayers money long term?
Ms. DIVITO. No.
Mr. SUBRAMANYAM. And why is that?
Ms. DIVITO. I think DOGE has been making incredibly hasty
cuts, and these have consequences. There are already a lot of pro-
tections baked into our Federal workforce——
Mr. SUBRAMANYAM. Yes.
Ms. DIVITO [continuing]. Our system of regulations. We can al-
ways add more that protect people in even better and stronger
ways, but we cannot take them back without costs.
Mr. SUBRAMANYAM. So, I would ask Mr. Burton or Mr.
Dickerson, you know, I had one idea for cuts, which is the Presi-
dent actually, his last term, spent $150 million plus on golf trips.
Do you think that is waste, fraud, and abuse? Yes or no?
Mr. BURTON. I certainly would think there are more high-priority
spending things, yes.
Mr. SUBRAMANYAM. But do you think that is wasteful spending?
Do you think that is less or more wasteful than cutting veterans
benefits, his golf trips?
Mr. BURTON. I would rather spend money on veterans.
Mr. SUBRAMANYAM. What about $50 million for the Department
of Homeland Security’s private plane? That is what they requested
in the appropriations bill. Do you think they should get a new
plane for DHS, a private plane?
Mr. BURTON. That is a factual question on whether or not
this——
Mr. SUBRAMANYAM. No, so I am going to reclaim my time.
In the end, what is happening is there is more waste, fraud, and
abuse since DOGE has come into effect. It has led to poor services,
a brain drain on our Federal Government, and it is going to cost
taxpayers money long term.
I yield back.
Ms. GREENE. The gentleman’s time has expired.
In closing, I want to thank our witnesses once again for their tes-
timony today.
I now yield to Ranking Member Stansbury for closing remarks.
Ms. STANSBURY. All right. Well, that is another DOGE Sub-
committee in the books, and another morning and a number of
hours of our lives that we will never reclaim spent here doing more
political theater with our friends across the aisle.
As the President is starting wars in the Middle East, and by the
way, news just broke, canceled the classified briefing that had been
scheduled for Congress without a rescheduling. He is deploying
United States troops against our people here in the homeland, and
this Congress, controlled by these folks right over here, is trying
to gut your healthcare, food programs, and steal your public lands
while saddling the American people with trillions of dollars in debt
to pay for tax breaks for billionaires.
This is one of the most unpopular domestic and global policy
agendas in modern history, and they are here trying to convince
you all that we should make DOGE permanent. But here is the
36

thing. The GOP may continue to try to make DOGE a thing, but
no matter how hard they keep trying, GOP will never make DOGE
happen. Even with their Regina George out of the picture—that is
Mr. Elon Musk in this scenario—Americans just are not buying
tickets to this show, and just like the movie business, House Re-
publicans’ DOGE reboot is not hitting like they thought it would.
And in fact, a majority of Americans actually oppose DOGE cuts,
a number that will only grow as the devastating and real-life im-
pacts continue to sink into everyday life for all of us. And I think
we have all seen this film before, and we do not like it.
The fact is DOGE is costing taxpayers more than it is saving,
and Donald Trump has spent more of your hard-earned taxpayer
dollars in his first six months in office than any other President in
modern history. That is right, he spent more money than the last
President just in the last six months, going golfing and doing other
random things while the Republicans are actually trying to in-
crease Federal spending in reconciliation with trillions of dollars in
tax breaks and kickbacks to their donors.
But despite this box office bomb—that is DOGE—here in this
Subcommittee we are stuck on repeat, watching the rerun over and
over again as the GOP continues to roll out the same tired talking
points that got Elon Musk fired in the first place. And not only
that, we are seeing the same kinds of witnesses, backed by the
Heritage Foundation and their allied organizations, coming to tes-
tify again and again, attempting to back up a flailing Administra-
tion and its flailing policies.
So, where are we? In case you forgot, the Heritage Foundation
is the same organization that brought you Project 2025, which is
what this is actually all about, a show that was so unpopular that
even the President and members of this Committee tried to dis-
tance themselves from during the campaign season and even lied
to the American people about.
But the American people are smart, and they are watching, and
they know what a scam is when they see it. You cannot run away
from Project 2025 because it is right here, and we will not let you
destroy our government, our democracy, our institutions, and our
freedoms. And we will hold you accountable.
Medical trials ended, veterans’ benefits cut, Social Security deci-
mated, thousands of children without food and medicine, thousands
dead across the world, American lives upended, that is DOGE’s leg-
acy. But it is clear, however, no matter the impact, the Trump Ad-
ministration and the GOP does not seem to care. Because DOGE
is not actually about waste, fraud, and abuse. It is not even about
cost-cutting or making the government more efficient. It is a means
for pushing their political agenda on the American people.
And if you could not tell already by their obsession with the cul-
ture wars, from attacking education to slashing global food aid to
stripping healthcare, this is about remaking American society.
They want to remake our country in a hyper-conservative image,
just as they laid out in Project 2025. The American people know
what is going on, and this is not the sequel we asked for.
So, I want to just take a note from America’s real anti-hero and
to say to Mr. Elon Musk, as far as we are concerned, you are just
another picture to burn. And to DOGE, now we got problems, and
37

