During remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) spoke about DOGE cuts to the Federal Government.
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Well, Mr. President, it's another week in Washington, and I think maybe the 52nd day
00:07since President Trump was inaugurated, and we're seeing the compliant mainstream media
00:17continue to spread falsehoods about the work of the Department of Government Efficiency
00:23and Elon Musk.
00:26As I've said before, the federal government has a spending problem, and like with any
00:31addiction, getting clean and solving that problem is not necessarily easy or comfortable,
00:38but it is long overdue and absolutely necessary.
00:44With the national debt at $36.2 trillion and counting, we have to start somewhere, and
00:52little things add up.
00:56And what better place to start than the waste, fraud, and abuse that Doge is identifying?
01:03This has long been a bipartisan issue.
01:06I can think of everything dating back to the Grace Commission, where waste, fraud, and
01:11abuse was a bipartisan target, but apparently not with President Trump in the office and
01:17not with Elon Musk in charge of the effort to identify this spending.
01:29If you take a look at most things that the federal government is cutting at the recommendation
01:35of Doge, it becomes harder and harder to become a Doge skeptic unless you're just blind to
01:44what they are doing.
01:46Last week, I mentioned the waste that Doge had identified with subscriptions and software
01:51licenses, and people may think, well, that's no big deal, but there's no reason taxpayers
01:57should be footing the bill for expensive subscriptions that go unused.
02:02Doge uncovered the potential for massive fraud with an audit they conducted of government
02:06credit cards.
02:09At the beginning of the audit, there were 4.6 million active government credit cards.
02:184.6 million.
02:20After two weeks, Doge identified nearly 150,000 credit cards that were thankfully unused or
02:28unneeded and closed both down.
02:32And I'm sure there's more to be done with 4.6 million active credit cards.
02:39There's no reason for so many government employees to have direct access to spending taxpayer
02:44money at the click of a button or swipe of a credit card.
02:50This is basic and would never happen in the private sector or in our individual lives.
02:58But the federal government, in the federal government, before this administration and
03:03before Doge, these were commonplace and have been overlooked for way too long.
03:12There's some instances of fraud that we've known about for some time, but it's taken
03:16the Trump administration and Doge to identify it and fix it.
03:20For example, the Government Accountability Office submitted a report to Congress last
03:26April estimating that the federal government loses between $223 billion and $521 billion
03:38every year as a result of improper payments.
03:42Federal governments making improper payments and spending potentially up to half a trillion
03:48dollars.
03:50Naturally, this was an opportunity for Doge to identify this waste of taxpayer dollars.
03:59Doge found payments to illegal immigrants using multiple Social Security numbers to
04:04submit Medicare claims, something for which they are not legally entitled.
04:10They found $57,000 in Medicare payments in 2020 for a patient who actually was recorded
04:18to have died 14 years earlier.
04:22It's amazing.
04:24You can continue to charge for Medicare payments 14 years after your death.
04:32In one particularly egregious instance, an illegal immigrant with a warrant out for her
04:37arrest was receiving more than $100,000 in loans from the Small Business Administration.
04:47But the waste and abuse of tax dollars goes beyond mere inefficiencies.
04:54Some of the other line items on the Doge cutting floor are so patently absurd, it would make
05:00your blood boil.
05:03For example, last week, the National Institute of Health canceled more than half a billion
05:08dollars in grants for transgender experiments on mice.
05:14You can't make this stuff up.
05:17It's stranger than fiction.
05:20In a similar vein, NIH also canceled millions in woke grants ranging from promoting healthy
05:27relationships among transgender youth to delivering transgender services via telehealth.
05:35I think if you asked most taxpayers how they'd like their money to be spent, these programs
05:40would not make the cut.
05:43But that's not all.
05:46NIH is also canceling research grants that were going to universities in China.
05:55They canceled a grant for $1.7 million going to the Peking University in Beijing for the
06:01quote, China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, close quote.
06:10Once again, I think American taxpayers would prefer to focus on things here at home, including
06:17their own retirement savings, rather than sending millions of dollars to China to study
06:23health and retirement security in a country which is our chief geopolitical rival.
06:33But that's not all.
06:34The list goes on.
06:37A group called the Inter-American Foundation has been significantly reduced after Doge
06:42found egregious misuse of tax dollars, including over $900,000 going towards alpaca farming
06:53in Peru.
06:57That's on top of $800,000 for vegetable gardens in El Salvador.
07:02And more than $700,000 to improve the marketability of mushrooms and peas in Guatemala.
07:12I know that children frequently squirm at the dinner table when they're told they have
07:17to eat their vegetables, but I don't think this is an area where most people think our
07:23tax dollars should be spent.
07:27Unfortunately, this waste doesn't stop at the vegetable.
07:32aisle.
07:34This foundation also spent more than $600,000 to expand the sales of fruit and jam in Honduras,
07:45as well as nearly half a million dollars on improving the production of artisanal salt
07:53in Ecuador.
07:56Artisanal salt in Ecuador.
08:00Well, thank goodness the Department of Government Efficiency and Mr. Musk were key to identifying
08:08these egregious abuses of the taxpayer.
08:14But they've been going on for a long time until the Trump administration came along,
08:19so I'm grateful that now some of these outrageous expenditures of tax dollars are being exposed
08:28and dealt with.
08:31As I said earlier, Washington, D.C. has a spending problem.
08:36And like any addiction, it's hard to kick the habit, especially after you become adjusted
08:43to it.
08:45But it's time for a little cold turkey when it comes to this addiction.
08:52And many people who benefit from this gravy train don't want it to end.
08:59So naturally, many of our colleagues on the other side are concerned about Doge, and they
09:05want to suggest that everything the federal government does is absolutely perfect.
09:11They wouldn't change a thing.
09:14But they don't really have any real substantive response to these outrageous examples that
09:20I'm mentioning here.
09:22They wouldn't change a thing.
09:27They see these stats and they tell you, don't believe your lying eyes.
09:35But those of us who've looked into it, who've taken the time to study what's been exposed,
09:43know otherwise.
09:45The government is not infallible.
09:48We have an unsustainable level of federal debt that threatens our economy and our national
09:56security.
09:58And the truth is, the Trump administration and Republicans are hard at work trying to
10:03address it to make the government more efficient and more affordable for American families.
10:12So once again, I'd like to do something that you don't hear very often here in D.C. these
10:16days and thank Elon Musk for his service to our country in performing this essential
10:24and long overdue role.
10:27Mr. President, I yield the floor.