Business
‘Accountability Is Coming’: Joni Ernst Sends Musk’s DOGE ‘A Trillion Dollars’ Worth Of Ideas To Gut Gov’t Spending
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa sent Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) co-chairs Tesla CEO Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy a letter Monday with ideas for cuts that could save the federal government over $2 trillion.
Trump named Musk and Ramaswamy as co-chairs of DOGE on Nov. 12. In the seven-page letter, Ernst’s suggestions ranged from addressing unused space in buildings to uncommitted spending for COVID relief, with the proposed cuts totaling over $2 trillion.
Ernst has focused on government waste since her election to the United States Senate in 2014, with a recent focus on the effects of telework and remote work on federal agencies.
“When faced with proposals to trim the fat from Washington’s budget, members of Congress from both parties act like Goldilocks,” Ernst wrote. “It’s too little or too big, always too hard, and never just right. But the real ‘make-believe’ of this fairy tale is that it’s impossible to reduce Washington’s budget without causing pain. Most Americans aren’t even benefitting in any meaningful way from hundreds of billions of dollars being wasted.”
“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 continued.
Three rail projects in California with a combined price tag of over $135 billion, $213 million in unemployment payments to millionaires, $31 million in pay to government employees with no assigned duties and $10 billion in inaccurate Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program payments are among the programs Ernst listed as potential cuts. Ernst also said there was over $1.6 trillion in uncommitted COVID relief spending.
Ernst announced Friday she would lead a Senate DOGE caucus to work alongside Musk and Ramaswamy, while Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was named as chair of a House Oversight Committee subpanel called the Delivering on Government Efficiency panel.
“I have a simple message to the bureaucrats who haven’t shown up for work in years and the government contractors and grantees collecting millions to study how fast a shrimp runs on a treadmill – buckle up because accountability is coming,” Ernst said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “My decade-long mission to make Washington squeal has created an exhaustive list of more than $2 trillion worth of waste, fraud, and abuse that I will work with DOGE to cut. We are going to break down the nonsense that has taken over Washington and put in its place a government that actually works for the people.”
Ernst previously questioned USAID over an employee who improperly received “locality pay” for the Washington, D.C. area despite living in Florida, and requested a staff briefing after a second instance of improper locality pay involving another USAID employee living in North Carolina was reported.
In an August 2023 letter requesting a review of the issues involved with telecommuting sent to 24 government agencies, Ernst cited a media account of a VA employee who attended a staff meeting while taking a bubble bath.
Ernst wrote the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), urging the agency to take emergency action in an August 28 letter sent to EPA Administrator Michael Regan about contaminants that built up in the drinking water of federal buildings left unoccupied by a shift to remote work.
Ernst introduced the Stopping Home Office Work’s Unproductive Problems (SHOW UP) Act, in September 2023 as part of a package of legislation to rein in the “administrative state.”
“This is by no means an exhaustive list, and I will be providing many more recommendations soon,” Ernst wrote. “My team and I are ready to help you make some prime cuts.”
The Trump-Vance transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.
By Ken Macon
Digital ID systems risk becoming massive vulnerabilities in the face of modern cyber threats.
Ukraine’s reliance on its new digital identity systems has become a warning about the dangers of digital ID, as a recent cyberattack exposed critical vulnerabilities in the country’s digital infrastructure.
Last month, several key government databases were taken offline, disrupting essential services like legal filings and marriage registrations. Officials assured citizens that the controversial Diia, the government’s widely used e-governance app, would soon be restored, but the incident laid bare significant risks within the app’s centralized backend platform, Trembita.
This breach, the most serious since Trembita’s launch in 2020, raises urgent questions about the security of Ukraine’s growing dependence on digital IDs and is a clear warning to other countries that are rushing to embrace the controversial tech.
Trembita, the platform enabling Diia’s operations, functions as a digital network connecting government databases. While officials insisted it operated as designed during the breach, cybersecurity experts are sounding alarms.
Mykyta Knysh, a former Ukrainian security official, described the platform’s centralized architecture as a dangerous “single point of failure.” Warnings about these risks had surfaced before — security analysts cautioned in 2021 that consolidating sensitive personal and administrative data under Diia would leave Ukraine exposed to large-scale attacks.
The Russian hacking group XakNet has claimed responsibility for the attack.
This highlights a broader danger inherent in Ukraine’s ambitious digitalization efforts, spearheaded by the Ministry of Digital Transformation under the Zelensky administration.
While consolidating government services into the smartphone-based Diia app has streamlined access for millions of citizens, the breakneck pace of implementation has left little time to address critical security gaps.
The compromised registries contained highly sensitive data, including personal addresses, family connections, and financial assets.
Beyond military implications, the breach exposes the inherent risks of digital ID systems. Security analysts have pointed out that a central repository of personal data, as seen in Ukraine’s system, creates lucrative targets for hackers. If exploited, such data could fuel identity theft, phishing campaigns, or even more devastating cyberattacks, undermining public trust in digital governance.
If you’re tired of censorship and surveillance, subscribe to Reclaim The Net.
By Rick Findlay
The executive order marks a decisive pivot in US digital asset policy.
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