Plum Island Preservation Study Act

Floor Speech

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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, in recent weeks, there has been a lot of talk and a lot of optimism about President Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and, of course, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's plan to eliminate government waste, fraud, and abuse, and there is a reason for this. I think we have pretty much hit a tipping point with the American people. They have looked at this big, bloated government. They have looked at this $36 trillion in debt--which is growing every day--and they truly see this as a threat to our Nation's stability, to our children's futures, and for us to be able to protect ourselves from our enemies.

And what they have noticed is that, as this debt grows, then more of their taxpayer dollars are being spent to pay the interest on the debt. That is money that is not going to national security. It is money that is not going to disaster relief. It is going to the debt.

And here is a great example of that. In just the first half of fiscal year 2024, our country spent--get this--$440 billion to service the debt. Now, interestingly enough, that was more than what we spent on our military in the same time.

So the American people are smart. They are seeing this and they are saying it is a problem and this has got to be brought under control.

Now, I think it is important for us to look at how we have gotten to where we were, and I went back and looked at where we were when George W. Bush left office and President Obama came into office. As George W. Bush left, our debt was at $10.6 trillion, and we all remember that. We remember 2008, 2009. That is not that long ago. But think about that number, $10.6 trillion. Now, I will remind everybody that was after the Gulf war; that was after that period of time, 9/11, when our economy shut down for a full quarter. And the total debt at that point was $10.6 trillion.

Now, when Obama left office, after 8 years in office, that debt had nearly doubled. It was just shy of $20 trillion. Think about that.

Now, President Trump came into office. 4 years later, he leaves, and our debt was north of $27 trillion with all the COVID spending that was done in 2020.

And instead of restoring spending to stable levels and going back to those pre-COVID levels, what did President Biden do?

Since his inauguration, he has piled more than $8 trillion on our debt. And the deficit for this year alone--fiscal 2024 alone--is at $1.8 trillion.

And these are the numbers. Anyone who wants to look at this can go to any number of government websites. You can pull up these numbers through OMB, through Treasury. But what the American people have seen is a recklessness and a disregard for them, the taxpayer.

Since this Nation's founding, people have believed we are a government of, by, and for the people. And, quite frankly, I think that this year the people decided to be ``We the people.''

And what they have seen is, over the last 4 years, during the Biden- Harris administration, there has been a government that wasn't really accountable to anybody. If they wanted to do something, they just did it. And they have watched this wasteful, out-of-control spending. They have seen a growing bureaucracy with people who don't even show up to work. Less than 10 percent of the Federal workforce is showing up 5 days a week in person. This is why the people have said: We the people are going to take charge of this.

Speaking of that workforce, the Federal Government today is employing 2.2 million bureaucrats. Just to put context on this, that is a number larger than the population of 15 of our States. And you have people, less than 10 percent, showing up every day in person to do their job. And when you look at the amount of office space that is being used, only 12 percent of our Federal office space is occupied.

Now, to make matters worse, for most Federal employees, pay increases and promotions are completely disconnected from their job performance. They are paid the longer they stay on the job. They get automatic pay increases that are tied to the amount of time they spend employed by the Federal Government, not how well they are doing their jobs.

I think that, as you look at this, this is why the American people have said: We support the Department of Government Efficiency. And it is why they are excited about this and why Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy are going to have the American people standing with them to make these cuts.

Now, last week, I introduced the DOGE Acts, and it is a package of bills that will hold the government accountable for how they manage and use taxpayer dollars. Among the measures, the DOGE Acts will address out-of-control spending with 1, 2, and 5 percent across-the-board cuts to discretionary spending, excluding Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs.

In addition to the spending cuts, this legislation will freeze salaries for Federal bureaucrats and order Agency heads to shrink their workforce by 5 percent over 3 years.

To drain the swamp, the legislation will establish a commission to study how the incoming administration can relocate Agencies from Washington, DC, to States across the country.

Who can seriously claim that it is good for beltway bureaucrats to be siloed away from most of the American people? If anything, they should be closer to the people who are suffering from their burdensome rules and regulations.

To ensure that Federal bureaucrats are actually working while living on the taxpayer dime, the DOGE Acts would require government employees to return to their office by ending pandemic-era telework policies.

And to reward merit, they would implement a pilot program for Agencies to pay employees based on productivity, not seniority.

In just a few short weeks, Republicans here in Congress and the Trump administration will work together to put our country back on track, including rightsizing the Federal Government, and we look forward to pushing forward our DOGE Acts and helping make that happen.

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