WASHINGTON—With Democrats up in arms over the aggressive and transparent nature of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in support of President Donald Trump’s “America First Agenda” initiative, Republican lawmakers like Senator Ashley Moody and Rep. Byron Donalds continue to praise the efforts of a complete government agency overhaul.
Shortly after votes on Monday, The Floridian spoke to Senator Moody about how effective DOGE has been and her overall thoughts about President Trump’s push to “Drain the Swamp.”
“As Attorney General, a lot of what I did was push back on some overreaching policy decisions, spending decisions of some of these agencies, and I think folks have realized that not only have these agencies gotten so large, they have overstepped time and time again,” said Sen. Moody.
Sen. Moody tried to give past and current members of Congress the benefit of the doubt about what was going on within government agencies, but the newly-minted junior senator from Florida reverted back to praising the Trump administration for assembly the Musk-ran DOGE that has been looking under every stone within the federal government to uncover wasteful spending.
“With Congress, I don’t think a lot of people understood what some of that spending was, and so I give a lot of credit to assembly a team that’s coming in and going item by item by item to utterly curtail the size of government, but be very focused on what’s been spent and whether that is something Congress originally intended and whether the people support that,” Moody concluded.
But while Moody and other Republicans try not to nuke their Democratic colleagues for the part they may have played in the overblown size of the federal government, Rep. Donalds wasn’t so kind.
“Of course the Democrats are complaining because all their pet projects are burrowed into the bureaucracy, and now someone is going in and examining everything, which this town has never done, and what has been needed in this town, so, of course, they are going to be upset,” said Rep. Donalds.
Donalds went on to point out that congressional Democrats were to blame for “writing law for decades” through the Executive Branch in order to support their “pet projects.”
“They are the ones that gave so much discretion to the Executive Branch_that’s how they’ve been writing law for decades now so that they can squeeze all their pet projects without congress really having to do that heavy lifting,” he added. “And now you have an Executive who is using that discretion to examine the Executive Branch.”
Musk recently sent out an email asking government employees to respond with what they had accomplished the previous week or face possible termination.
