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House of Representatives

Farewell to Doge

2026-07-15 Issue 115 Showing 1–3 of 3

Official Congressional Record ↗

Melanie A. Stansbury

Democrat 5:40 p.m.

“I don't like the person the President hired to run a government department. I think the changes he made were bad. Some people lost their jobs. I want to blame the President's friend for everything that went wrong.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, we rise tonight to acknowledge that DOGE is, indeed, dead. Mr. Speaker, the 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, but 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, but the biggest breakup of all was the breakup between President Trump and Elon Musk 1 year ago. One day, Elon is sending a love letter of hundreds of millions in campaign donations to the President's campaign, and the next, he is wondering where it all went wrong. After all the insults, all of the public arguing, and a very public divorce, today, we are here to say to Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency: I 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, or 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, and abuse across the Federal Government. Well, the honeymoon is over, and I think the numbers say it all. He didn't even save a fraction of that amount. 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. In fact, here is what we know about DOGE's impacts: Large-scale loss of experienced Federal employees. Our agencies lost tens of thousands of employees through layoffs, deferred resignations, early retirements and hiring freezes. 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. 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. That is right. They 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. This is not just a run-of-the-mill exercise of modernizing the government. They 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. Let us not forget the most consequential impacts that we know came as a result of Elon Musk's dangerous date with the White House, and that is the dismantling of the USAID. 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. 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. What 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? No. There is no remorse. And let me tell you this: This has been one toxic relationship since the very beginning. So here is what we know. DOGE, you are voted off the island, and we do not want to ever see you back here again. The 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. So 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. What we will say is that we will continue to fight every single day for the American people. 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, and 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. 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, and that cares for the human dignity of our people. That is our promise. We don't want any more toxic relationships. We just say this: The American people deserve better, girl, and we are here for you. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Oregon.

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Val T. Hoyle

Democrat 5:50 p.m.

“I am sad the President hired Elon Musk to fix the government. Elon Musk fired some workers. Some people left their jobs. One worker knew how to warn people about a tsunami. Now he is gone. I don't like that a company will make people pay to file their taxes. Some people at an agency died. That's sad. A health agency cut some grants. Some weather workers lost their jobs. Elon Musk wanted to fire more people. He looked at people's private data. Some companies got a lot of money from the military. They did bad things. Why are we not stopping that? The government should spend money to help people. Elon Musk stopped some things that cost money. That's bad. Elon Musk quit his job. He didn't write a report about his work.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of the 119th session, I was ready to work with anyone to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in the government. We are here to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars, and we should want our government to be efficient. That is not what happened. We started with a bipartisan congressional effort, and then President Trump appointed Elon Musk, who stood there with a chainsaw, brought in a bunch of unqualified DOGE bros, who said that they were going to make $2 trillion in savings from the Federal budget, but made no meaningful impact in spending. They tortured and went after our public employees that cost the taxpayers $10 billion through the deferred resignation program. Mr. Speaker, 300,000 Federal workers were fired or urged to retire, including 100,000 veterans. This wasn't done in a strategic way. People were fired without understanding what their jobs were. For instance, off the Oregon coast, they fired the people who knew how to operate the tsunami warning system. That isn't rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse. They shut down promising innovations, like direct file, at the request of big businesses that stood to financially benefit. That hurt low-income and working Americans who now have to pay to file their taxes. They slowed response time to complaints made to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had previously helped return $21 billion to Americans. They purged USAID by getting rid of 83 percent of USAID projects. Impact Counter estimates that 757,000 people died, mostly children. We lost the benefit of soft power that we had when we invested in this very effective program. They tried to end NIOSH and canceled $3.8 billion in NIH grants. They laid off 1,300 critical Federal workers from NOAA. If you want to talk about government overreach and small government, that is not what happened with DOGE. They gained access to personal data, like our Social Security numbers, our tax returns, and our health records. Waste, fraud, and abuse still exist in the Federal Government. For instance, if we want to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, let's start with the Pentagon that failed the last eight audits. There is a ton of waste, fraud, and abuse. They have awarded more than $208 billion in contracts to companies that have been cited for repeated or willful violations. Why are we not addressing that? We should want government to be more efficient. We should want to root out waste, fraud, and abuse. I will work with anyone to make that happen. Instead, we gave a chainsaw to a trillionaire who made his money off of Federal grants, Federal research, and Federal projects, and we cut critical investments to make our government work better for the working people. On July Fourth, DOGE shut down. It doesn't intend to publish a final report because they would have to report a giant failure that cost taxpayers $10 billion. I say, good-bye, good riddance, and let's not do this again.

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Melanie A. Stansbury

Democrat 5:50 p.m.

