[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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