    [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 33 (Wednesday, February 19, 2025)]
    [Senate]
    [Pages S1026-S1028]
    From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                      Department of Government Efficiency

      Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I would like to speak about the importance
    of FEMA, the importance of fixing it but not destroying it. Mother
    Nature, this week, provided yet another reminder of the devastating
    impacts of natural disasters.
      In Kentucky, we had catastrophic flooding that inundated communities
    and led to thousands of evacuations. At least 14 are dead, and all of
    us, our hearts break for the people of eastern Kentucky. To my
    colleagues from the Commonwealth, I offer all of my support in getting
    the aid that you need to help recover.
      That is the same commitment I have offered to our colleagues in
    Hawaii, North Carolina, California, and Florida, and it is also the
    commitment many of my colleagues made to me and Senator Sanders after
    Vermont's devastating floods in July of 2023 and 2024.
      What we know in Vermont is the disasters that have afflicted us all
    over the country, they don't care whom you voted for. They don't
    respect county or State lines. They are indiscriminate and
    unpredictable, and the storm metes out its suffering in a bipartisan
    way. There is no escaping it, but we need FEMA. That is what we learned
    in Vermont.
      When the storm arrived, FEMA was there. In the immediate aftermath
    when people had seen literally their homes swept down a river, when the
    crops and farms had been destroyed, when businesses were ruined, FEMA
    was there to help in the immediate aftermath.
      But we also experienced something that I have heard from my
    colleagues in FEMA-related situations, and that is that in the longer
    term recovery, you run into the frustration of a distant bureaucracy
    that can't make quick turnaround decisions and such things as granular
    as whether you can install a 24-inch culvert instead of a 16-inch
    culvert.
      That is why the reform we need is focused on empowering local
    communities to have much more decision-making and implementation
    authority in executing the recovery that takes, oftentimes, well over a
    year or 2 years.
      You simply can't have that done by folks not in the community. Those
    folks in the community are totally invested in getting their community
    back on its feet, helping its businesses, helping the folks who lost
    their homes, and helping the farmers who lost their crops.
      So the reform that we need in FEMA is definitely there, and we can do
    that and must do it together because any of these natural disasters are
    going to come our way at some point, regardless of which side of the
    aisle you represent.
      It is one of the reasons I am absolutely so concerned about what is
    happening at FEMA now. There has been a DOGE invasion. I use that
    explicitly. What does Elon Musk know about the suffering in these
    communities? Where does he get the authority--where does he get the
    callousness to say FEMA should be destroyed? Something, by the way, the
    President himself has said.
      When I think about all the folks in Vermont, all the folks now in
    Kentucky, all the folks in California from the fires, Hawaii and the
    fires, to be told that the response of the Federal Government, when a
    catastrophic event happened in their community, without any
    responsibility on their part--they were on the receiving end of Mother
    Nature making its decision to hit that community at that time. Why do
    Trump and Musk say we ought to get rid of the Agency that is on the
    scene as the storm arises and stays there, hopefully, until people get
    back on their feet?

    [[Page S1027]]