“I want to blame Elon Musk and the President for all the bad things. They fired government workers. They made bad changes. Their agency cost a lot of money. It was bad. We will keep looking into what they did wrong. The other side is bad and mean. They let the President do bad things with money. We will stop them. We will make the government bigger and give it more money. That will be good.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, there are so many things to be said about DOGE and the waste of money and lives that happened over the course of the year and a half that it was officially on the books. Mr. Speaker, I also want to take a moment to talk about our country at a crossroads. Do we continue to use American taxpayer dollars to fund the killing of civilians, children, and families abroad, or do we finally say, enough? Today, I took a vote for the children, for peace, and for the future of this country, by voting ``yes'' on an amendment to block $3.3 billion in offensive military aid. This is money that should be used to build roads, to build housing, and to lower the cost of food and childcare for families who are struggling right here in the United States. I did not come to Congress to write blank checks to the military. I did not come to Congress to write blank checks to foreign militaries to bomb civilians, and I did not come here to support an unending and illegal war in the Middle East. That is why I chose today to block offensive military aid. Today, I choose our people over weapons. I choose peace over war. I choose accountability over silence, and I will continue to choose that every single time. Now, Mr. Speaker, as we close out this debate and the broken promises of DOGE and this administration, let us be reminded that when President Trump and Elon Musk first created DOGE, the American people were promised that it would cut waste, fight fraud and abuse, and save the taxpayers $2 trillion across the government. Many of us hoped that was actually true because cutting waste, fraud, and abuse is not a partisan issue. It is just good government. All of us want a government that actually works for the people of this country. Actions speak louder than words. When it comes to the legacy of DOGE and this administration, its actions speak for themselves. Instead of cutting waste, they cut over 100,000 jobs of veterans across the Federal Government, veterans in my district who worked at the VA and across our Federal agencies, who wanted nothing more than to continue their service to this country. They cut workers in charge of maintaining our nuclear stockpile, only to scramble to rehire them. They fired some of our Nation's top scientists, who were responsible for making sure our national security is taken care of. They attacked Social Security. They fired thousands of workers across the Social Security Administration, including in my district where people were struggling just to get access to their basic needs being met. DOGE cut back hours and fired hundreds across New Mexico. It pushed seniors, children, and veterans to the brink. Instead of saving taxpayers money, DOGE cost taxpayers billions of dollars in lost productivity, lost revenue, and the cost to hire essential civil servants they fired. Instead of fighting abuse, DOGE gave the richest man on planet Earth direct influence over government decisionmaking and access to our personal and financial data. We will never know the true damage that DOGE did because the administration won't even release the final information or final report explaining what they did. This is not okay. Let me say this to this administration: You better bet we will be investigating every inch of what you did through DOGE and your behavior in the administration. The American people deserve transparency. The American people deserve a government that works for them. The American people deserve a government and leaders who tell the truth. The American people deserve accountability for their taxpayer dollars. The American people deserve respect, especially those who have served this great Nation. Even though DOGE's disaster is officially over on the books, we already have another agency whose job is to find waste, fraud, and abuse. We will continue to investigate what happened through DOGE. We will continue to do the work of improving our government, and we will continue to investigate what has happened. Our question is: After all that has been said and done, will the Republicans of this body continue to support the lies that this administration has put forward through DOGE? Will they continue to support the dismantling of our Federal agencies, as is happening right now at the Department of Education, as we stand here, and the Education Committee? Will they continue to raid agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and steal money from the taxpayers? Will they continue to allow this administration to steal your taxpayer dollars and give it to the military to bomb civilians overseas? Will they continue to allow an out-of-control President to make billions of dollars in self-dealing while lining his pockets and demolishing the White House or will they actually stand up for the American people? That is the real waste, fraud, and abuse, and that is the real corruption, a President who is wasting our taxpayer dollars on an unending and illegal war, painting a pool filled with algae, a golden ballroom, and trying to put his name on the Kennedy Center, spending millions of dollars, taxpayer dollars litigating over illegal actions he has taken since taking office, all while giving private contracts to his own family members and the very man who started DOGE in the first place. While DOGE may be over, let the lesson be that when we take back the House, we will hold them accountable. We will build a government that works for the American people, that is stronger. We will stop billionaires from coming in and using their money to achieve their own political ends and line their own pockets. We will stop the self-dealing not only in the White House, but that happens in this Chamber. We will work to get big money out of politics, to end Citizens United, and to ensure that we have a system that actually represents the people of this country. We will rebuild better the agencies that were dismantled. We will create a whole new generation of public servants who want to serve this great Nation, and we will bring a new deal for this country that is about results, that is about dignity, that puts people and services ahead of profits and not empty promises. That is why, Mr. Speaker, we are here today to celebrate the end of this dark chapter and bring DOGE to a conclusion. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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