(The Center Square) House Republicans and Democrats sparred on Tuesday over codifying cuts proposed by the Department of Government Efficiency.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said Congress needs to “lock in” DOGE’s $180 billion in cuts across the federal government at a House Oversight and Government Reform’s DOGE subcommittee.
“We need to make sure we lock in those savings, it should be the first installment we pay on our nation’s $37 trillion debt,” Greene said.
Greene also pointed to a $9 billion recessions package passed in the House which would make cuts to several international organizations, nongovernmental organizations as well as public media including NPR and PBS.
“Nine billion is just the tip of the iceberg of the waste DOGE has identified and of the spending that the administration has paused or shut off,” Greene added.
Witnesses before the panel highlighted some of DOGE’s cuts and said Congress needs to take control in order to make the DOGE cuts permanent.
Matthew Dickerson, a witness before the committee and director of budget policy at the Economic Policy Innovation Center, called for Congress to enact a 10% reduction across the federal workforce. He said this reduction would reduce discretionary spending on salaries by as much as $608 billion.
“The most straightforward way to control waste, fraud and abuse is by controlling agency budgets in the annual appropriations process,” Dickerson said.
David Burton, a senior fellow in economic policy at the Heritage Foundation, affirmed the importance of the appropriations process.
“Most of the personnel reductions, grant reductions and other reforms initiated by DOGE will not result in actual savings unless Congress takes action through appropriations bills,” Burton said.
Democrats on the committee disagreed with the sentiment of cementing DOGE cuts and pointed to several errors the agency has made in the past few months.
“While we came to the table at the beginning of the whole process in good faith, with real ideas, bipartisan ideas that folks have actually been working on for years and desire to actually fix and modernize the federal government, what we’ve seen from DOGE is the exact opposite,” Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., said.
Democrats cited proposed cuts to healthcare services for veterans within the Department of Veterans Affairs. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, called for a subpoena of Elon Musk to investigate DOGE’s actions, which failed to pass.
Greene reaffirmed a commitment to implementing cuts proposed by DOGE and compared the government to “an overgrown, out of control animal.”
“We as lawmakers should pass new DOGE cuts every single day and make cutting waste, fraud and abuse our top priority,” Greene said.
“Instead of growing the government, we should be slashing the government. The government is far too big, it’s like an overgrown, out of control animal, and the American people are beginning to hate it,” she added.
