At today's House DOGE Committee hearing, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) played a video of past Democratic Presidents promoting cuts to waste, fraud, and abuse in federal government spending.
00:01This hearing of the Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency will come to order.
00:07Welcome, everyone.
00:08Without objection, the chair may declare a recess at any time.
00:12I recognize myself for the purpose of making an opening statement.
00:16Good morning and welcome to today's hearing.
00:19I would like to begin by showing a video of what Doge is all about.
00:30We know and we have worked to give the American people a smaller, less bureaucratic government in Washington.
00:38And we have to give the American people one that lives within its means.
00:42The era of big government is over.
00:46The steps we're taking today will save the American taxpayers $9 billion.
00:52And ordered federal agencies to cut billions of dollars in administrative costs
00:57and to trim 100,000 federal precisions by attrition.
01:01This report tells us how to cut waste, cut red tape, streamline the bureaucracy,
01:08change procurement rules, change the personnel rules,
01:11and create a government that works better and costs less.
01:16We'll consolidate departments.
01:18We'll get rid of duplicate departments.
01:20We'll allow competition to bring about better service at lower cost.
01:26We can downsize government by 12 percent, reducing the bureaucracy by 252,000 positions.
01:34Everyone knows that getting rid of the deficit will require some tough decisions.
01:39And that includes cutting back on billions of dollars in programs that a lot of people care about.
01:44But what should be easy is getting rid of the pointless waste and stupid spending that doesn't benefit anybody.
01:50You're paying for thousands of buildings all across the country no one uses.
01:54Now, the government hadn't been able to sell this building, and others like it, because of red tape.
02:00We thought that it was entirely appropriate for our governments and our agencies
02:04to try to root out waste, large and small, in a systematic way.
02:10And in September, Joe convened the cabinet and has really pushed them hard
02:16in finding savings across all our agencies.
02:19We need to step up our game.
02:21We need to go after every dime.
02:23We need to make government work for you.
02:25That's why, starting today, I've asked the vice president to lead a renewed effort to hunt down
02:30misspent tax dollars in every agency and department of this government.
02:35We're not just eliminating fraud and waste.
02:37We hope to be instilling an entire new culture that not only our administration,
02:41but every succeeding administration will, in fact, pursue.
02:46We're going to give you the government you expect and deserve.
02:52I certainly wish that my Democrat colleagues felt the same as their former Democrat leaders felt
02:59and worked to try to reduce our deficit and reduce the size of our government.
03:04Unfortunately, these former Democrat leaders failed at what they were saying they were trying to do.
03:11But today's DOGE and DOGE subcommittee is actually delivering on those exact promises,
03:17and we are delivering the results.
03:20It's too bad that my Democrat colleagues constantly mock DOGE, attack DOGE, criticize DOGE,
03:26and criticize the hardworking people in DOGE.
03:29They also attack this committee and attack what we're all about.
03:33But that's today's Democrat Party.
03:36They're for big government, big spending, and doing nothing for the American people.
03:41They're America last.
03:42This subcommittee has highlighted where DOGE has staunched the flow of waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending.
03:52DOGE drove the administration to turn off the spending faucet that was pouring out billions of dollars
03:58to corrupt anti-American NGOs, to illegal DEI programs, and to a vast array of wasteful, unnecessary federal grants, contracts, leases, and personnel.
04:10President Trump drove this massive effort by creating DOGE via executive order on Inauguration Day.
04:17He then issued a series of White House directives empowering DOGE teams to work with agency leaders government-wide
04:25in an unprecedented effort to root out wasteful spending using all means at their disposal.
04:32And that effort has borne fruit.
04:34The DOGE website identifies $180 billion in savings achieved in just a matter of months.
04:41We need to make sure we lock in those savings.
04:45It should be the first installment we pay on our nation's $37 trillion debt.
04:52We need to tackle that debt on behalf of our children and future generations.
04:57That's why Congress needs to act.
05:00DOGE has shown how our government can cost less and deliver more.
05:04It's shown how we can turn off the faucet.
05:08It's shown we don't need to spend all the dollars that Congress appropriated for this year.
05:14Congress can reverse that unnecessary spending by rescinding dollars it's appropriated.
05:20That's why the administration recently sent a $9 billion rescission request to Congress.
05:26By the way, you just saw Democrats on that video talking about saving $9 billion.
05:31Republicans just delivered on that.
05:34It would prevent dollars, our $9 billion rescission would prevent dollars from going to corrupt international organizations,
05:44to woke NGOs, to NPR, and to PBS.
05:48The House adopted the legislation earlier this month, HR4, the Rescission Act of 2025.
05:55But we need to do more, much more.
05:58$9 billion is just the tip of the iceberg of the waste that DOGE has identified
06:03and of the spending that the administration has paused or shut off.
06:07So Congress needs to work with the administration and DOGE to rescind billions more of dollars it has appropriated for agencies to spend.
06:19DOGE is also creating savings that will lower the cost of government for years to come.
06:24For instance, the administration is right-sizing the federal bureaucracy by eliminating several hundred thousand staff positions.
06:33That reduces discretionary spending costs for the next year and every future year by tens of billions of dollars.
06:40So we need to adjust those levels of new appropriations to align with the streamlined government DOGE is creating.
06:49That's why the President proposed last month, when he submitted to Congress, a budget for next year that reduces non-discretionary spending by $163 billion.
07:01If we lower the spending baseline in that way, we can save $2 trillion in that portion of the budget over the coming decade.
07:10We 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.
07:21DOGE has attracted enemies because it's taken on Washington's culture of spending and the money laundering schemes that have been embedded in this institution.
07:31We should make that a permanent battle.
07:33We should institutionalize the battle against waste, fraud, and abuse in government.
07:39I hope that is something with which my Democrat colleagues can at least agree on.
07:45DOGE is working with agencies to reduce the rampant fraud that GAO says costs taxpayers as much as a half trillion dollars annually.
07:54To enhance fraud detection, agencies are now providing the Treasury Department more information about financial awards,
08:02and they are making more use of Treasury's do-not-pay database.
08:06To avoid funding fraudsters, DOGE is also lowering the barriers that prevent agencies from sharing data to identify duplicate awardees.
08:17What's more, DOGE has pioneered what the President calls radical transparency concerning wasteful spending.
08:24The DOGE website and individual federal agency sites continually update for public view the specific grants, contracts, leases, and other payments that they are flagging for termination.
08:39This is how you change the culture of spending.
08:42And with that, I yield to Ranking Member Stansbury for her opening statement.
