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Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, there is a lot going on here in Washington, DC. That is an understatement. But I want to highlight the meeting that I had--that I attended, along with many of my Senate colleagues--last week, with Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency team. That is a topic that has gotten a fair amount of information and visibility in the press, but much of it has been misinformation. I would like to address some of that and the importance of this effort, here, in the next few minutes. We had a very informative meeting with Mr. Musk and his team about the work they are doing on behalf of the American people.

I first met Elon Musk maybe 15 years ago, when he came to my office and said he had a new company called SpaceX, and he wanted to be able to compete with other companies that had all of the NASA contracts for space. I guess, looking back on it, that was quite a long time ago, but we see how far SpaceX has come, which now covers the vast majority of payloads into space for the U.S. Government and for the private sector.

Interestingly, and to the point of the Department of Government Efficiency, Mr. Musk had to sue the Federal Government in order to compete, which tells you a lot about the problems that the Federal Government has; that it is not open to competition and, thus, creates a lot of the problems now that I think the Department of Government Efficiency is now looking at.

But in addition to all of that, Mr. Musk has now moved personally his family and his businesses to Texas. So I am happy to have him as a constituent. He has created a lot of jobs in my State, anywhere from Boca Chica in South Texas, in Cameron County--which is now, I think, officially renamed Starbase--and the Tesla gigafactory, which is right outside of Austin, which I visited a few months ago with Mr. Musk; Starlink, obviously, providing internet access to people in remote parts of the planet that would never hope to have that access--all sorts of interesting things that he is involved in.

Certainly, I think we can all acknowledge, whether you like Mr. Musk and what he is doing or you don't like him, he is obviously a brilliant individual and, certainly, among the most brilliant people I know.

So you have to ask yourself: Why would a guy, maybe one of the richest--maybe the richest--human beings on the planet, do what he is doing for the U.S. Government? I think that is an important question to ask.

Certainly, he is not doing it for the money. He is certainly not doing it for the glory, because anytime you start messing with the status quo here in Washington, DC, you can be assured you will become a target. You will be criticized. You will be demagogued against. You will be lied about. It just goes with the territory, and it is something, I am sure, he has not necessarily experienced before. Frankly, I am glad he is willing to put up with all of that in order to do some important things.

But, of course, what the Department of Government Efficiency is focused on is efficiency--something that we purport and claim to be focused on here in Washington, DC: waste, abuse, and fraud. We talk about it a lot, but that is basically what we end up doing--talking about it and not doing much, if anything, about it.

Right now, the U.S. national debt--that is like our credit card--sits at over $36.4 trillion. I am sure that the American people--certainly, it is true in my case--can't really get your heads around how much money that really is. To me, one of the most telling indications of how big a number that is, is that we are now spending more money on interest on our national debt than we are on our defense, which is the most fundamental and important role that the Federal Government plays.

I know, sometimes, when you have such a big number or a big challenge or a big problem, it is easy to say: Well, it is just too hard. We can't do anything about it.

In the case of politicians, some may say--and I bet there are more than a few: Well, it is too politically risky to try to deal with the status quo because I am sure there are going to be some sacred cows or some pet projects that individual Members of Congress or maybe constituent groups or special interest groups want to preserve. So they don't want you looking at that. They don't want you disrupting the status quo.

But the reality is--and as we heard from President Trump last night, as well as news reports--there are many examples of outrageous expenditures of taxpayer dollars that need to be exposed, and they need to be addressed. We have to start somewhere, and I would submit that there is no time like the present.

If you spoke to someone struggling with a substance abuse problem, an addiction, you would never say to that person: Well, the situation with your addiction is just so bad that it is hopeless. It is simply too hard to change. There is nothing you can do.

The truth is, Washington, DC, is addicted to spending and has been for a long, long time. And we have no responsible choice but to address it.

So I am glad that Mr. Musk and his team have stepped up. And while DOGE may not erase that national debt overnight, they are certainly highlighting the problems that those taxpayer expenditures present. And I think this effort will be part of the answer to how we get back on track and correct our fiscal challenges here in our country.

Now, of course, there are many in Washington who want nothing to change. I think we saw some of them last night sitting on their hands during the President's State of the Union speech. They like the way things are. They like the status quo. As a result, there has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth and, frankly, dissemination of a lot of erroneous information, again, which is just simply not reality.

