[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 115 (Wednesday, July 15, 2026)]
[House]
[Pages H4531-H4534]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1740
                            FAREWELL TO DOGE

  (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Ms. 
Stansbury of New Mexico was recognized for 60 minutes as the designee 
of the minority leader.)


                             General Leave

  Ms. STANSBURY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks 
and include extraneous material in the Record.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentlewoman from New Mexico?

[[Page H4532]]

  There was no objection.
  Ms. STANSBURY. Mr. Speaker, we rise tonight to acknowledge that DOGE 
is, indeed, dead.
  Mr. Speaker, the scandals, the gossip--when New Mexicans tune in to 
see what is happening here in Washington, it feels like they are tuning 
into an episode of a reality TV show rather than another day in the 
people's House, but the messiest House isn't an overseas villa. It is 
the White House.
  The President has a lot of messy friends and a lot of messy breakups, 
but the biggest breakup of all was the breakup between President Trump 
and Elon Musk 1 year ago.
  One day, Elon is sending a love letter of hundreds of millions in 
campaign donations to the President's campaign, and the next, he is 
wondering where it all went wrong. After all the insults, all of the 
public arguing, and a very public divorce, today, we are here to say to 
Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency: I am 
so sorry, but you have not been chosen, and you will be dumped from the 
villa.
  Now that the season of DOGE is over, it is time to look back and have 
a reunion episode and answer the question on everyone's mind: Where did 
it all go wrong? Was it all talk, or did Elon actually deliver on his 
promises because when DOGE was created and Americans heard what they 
were up to, there were some very big promises. He said that he could 
save $2 trillion by cutting waste, fraud, and abuse across the Federal 
Government.
  Well, the honeymoon is over, and I think the numbers say it all. He 
didn't even save a fraction of that amount. In fact, what we know is 
that due to disruptions in government services and firings and 
litigation, he may have actually cost the Federal Government more money 
than he saved.
  In fact, here is what we know about DOGE's impacts: Large-scale loss 
of experienced Federal employees. Our agencies lost tens of thousands 
of employees through layoffs, deferred resignations, early retirements 
and hiring freezes.
  They reduced the institutional knowledge of generations across our 
agencies and made it impossible to do basic functions that our 
communities needed: Forest Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and our 
nuclear agencies who protect the nuclear and national security of this 
country.
  They disrupted government services. Agencies were unable to process 
basic functions. They attacked Social Security. They laid off thousands 
of veterans across our Federal Government who had served this great 
country and given their sacrifice in service, only to find themselves 
eliminated by a cheap date in the West Wing.
  Legal challenges--we don't even know how many lawsuits there have 
been in the wake of DOGE--personnel actions, agency restructuring, 
illegal orders, withholding of funds, and many, many more that are 
still awaiting to be adjudicated by the courts.
  Let us not forget that they stole your data. That is right. They came 
in talking a big talk, saying that they were going to digitize our 
Federal Government and modernize it and help us actually make the 
government work for the people. It was a front for stealing your 
personal data--your IRS data, your Social Security data, your bank 
account data. They not only went into the most private systems of the 
Federal Government and stole your data, but they exported it and gave 
it to private companies.
  This is not just a run-of-the-mill exercise of modernizing the 
government. They stole your data for a profit, for campaign 
advancement, and to ensure that they would be able to continue to 
access your data for power.
  In addition to that, they broke key aspects of our Federal 
Government. They disrupted contracts. They gave themselves private 
contracts. They gave away billions of dollars in Federal taxpayer 
dollars for defense contracts to their friends, for NASA contracts for 
their friends, for weather service contracts for their friends. They 
disbanded decades of scientific research on every single continent 
across this planet.
  The reductions in workforce not just impacted the functioning of the 
Federal Government but disrupted local economies across the country, 
especially in our rural communities.
  Let us not forget the most consequential impacts that we know came as 
a result of Elon Musk's dangerous date with the White House, and that 
is the dismantling of the USAID. We know that, as a direct result of 
the dismantling of public health programs that have been in place 
across the world for decades, that literally thousands of children 
across the world died as a direct result.
  Medicine, food--they came in claiming that they were trying to cut 
waste, and they left food for starving children to sit in warehouses 
and rot while children did not have anything to eat.
  They let medicine expire in warehouses and actually threw it away 
rather than give it to people for whom it would save their lives.
  What do they have to answer for it as they have come here to testify 
before Congress? Is there any remorse for the lives that were lost? Is 
there any remorse for the thousands of children whose lives were taken 
because they could not access medicine? Is there any remorse for the 
thousands of nonprofit organizations who serve our communities every 
day who have been impacted? Is there any remorse for the hundreds of 
thousands of Federal workers who they fired and whose lives they 
disrupted?
  No. There is no remorse. And let me tell you this: This has been one 
toxic relationship since the very beginning.

