Melanie A. Stansbury

Mr. Speaker, Claims · 10 wordswe rise tonight to acknowledge that DOGE is, indeed, dead. Mr. Speaker, Positioning · 38 wordsthe scandals, the gossip--when New Mexicans tune in to see what is happening here in Washington, it feels like they are tuning into an episode of a reality TV show rather than another day in the people’s House, PositioningAside · 27 wordsbut the messiest House isn’t an overseas villa. It is the White House. The President has a lot of messy friends and a lot of messy breakups, AsideClaims · 57 wordsbut the biggest breakup of all was the breakup between President Trump and Elon Musk 1 year ago.¹ One day, Elon is sending a love letter of hundreds of millions in campaign donations to the President’s campaign, ²and the next, he is wondering where it all went wrong. After all the insults, all of the public arguing, Procedure · 21 wordsand a very public divorce, today, we are here to say to Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency: ProcedureAside · 54 wordsI am so sorry, but you have not been chosen, and you will be dumped from the villa. Now that the season of DOGE is over, it is time to look back and have a reunion episode and answer the question on everyone’s mind: Where did it all go wrong? Was it all talk, AsideClaims · 45 wordsor did Elon actually deliver on his promises because when DOGE was created and Americans heard what they were up to, there were some very big promises. He said that he could save $2 trillion by cutting waste, fraud, ³and abuse across the Federal Government. Aside · 5 wordsWell, the honeymoon is over, AsideProcedure · 8 wordsand I think the numbers say it all.Procedure Claims · 39 wordsHe didn’t even save a fraction of that amount.Unearned certainty In fact, what we know is that due to disruptions in government services and firings and litigation, he may have actually cost the Federal Government more money than he saved. Procedure · 10 wordsIn fact, here is what we know about DOGE’s impacts: ProcedureClaims · 162 wordsLarge-scale loss of experienced Federal employees. Our agencies lost tens of thousands of employees through layoffs, deferred resignations, early retirements and hiring freezes.⁴ They reduced the institutional knowledge of generations across our agencies and made it impossible to do basic functions that our communities needed: Forest Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and our nuclear agencies who protect the nuclear and national security of this country. They disrupted government services. Agencies were unable to process basic functions. They attacked Social Security. They laid off thousands of veterans across our Federal Government who had served this great country and given their sacrifice in service, only to find themselves eliminated by a cheap date in the West Wing.⁵ Legal challenges--we don’t even know how many lawsuits there have been in the wake of DOGE--personnel actions, agency restructuring, illegal orders, withholding of funds, and many, many more that are still awaiting to be adjudicated by the courts. Let us not forget that they stole your data.Unearned certainty Procedure · 3 wordsThat is right.Procedure Claims · 77 wordsThey came in talking a big talk, saying that they were going to digitize our Federal Government and modernize it and help us actually make the government work for the people. It was a front for stealing your personal data--your IRS data, your Social Security data, your bank account data. They not only went into the most private systems of the Federal Government and stole your data, but they exported it and gave it to private companies. Reasoning · 11 wordsThis is not just a run-of-the-mill exercise of modernizing the government. Claims · 113 wordsThey stole your data for a profit, for campaign advancement, and to ensure that they would be able to continue to access your data for power. In addition to that, they broke key aspects of our Federal Government. They disrupted contracts. They gave themselves private contracts. They gave away billions of dollars in Federal taxpayer dollars for defense contracts to their friends, for NASA contracts for their friends, for weather service contracts for their friends. They disbanded decades of scientific research on every single continent across this planet. The reductions in workforce not just impacted the functioning of the Federal Government but disrupted local economies across the country, especially in our rural communities. Procedure · 24 wordsLet us not forget the most consequential impacts that we know came as a result of Elon Musk’s dangerous date with the White House, ProcedureClaims · 102 wordsand that is the dismantling of the USAID.⁶ We know that, as a direct result of the dismantling of public health programs that have been in place across the world for decades, that literally thousands of children across the world died as a direct result.Unearned certainty Medicine, food--they came in claiming that they were trying to cut waste, and they left food for starving children to sit in warehouses and rot while children did not have anything to eat. They let medicine expire in warehouses and actually threw it away rather than give it to people for whom it would save their lives. Positioning · 86 wordsWhat do they have to answer for it as they have come here to testify before Congress? Is there any remorse for the lives that were lost? Is there any remorse for the thousands of children whose lives were taken because they could not access medicine? Is there any remorse for the thousands of nonprofit organizations who serve our communities every day who have been impacted? Is there any remorse for the hundreds of thousands of Federal workers who they fired and whose lives they disrupted?⁷Positioning Claims · 5 wordsNo. There is no remorse. Procedure · 6 wordsAnd let me tell you this: ProcedurePositioning · 10 wordsThis has been one toxic relationship since the very beginning.Positioning Procedure · 6 wordsSo here is what we know.Procedure Aside · 19 wordsDOGE, you are voted off the island, and we do not want to ever see you back here again.Aside Positioning · 60 wordsThe American people want efficiency. The American people want a government that serves them. The American people want to make sure that their leaders care for the communities that they live in and will care for them. The American people do not want toxic billionaires trying to steal their taxpayer dollars and dismantling the basic services that keep them well.Positioning Aside · 27 wordsSo we bid good-bye to DOGE. We say farewell. We won’t miss you. We won’t miss you as you leave the island and take your big exit.Aside Promise · 145 wordsWhat we will say is that we will continue to fight every single day for the American people.Vague promise We will continue to actually work to make this government work for the American people, to actually cut real waste and real fraud and real abuse and the real abusers who are sitting in the White House and committing waste, fraud, Vague promiseand abuse on the American people every single day. We will commit that when we take back this House, when we take back the White House, that we will fight for a nation that fights for our people.Vague promise We will bring a new deal to this country that serves the working people of this country, that invests in housing and healthcare and food, that protects the environment, that fights for climate action, Vague promiseand that cares for the human dignity of our people. That is our promise. Aside · 7 wordsWe don’t want any more toxic relationships.Aside Procedure · 4 wordsWe just say this: ProcedureAside · 12 wordsThe American people deserve better, girl, and we are here for you.Aside Mr. Speaker, Procedure · 7 wordsI yield to the gentlewoman from Oregon.Procedure