Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, on Monday sent a letter to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy outlining ways they could cut upward of $1 trillion in federal spending from the budget in their roles leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under the incoming Trump administration.
Ernst’s letter, which was first obtained by the Washington Examiner, praised Musk and Ramaswamy for “stepping up to take on the challenge of saving taxpayers from Washington’s out-of-control spending that put our nation $36 trillion in debt.”
The senator – who met with President-elect Trump, Musk and commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick on Saturday – said in the letter that her “fellow Iowans sent me to the Senate ten years ago to make the porkers squeal” and that it’s “been a very lonely fight” because of bipartisan support for spending in ways that have the government “living high off the hog.”
“While you’re seeking ‘super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries’ for ‘unglamorous cost-cutting,’ all that’s really needed is a little common sense. If you can’t find waste in Washington, there can only be one reason: you didn’t look,” Ernst wrote.
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She suggested that Musk and Ramaswamy should look to consolidate federal office space to reduce costs while auctioning off unneeded properties to generate revenue, noting that the maintenance and leasing of federal office buildings cost $8 billion annually plus another $7.7 billion on energy to keep them powered.
Ernst explained that “with the federal workforce still largely working from home, not a single headquarters of a major government agency or department in the nation’s capital is even half full.” She added that there are 7,697 vacant buildings owned by the government and another 2,265 that are partially empty.
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The senator also urged DOGE to audit the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), citing her findings that over 5,800 IRS employees and contractors owe more than $50 million in taxes that landed many on payment plans, though 860 still haven’t paid overdue taxes. She also noted that across the government there are nearly 150,000 tax cheats who owe $1.5 billion in unpaid taxes.
Ernst also called for DOGE to slash spending on several of the Biden-Harris administration’s infrastructure initiatives, including the $7.5 billion EV charging station program that has been criticized over a lack of progress in building the stations, as well as the $42 billion expansion of rural broadband. She noted that just 17 EV stations have been created and that “not a single person – not one – has been connected to the internet yet.”
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California’s federally-funded transportation projects were also scrutinized in Ernst’s letter, such as the $128 billion California High-Speed Train system, the $9.3 billion six-mile extension of a subway system from San Francisco to Silicon Valley, and the 1.3-mile extension of San Francisco’s Caltrain service which carries a price tag of $6.7 billion.
Ernst also called for federal agencies’ spending at the end of a given fiscal year to be reined in, a practice that occurs to prevent annual budgets from being cut back when allocated funds go unspent.
“In Washington, Christmas comes in September when binge buying bureaucrats go hog wild fulfilling their own wish lists. That’s because the federal government’s authority to spend money left over at the end of a fiscal year expires at midnight on September 30,” Ernst wrote. “In the rush to use it before they lose it, $53 billion was recently spent in a single week!”
Other areas for cost savings include reallocating $1.6 trillion in unobligated federal dollars sitting in accounts to offset federal borrowing, preventing millionaires from collecting unemployment benefits, cutting back on “silly science” research projects as well as government agencies’ swag.
Ernst also noted that it costs three cents to produce a penny and over 11 cents for a nickel, while changing the composition of coins could save over $50 million per year.
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