  So here is what we know. DOGE, you are voted off the island, and we 
do not want to ever see you back here again.
  The American people want efficiency. The American people want a 
government that serves them. The American people want to make sure that 
their leaders care for the communities that they live in and will care 
for them.
  The American people do not want toxic billionaires trying to steal 
their taxpayer dollars and dismantling the basic services that keep 
them well.
  So we bid good-bye to DOGE. We say farewell. We won't miss you. We 
won't miss you as you leave the island and take your big exit.
  What we will say is that we will continue to fight every single day 
for the American people. We will continue to actually work to make this 
government work for the American people, to actually cut real waste and 
real fraud and real abuse and the real abusers who are sitting in the 
White House and committing waste, fraud, and abuse on the American 
people every single day.
  We will commit that when we take back this House, when we take back 
the White House, that we will fight for a nation that fights for our 
people. We will bring a new deal to this country that serves the 
working people of this country, that invests in housing and healthcare 
and food, that protects the environment, that fights for climate 
action, and that cares for the human dignity of our people.

                              {time}  1750

  That is our promise. We don't want any more toxic relationships. We 
just say this: The American people deserve better, girl, and we are 
here for you.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Oregon.
  Ms. HOYLE of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of the 119th 
session, I was ready to work with anyone to root out waste, fraud, and 
abuse in the government. We are here to be good stewards of taxpayer 
dollars, and we should want our government to be efficient.
  That is not what happened. We started with a bipartisan congressional 
effort, and then President Trump appointed Elon Musk, who stood there 
with a chainsaw, brought in a bunch of unqualified DOGE bros, who said 
that they were going to make $2 trillion in savings from the Federal 
budget, but made no meaningful impact in spending.
  They tortured and went after our public employees that cost the 
taxpayers $10 billion through the deferred resignation program. Mr. 
Speaker, 300,000 Federal workers were fired or urged to retire, 
including 100,000 veterans.
  This wasn't done in a strategic way. People were fired without 
understanding what their jobs were. For instance, off the Oregon coast, 
they fired the people who knew how to operate the tsunami warning 
system. That isn't rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse.
  They shut down promising innovations, like direct file, at the 
request of big businesses that stood to financially

[[Page H4533]]