I do not think we can solve them. You made really deep cuts, and
baby, now we are bad blood. I think we are out.
I yield back.
Ms. GREENE. I now recognize myself for closing remarks.
The American people gave President Trump a mandate to drain
the swamp, and they expect us to deliver on that promise. Our
massively growing debt and interest threaten every single Amer-
ican, their children, and every generation to come. The United
States is now $37 trillion in debt. In Fiscal Year 2024, the govern-
ment spent over $1.8 trillion more than it took in. And in Fiscal
Year 2025, the interest on our debt is expected to exceed $1 trillion,
more than our military budget.
We need to be brutally honest about how this massive debt came
to be in the first place. It originated from Congress and elected
Presidential administrations for decades. We are grateful that
President Trump’s DOGE team has already identified at least $180
billion in Federal savings. However, without legislative action,
these hard-won cuts could be reversed by the stroke of a pen with
a future administration. After all, we listen to Democrats every sin-
gle day make fun of, attack, and criticize the efforts of DOGE. They
do not take it seriously. They want government to be bigger and
bigger and bigger until we completely collapse.
Congress must use every tool at our disposal to make the hard
work of the Trump Administration permanent. Two weeks ago,
House Republicans took the first step in codifying the DOGE cuts
by passing the White House’s $9.4 billion rescissions package. This
is only the first step. The Senate must immediately pass these cuts
and send them to President Trump’s desk. We must continue to
codify every penny of DOGE cuts through rescissions and the ap-
propriations process. This is our mandate. This is our duty.
The legislative branch cannot sit on the sidelines. In this Sub-
committee, we will fight the war on waste shoulder to shoulder
with President Trump. We have held hearings exposing billions in
improper payments, corrupt NGOs pushing destructive policies,
and taxpayer-funded media like NPR and PBS that serve elite in-
terests over the public good. We have uncovered shocking examples
like United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
funneling money to undermine United States interests abroad, lav-
ish spending on empty Federal buildings, and so-called nonprofits
bankrolling illegal immigration.
Today, we heard more egregious examples of Americans’ hard-
earned tax dollars being abused to promote genital mutilation of
children, fund the Green New Deal scam, fund terrorists overseas,
and fund hundreds of billions of improper payments. The American
people overwhelmingly support the cuts, and I do not know what
faulty polls my Democrat colleagues are using to back their claims
saying otherwise, but I have never heard of any legitimate poll that
adds up to 110 percent like the one on their poster that was dis-
played here today. What a joke. What a pathetic example. My god.
Maybe they should support spending a little more on teaching ac-
tual mathematics in the classrooms and a little less on seeking to
advance racial justice in mathematics, like the National Science
Foundation grant. Regardless, we know the American people are
38

behind the DOGE efforts, and we know the American people do not
believe stupid, fake polls that have math that make no sense.
Exposing this waste and abuse is only half the battle. To win this
war, we need to make sure these cuts are not just temporary. That
means passing laws to streamline agencies, eliminate redundant
programs, and give the President the authority to fire bureaucrats
who do not do their jobs, the same bureaucrats that go ahead and
give out these grants that mutilate children, gives money to USAID
to do regime change in foreign countries, and so many more stupid,
horrible things that the American people do not want to spend
their money on.
Slashing waste, fraud, and abuse from the Federal Government
provides real savings for the American people. We, as lawmakers,
should pass new DOGE cuts every single day and make cutting
waste, fraud, and abuse our top priority. Instead of growing the
government, we should be slashing the government. The govern-
ment is far too big. It is like an overgrown, out-of-control animal,
and the American people are beginning to hate it.
With that, and without objection, all Members have five legisla-
tive days within which to submit materials and additional written
questions for the witnesses, which will be forwarded to the wit-
nesses.
If there is no further business, without objection, the Committee
stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:02 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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