Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), a leading senator on slashing government waste, gave the inside story on how the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was “ready to go” in cutting $2 trillion in government waste during an exclusive appearance on The Alex Marlow Show.
Ernst, founder of the DOGE Caucus, said she has been focused on cutting spending for a decade, so when President Donald Trump won the election and expressed an interest in taking this seriously, she and her team were ready to go.
“Over the past decade, I have been working on what I called my squeal work. So, every month, publishing, you know, squeal awards for government waste fraud that we have uncovered,” Ernst said, noting that she has several staff members “entirely dedicated to uncovering fraud and waste within the federal government.”
WATCH — White House Press Secretary Brings the Receipts of Waste Cut by DOGE:
“So not only am I working to uncover that, but then my role and oversight in the United States Senate is then to provide solutions, find the policy that will correct the behaviors that we have seen in the federal government,” she said, explaining that she has accumulated a “huge stash” of work that has been done via her office for years, and now, it is called DOGE work.
“I did have this huge amount of information that once President Trump was elected and he decided to go forward with the Department of government efficiency,” she said, describing the eight-page memorandum she had her staff prepare for Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk. At that point, she brought her blueprint to save $2 trillion to Mar-a-Lago and presented it to them.
“So, my team and I have been working on this, again, for ten years, so we had a lot of this information compiled already. And so right after the election, what my team and I did was present, and it was a boiled down, eight-page document that we gave to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy the minute that they founded DOGE,” she said, explaining that she happened to be in Florida for a separate event and arranged a meeting with the DOGE leaders at Mar-a-Lago.
“I was able to walk them through all of these ideas, the areas of waste that needed addressing right away, something that could help them get to that $2 trillion mark. And it was a great conversation. And I just remember when I sat down and I showed this to Vivek, we were walking through it, and he was just astounded. He’s like, ‘I can’t.’ He’s like, ‘There’s $2 trillion in this.’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘And you don’t touch Social Security?’ And I said, ‘No, no, we don’t.’ I mean, this is all of the spending that we do where we can save. Elon was excited about it as well,” Ernst said.
WATCH — Democrat Uses Hearing on Govt Waste to Attack Musk and DOGE, Asks Zero Questions:
“Elon and I will share information, you know, every few days or so. And I just remember one conversation that I had with him. He had texted me back on an issue, and he said, just thank you so much. You are one of the only ones that truly cares about this issue,” she added, noting that a lot of the savings focuses on programs “where the spending has been excessive with very little return on investment for our taxpayers, or just outright abuse.”
“So, if we can take away that low-hanging fruit you have, you probably hit that quarter of a trillion dollars of savings already, just with very little effort. But then there are all kinds of programs. And think about the dollars that were funneled through NIH, through USAID to China, to the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” she said, sharing a few examples.
“You know, millions and millions of dollars through various rat holes, and it’s not easily found. It really does take a concerted effort to find all of this money, but all of the money that has been sent to foreign entities and what I would even call adversaries like China. You know, that’s another part of that. Well, we need to stop that right away. And we’ve had legislation that can do that, but we need to focus on that. But then also, gosh, within our own federal government, think about federal workers and the telework that has been going on since COVID,” she continued. “We’re four years out of COVID now, yet we have people that are teleworking but somehow have been able to work other full-time jobs.”
The Alex Marlow Show, hosted by Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow, is a weekday podcast produced by Breitbart News and Salem Podcast Network. You can subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Rumble, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.