Now, some in the media have created, for their own reasons, misperceptions that Mr. Musk and his team are going in and making personnel and financial decisions on their own or forcing these decisions on the respective Agencies that they are researching, but that is simply false. Let me say that again. Some may have the perception that Mr. Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency team are themselves making personnel or financial decisions on their own. That is false. The reality is that those working for the Department of Government Efficiency are doing so in compliance with the law.

Each Agency's DOGE employees have gone through the Presidential personnel office onboarding process. They have appropriate security clearances and are direct contract employees of these Agencies, and they must abide by the same guidelines and rules as other employees to ensure the protection of sensitive information.

The reality on the ground is that DOGE employees are reviewing systems, processes, data, personnel, and making recommendations-- recommendations--to the Agency heads. Then the Agency head--in most cases, a Cabinet member appointed by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate--is the one with the authority to make those discretionary calls.

Now, of course, it is a tremendous project, as I indicated earlier, to reform our government's giant bureaucracy, and with any undertaking of this size, it is a given that there will be some trial and error, some mistakes that are made. But, hopefully, those can be readily addressed once pointed out. And the administration has made those course corrections, and they should continue to do so and, I believe, will do so. But there is much to be hopeful about.

One example that DOGE identified--and it is just, to me, a symptom of the problem--is reforming software licenses and subscriptions. We were told at the meeting at the White House with Mr. Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency that some Agencies are finding out that they are paying for as many as 37,000 software licenses but only about 10,000 employees are responsible for functions that require those licenses--37,000 licenses but only 10,000, arguably, would be required. Now, think about what this means for a minute. And, again, this is just a symptom, I think, of a larger problem. This means taxpayers are paying for a lot of software licenses that are sitting around and are not being used.

Imagine if a private company let something like this go unaddressed. Of course, they wouldn't, because if they did, they eventually would go out of business. They would go bankrupt and cease to exist. But the Federal Government doesn't work that way. Some of these things that Mr. Musk and his team are finding should be an embarrassment.

I can tell you that my constituents back in Texas are paying close attention and mainly like what they see. But the perennial problem is that the Federal Government just is very slow to change, and part of that has to do with the incentives that exist in the private sector that don't exist in the public sector. As I indicated, a private business couldn't do what the Federal Government does, or they would go belly up.

This is part of the reason that our national debt has been growing by leaps and bounds without any credible effort by the Congress or the Federal Government to change. And change we must. It is unsustainable.

Now, here in Congress, we have a certain amount of accountability because we run for election. We have to stand for reelection. Our constituents get to vote for us or against us, and we, naturally, want to be responsive to what our constituents are telling us. There is always a sensitivity, for example, in what we spend in our offices. We take great care--I bet, to a person--not to waste the taxpayers' dime. Now, that is the sort of accountability that democracy provides: government of the people, by the people, for the people.

But when you look at the bureaucracy--a word that literally means ruled by the desk--there are no such incentives; there is no accountability--until now. So to have someone like Elon Musk and DOGE come in and shake things up is just exactly what Washington needs. And, again, it should be no surprise to any of us that there are some folks here in town who don't like what they see. There are many people who want nothing to change.

And we are definitely hearing a lot of speculation, in addition to the misinformation, about what this means and where it will ultimately lead, but many of these stories have turned out to be nothing more than that: stories.

We know there has always been waste, fraud, and abuse within the government, but it does not have to be that way. The problem is big, but it is our job as elected Members of Congress--working as part of the Federal Government, working for the American people--not to ignore it, not to give pretty speeches talking about how bad the problem is; but, actually, our job is to do something about it.

That is why I appreciate what the Department of Government Efficiency and the Trump administration are doing. I truly believe this is a once- in-a-generation opportunity to actually get our fiscal house in order. This is not easy. If it were easy, we would have done it before. This is hard. It is politically risky. But it is absolutely critical that we do so.

If we look at what the voters told us on November 5 of last year, we saw an overwhelming desire of the American people to change the direction of the country. They gave President Trump and us a mandate for change, and I think what DOGE is doing, along with the Trump administration, is very much in line with the mandate that we got from the voters on November 5.

So I support the efforts that the Department of Government Efficiency are undertaking, and I look forward to continuing to work with Mr. Musk and President Trump, as a member of the Senate Caucus for DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, so that we can get our Nation's fiscal trajectory back on track. It is absolutely essential that we do so.

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