benefit. That hurt low-income and working Americans who now have to pay 
to file their taxes.
  They slowed response time to complaints made to the Consumer 
Financial Protection Bureau, which had previously helped return $21 
billion to Americans.
  They purged USAID by getting rid of 83 percent of USAID projects. 
Impact Counter estimates that 757,000 people died, mostly children. We 
lost the benefit of soft power that we had when we invested in this 
very effective program.
  They tried to end NIOSH and canceled $3.8 billion in NIH grants. They 
laid off 1,300 critical Federal workers from NOAA.
  If you want to talk about government overreach and small government, 
that is not what happened with DOGE. They gained access to personal 
data, like our Social Security numbers, our tax returns, and our health 
records.
  Waste, fraud, and abuse still exist in the Federal Government. For 
instance, if we want to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, let's start 
with the Pentagon that failed the last eight audits. There is a ton of 
waste, fraud, and abuse.
  They have awarded more than $208 billion in contracts to companies 
that have been cited for repeated or willful violations. Why are we not 
addressing that?
  We should want government to be more efficient. We should want to 
root out waste, fraud, and abuse. I will work with anyone to make that 
happen.
  Instead, we gave a chainsaw to a trillionaire who made his money off 
of Federal grants, Federal research, and Federal projects, and we cut 
critical investments to make our government work better for the working 
people.
  On July Fourth, DOGE shut down. It doesn't intend to publish a final 
report because they would have to report a giant failure that cost 
taxpayers $10 billion. I say, good-bye, good riddance, and let's not do 
this again.
  Ms. STANSBURY. Mr. Speaker, there are so many things to be said about 
DOGE and the waste of money and lives that happened over the course of 
the year and a half that it was officially on the books.
  Mr. Speaker, I also want to take a moment to talk about our country 
at a crossroads. Do we continue to use American taxpayer dollars to 
fund the killing of civilians, children, and families abroad, or do we 
finally say, enough?
  Today, I took a vote for the children, for peace, and for the future 
of this country, by voting ``yes'' on an amendment to block $3.3 
billion in offensive military aid. This is money that should be used to 
build roads, to build housing, and to lower the cost of food and 
childcare for families who are struggling right here in the United 
States.
  I did not come to Congress to write blank checks to the military. I 
did not come to Congress to write blank checks to foreign militaries to 
bomb civilians, and I did not come here to support an unending and 
illegal war in the Middle East.
  That is why I chose today to block offensive military aid. Today, I 
choose our people over weapons. I choose peace over war. I choose 
accountability over silence, and I will continue to choose that every 
single time.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, as we close out this debate and the broken promises 
of DOGE and this administration, let us be reminded that when President 
Trump and Elon Musk first created DOGE, the American people were 
promised that it would cut waste, fight fraud and abuse, and save the 
taxpayers $2 trillion across the government. Many of us hoped that was 
actually true because cutting waste, fraud, and abuse is not a partisan 
issue. It is just good government. All of us want a government that 
actually works for the people of this country.
  Actions speak louder than words. When it comes to the legacy of DOGE 
and this administration, its actions speak for themselves. Instead of 
cutting waste, they cut over 100,000 jobs of veterans across the 
Federal Government, veterans in my district who worked at the VA and 
across our Federal agencies, who wanted nothing more than to continue 
their service to this country.
  They cut workers in charge of maintaining our nuclear stockpile, only 
to scramble to rehire them. They fired some of our Nation's top 
scientists, who were responsible for making sure our national security 
is taken care of.
  They attacked Social Security. They fired thousands of workers across 
the Social Security Administration, including in my district where 
people were struggling just to get access to their basic needs being 
met.
  DOGE cut back hours and fired hundreds across New Mexico. It pushed 
seniors, children, and veterans to the brink.
  Instead of saving taxpayers money, DOGE cost taxpayers billions of 
dollars in lost productivity, lost revenue, and the cost to hire 
essential civil servants they fired. Instead of fighting abuse, DOGE 
gave the richest man on planet Earth direct influence over government 
decisionmaking and access to our personal and financial data.
  We will never know the true damage that DOGE did because the 
administration won't even release the final information or final report 
explaining what they did. This is not okay.
  Let me say this to this administration: You better bet we will be 
investigating every inch of what you did through DOGE and your behavior 
in the administration.
  The American people deserve transparency. The American people deserve 
a government that works for them. The American people deserve a 
government and leaders who tell the truth. The American people deserve 
accountability for their taxpayer dollars. The American people deserve 
respect, especially those who have served this great Nation.

                              {time}  1800

  Even though DOGE's disaster is officially over on the books, we 
already have another agency whose job is to find waste, fraud, and 
abuse. We will continue to investigate what happened through DOGE. We 
will continue to do the work of improving our government, and we will 
continue to investigate what has happened.
  Our question is: After all that has been said and done, will the 
Republicans of this body continue to support the lies that this 
administration has put forward through DOGE? Will they continue to 
support the dismantling of our Federal agencies, as is happening right 
now at the Department of Education, as we stand here, and the Education 
Committee?
  Will they continue to raid agencies like the Consumer Financial 
Protection Bureau and steal money from the taxpayers?
  Will they continue to allow this administration to steal your 
taxpayer dollars and give it to the military to bomb civilians 
overseas?
  Will they continue to allow an out-of-control President to make 
billions of dollars in self-dealing while lining his pockets and 
demolishing the White House or will they actually stand up for the 
American people?
  That is the real waste, fraud, and abuse, and that is the real 
corruption, a President who is wasting our taxpayer dollars on an 
unending and illegal war, painting a pool filled with algae, a golden 
ballroom, and trying to put his name on the Kennedy Center, spending 
millions of dollars, taxpayer dollars litigating over illegal actions 
he has taken since taking office, all while giving private contracts to 
his own family members and the very man who started DOGE in the first 
place.
  While DOGE may be over, let the lesson be that when we take back the 
House, we will hold them accountable. We will build a government that 
works for the American people, that is stronger. We will stop 
billionaires from coming in and using their money to achieve their own 
political ends and line their own pockets.
  We will stop the self-dealing not only in the White House, but that 
happens in this Chamber. We will work to get big money out of politics, 
to end Citizens United, and to ensure that we have a system that 
actually represents the people of this country.
  We will rebuild better the agencies that were dismantled. We will 
create a whole new generation of public servants who want to serve this 
great Nation, and we will bring a new deal for this country that is 
about results, that is about dignity, that puts people and services 
ahead of profits and not empty promises.
  That is why, Mr. Speaker, we are here today to celebrate the end of 
this dark chapter and bring DOGE to a conclusion.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

[[Page H4534]]

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to refrain from 
engaging in personalities toward the President.

                          ____________________