Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy met with congressional Republicans on the afternoon of Thursday, Dec. 5, to brainstorm for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). A number of lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are interested in working with DOGE to trim down the government.
The first place of bipartisan agreement is the Department of Defense. The Pentagon has failed seven fiscal audits in a row and is unable to keep track of billions of dollars of equipment.
Lawmakers are also fed up with defense contractors charging incredible sums of money for their services.
“Defense contractors are fleecing the American people,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said. “American taxpayers paying 1,000% more for a part supplied or sold to the Department of Defense than if it was sold to a different federal agency.”
As an example, the Air Force overpaid Boeing for soap dispensers installed in the bathrooms of C-17s by $149,072, or 80 times what similar dispensers cost.
Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said the prices should be clearly outlined in the contract.
“I don’t know that you’re going to get anything out of Congress because they’re compromised. Everybody has jobs in their district or family members that work for a contractor, or friends that do, and it just runs so deep,” Burchett told Straight Arrow News.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., wants to reduce the size of the Department of Homeland Security. DHS has 22 agencies including Customs and Border Protection, the Coast Guard, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Secret Service.
“Homeland Security –– it’s a great idea, it should exist, it’s just become too big in the last 20 years,” Moskowitz told SAN. “So I think we need to remove some of those agencies. In addition to the Secret Service, I think FEMA should be a direct report to the president. That’s what it was when it was created. I think FEMA needs to be quick. It doesn’t need to be in a giant bureaucracy asking 20 people for permission to make changes in the agency.”
Finally, Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., wants to reduce red tape and improve services within departments. Currently, if an American taxpayer needs help from a federal agency and they aren’t getting it they have to go to their congressperson or senator’s constituent services office.
“If you can reform some of these systems to be able to allow customers to be able to say, ‘Hey, I’m having a problem,’ and then get a response back from the federal government, that’s going to make a big improvement,” Ricketts said. “It really ought not to be a Senate office who has to get involved to be able to get somebody to take a look at some of these problems.”
Ricketts wants to share with DOGE what he learned as Nebraska’s governor implementing the Lean Six Sigma business management method to improve the state’s efficiency and services.
