    [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 37 (Tuesday, February 25, 2025)]
    [House]
    [Page H774]
    From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                      DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY

      The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
    California (Mr. LaMalfa) for 5 minutes.
      Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, once in a while we could cooperate with the
    President and those who are trying to do things to make our government
    run better ultimately for the benefit of the citizens of this country,
    the taxpayers.
      So what we see with DOGE is that $65 billion of savings have been
    found and many, many contracts that are illegitimate or unnecessary to
    the operations of the government or what people expect are being turned
    over and are being rescinded.
      This includes the scandal that has been USAID. What started out as a
    good thing many years ago has been turned into something that is almost
    completely corrupt.
      So let's take a look at some of the other items that DOGE has found:
    104 DEI contracts eliminating $1 billion in spending. I could go down a
    whole long list: $168,000 for a Dr. Fauci exhibit and a $45 million DEI
    scholarship in Burma.
      What are we doing here when we have really difficult issues in our
    home districts and across the country as well as a $2 trillion deficit?
      So this isn't going to solve everything overnight, but it sure is a
    right step.
      So why don't we have cooperation by Federal agencies that work for us
    but ultimately for the American people?
      Here is the food chain: The people are on top. In a republic these
    are the voters who vote us in to carry out what they tell us they want
    done. Then we employ people at the different levels of different
    agencies to get that work done for us, which is ultimately the American
    people.
      Why is that not being recognized here, that yes, we are supposed to
    hold them accountable, and yes, we are supposed to have oversight?
      Ultimately, the oversight hearings don't work around here because it
    is 2 hours of running the clock out by the bureaucracy. Now we have an
    administration that has the executive authority to do that oversight.
      That is an important thing that keeps getting lost here. The
    administration has the executive authority to appoint people. That is
    what the entire administration is: people appointed by the executive
    branch, by the President. At the State level it is by a Governor. In a
    city it is by a mayor. It is not a foreign concept.
      Certainly, it is something that the Democrats when they are in charge
    take advantage of. They appoint people to do things.
      I didn't vote for Fauci, did I?
      A whole lot of other people are wondering that too.
      That is what gets done by the executive branch.

                                  {time}  1030

      Whether we are talking about Elon Musk, or whether we are talking
    about anybody in the President's Cabinet and the people that they
    appoint, yes, they are appointed positions. It is our job to rein them
    in and hold them in line to whatever their mission statement was, if
    they remember their mission statement, and to follow that.
      The work that DOGE is doing is pretty darn good. Yes, there are some
    fits and starts here and there and some things that we need to modify
    and smooth out a little bit on some of the employment out there, but at
    least the people's tax dollars are finally being respected.
      We want to keep going with this and work that out, but we would like
    to be able to work with the agencies and say: Where are the areas that
    we could do better in, and what personnel are extra to the process?
      Certainly, when the government was shut down due to COVID and we saw
    which people are essential and which people are nonessential, that
    should have been pretty revealing right there. That is tough if you are
    on the nonessential list, but we have to remember that we hire people
    in government and we create the agencies to serve a task and a purpose
    for the people of the country. It is not a government jobs program. It
    is a get-a-job-done-for-the-people program.

                 State of California's High-Speed Rail Project

      Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, one thing I point out here that came up
    last week in my home State of California as part of a considerable
    amount of savings we could do federally is to quit funding that high-
    speed rail project. It has been a boondoggle from day one.
      Right at the end of the Biden administration, they put up nearly $4
    billion more at the end, so let's quickly review that. The original
    high-speed rail program was going to be $33 billion to build the rail
    from San Francisco to L.A., and that has ballooned in the following
    years to $130 billion.
      It was supposed to be completed by 2020. All they have is about an
    1,800-foot-long bridge near Fresno done right now. They haven't laid
    any track. They have seized a lot of land. They have devastated a lot
    of agricultural land, parts of cities, important installations, et
    cetera, but they haven't laid any rail yet.
      They are trying to first do the easy part between Merced, California,
    and an orchard somewhere outside of Bakersfield. They actually said at
    the time it is because they will have less resistance to building that
    portion. That is not going to help anybody in San Francisco or Los
    Angeles, where the population base is.
      Basically, if it is timed versus Amtrak, I think you get from Merced
    to Bakersfield about 20 minutes faster, if they actually had a high-
    speed rail that ran all the way through on just this chunk of track.
    They don't, and they won't by at least 2033, 2035. To build out the
    whole thing will be a lot longer.
      We had a conference meeting in Los Angeles at Union Station last
    week, and I was very pleased. This was called by our Secretary of
    Transportation, Sean Duffy, at the behest of the Trump administration.
    We had this opportunity to talk to the press, the people of California,
    and anybody who would listen about what such a boondoggle this high-
    speed rail project is. It demands $4 billion of new money that we need
    to claw back and put toward something useful, such as fixing our
    highways, water infrastructure, or anything besides this boondoggle.

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