      The other thing that is happening with DOGE going into FEMA is that
    they are getting access and accumulating very personal information. If
    you are in the path of the storm and you seek FEMA aid, you have to
    give a significant amount of your own personal information, but that is
    solely for the purpose of evaluating your claim.
      We now have the DOGE folks. These are very young people. We don't
    know what their credentials are. We don't know what the use is that
    they are going to put this information to--getting the personal
    information of people in all of these communities around the country.
    They have no right to do that. They have no need to do that. It doesn't
    facilitate the reform or the destruction of FEMA. It is just an
    invasion of privacy.
      We need FEMA. We can fix it. We can reform it, but I have talked to
    many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and they know that
    most of our States, really all of our States, are simply not set up and
    equipped to deal with a catastrophic event. Oftentimes, as in the case
    of Vermont, a once-in-a-100-year-storm that came 2 years in a row, but
    we don't have the infrastructure of an emergency response to deal with
    that.
      We need the help of the Federal Government. That is exactly the role
    the Federal Government should play. It has a fiscal capacity that none
    of our States have, and the definition of an emergency is something
    that couldn't have been prevented by the actions of the State.
      So we need to recommit ourselves to assuring the American people in
    each of our communities that if and when there is a disaster, FEMA will
    be there. But we also have an obligation to make it work better so in
    that long-term recovery that is so essential, both emotionally and
    physically, that we will give the local communities much more authority
    to make their decisions and empower them with much more control of the
    funds needed to meet that recovery as quickly as possible.
      We not only can work together to improve FEMA, the only way we will
    is if we do work together. How in the world is it a partisan issue when
    you are talking about the folks you represent or I represent who find
    themselves in the path of a fire, in the path of a flood, in the path
    of a hurricane or a tornado? We come together to help each other when
    that happens.
      That is the responsibility we have, but more than that, it is really
    a wonderful opportunity to serve, where we are in a position to help
    Americans, regardless of where they live, regardless of what their
    political persuasion is, but because we respect them, the lives they
    have built, and we want to help them after a destruction of things that
    are really important to them and their community. We want to help them
    get back on their feet.
      I yield the floor.
      The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Schmitt). The Senator from Tennessee.
      Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, today, after 4 years of reckless
    spending and decades of high inflation under the Biden-Harris
    administration, our national debt now sits at $36.4 trillion. In many
    ways, this number represents one of the biggest threats to our Nation,
    as interest payments on the debt now eclipse our country's total
    defense spending.
      Think about that. The debt--interest on the debt--is costing the
    hard-working taxpayer more of their money. It is taking a greater share
    of their tax dollars than we are spending to provide for the common
    defense.
      It is astounding that that is where we are, but this problem has
    gotten worse through the years. During the last few months of the Biden
    administration, October to December of last year, our country ran a
    deficit of more than $710 billion, up 39 percent from the same period
    in 2023.
      The American people know this is unsustainable. Among many other
    reasons, that is why the American people showed up in record numbers
    and gave a mandate to Donald J. Trump as the President of the United
    States, winning the electoral college and the popular vote.
      The American people know full well they are overtaxed. Government is
    overspent. And they are tired of it.
      And since Inauguration Day, the President has been hard at work on
    this issue, getting the economy under control. And one of the first
    things he did, back in office, was to establish the Department of
    Government Efficiency. It is being led by Elon Musk, and the agency is
    working to uncover and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse from the
    Federal Government. And to no one's surprise, DOGE has found a lot of
    waste, especially with programs that should never have been put on the
    books in the first place.
      Now, in recent weeks, the agency, working overtime to find ways to
    save money for the taxpayer, they found $33 million in Education
    Department grants to groups that push far-left ideas like critical race
    theory and $44.6 million in canceled leases for unused office space and
    $45 million in scholarships for students in Burma and $182 million in
    Department of Health and Human Services contracts that had nothing to
    do with health--nothing. They even found $168,000 for a museum exhibit
    for Anthony Fauci, and a billion dollars in DEI programs.
      Now, when you scoop all of that together, you have a pretty good
    savings for the U.S. taxpayer, who has been funding all of this.
    Removing these programs and recouping those dollars, that is the right
    thing to do.
      In addition, DOGE has worked to reform the mismanaged U.S. Agency for
    International Development. We call this USAID. Under the last
    administration, the Agency used its $40 billion budget to support
    leftwing and anti-American causes around the world, including terror-
    tied extremist groups in the Middle East.
      As DOGE uncovers the left's abuse of taxpayer dollars, Washington
    Democrats have tried desperately to paint the agency as unaccountable
    to the American people. But the exact opposite is true. DOGE, which
    reports directly to President Trump, is restoring government
    accountability by reining in the Federal Government and reining in the
    bureaucracy. By the way, they are unelected.
      That is why, last week, President Trump issued an Executive order to
    support DOGE, directing Federal Departments to work with the agency to
    reduce the size of the Federal workforce. A downsize is desperately
    needed. The government employs more than 2.4 million civilian employees
    at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars each year.
      To support these efforts, I recently introduced a package of bills
    called the DOGE Acts, which would hold the Federal Government
    accountable for managing taxpayer dollars. Now, all of these bills
    would help to drain the swamp. And these are bills that I have proposed
    over the last several years, but we brought them together under the
    heading of the DOGE Acts. It would implement a hiring and salary
    freeze, direct Agencies to reduce the size of their workforce by 5
    percent within 3 years, and establish a commission to report to
    Congress on moving non-national-security Agencies outside of
    Washington, DC.
      In addition, the legislation would create a pilot program to
    determine Federal employees' compensation based on merit, not
    seniority, something that is so important to do because, right now, the
    longer someone holds a job, the more they are going to make. Let's move
    that to how well they do their job and how well they perform in
    fulfilling the responsibilities that are given to them.
      And it would require Agencies to reinstate their pre-COVID telework
    policies, a measure that is especially crucial after just 6 percent of
    Federal employees worked in an office full time during the Biden
    administration.
      Tennesseans go to work every day. They are working full time in order
    to get a full-time paycheck, and they are astounded when they hear that
    under the last administration--the Biden administration--6 percent of
    Federal employees worked full time. But do you know what? They all got
    a full-time paycheck courtesy of the hard-working U.S. taxpayer.
      Perhaps most importantly, the DOGE Acts would cut nonsecurity
    discretionary spending by 5 percent by fiscal year 2028 and every
    following year, saving taxpayers billions of dollars. When it comes to
    government spending, Tennesseans--and certainly Americans--demand
    accountability. With DOGE, Republicans are delivering it.

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