Elon Musk is on a mission to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse from the federal government.
But he’s run into an obstacle that he never expected.
And Elon Musk got one dire warning about DOGE from Rand Paul that put him on red alert.
Congress needs to make DOGE’s spending cuts permanent
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are auditing the federal government to identify wasteful and corrupt spending to be cut.
Democrats and their media allies had a meltdown when DOGE exposed the woke spending at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
USAID was using its more than $40 billion annual budget to fund hip-hop contests in Kazakhstan, transgender comic books in South America, and buying subscriptions to left-wing media outlet Politico.
President Donald Trump moved to shut down the agency after DOGE exposed it was a left-wing slush fund.
DOGE is poised to identify more wasteful spending as it begins to audit other government agencies.
U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) warned that the only way to make the spending cuts identified by DOGE permanent was by an act of Congress.
He told Breitbart News that Congress needed to act right away to eliminate this wasteful spending.
“We need to do what’s called a rescission package, meaning get rid of the spending right now,” Paul explained. “None of the spending has really been eliminated, so they’re finding the waste, they’re talking about it, and it’s the same thing I’ve been doing for a decade, but it has to be sent back.”
Paul argued that the spending cuts identified by DOGE should be packaged into one bill.
“When it comes back to Congress, it can be passed with a simple majority, Republicans only because we won’t get any Democrats,” Paul said. “But then once we pass a bill getting rid of that spending, then the savings actually occurs. Then the money goes back to the Treasury and [is] not spent.”
Finishing the job that DOGE started
Paul has been highlighting wasteful government spending for more than a decade with his annual holiday Festivus report.
“Right now, when they find waste, it’s still being spent,” Paul stated. “They’re temporary, delaying it or stopping it, but it hasn’t come back to the Treasury and won’t come back unless Congress votes on it. We can do this, but not enough people are talking about it.”
The Trump administration and DOGE argue that the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which requires the President to spend all of the money appropriated by Congress, is unconstitutional.
Musk said that the executive branch could not spend all of the money appropriated by Congress and send the rest back to the Treasury as savings.
“It basically just says you’re not going to spend it,” Paul explained. “So Congress tells you to spend it, and they say, here’s a billion dollars for an aircraft here, and you build it for $800 million because Elon is now in charge, so you save $200 billion but what happens is the money just sort of sits there, doesn’t necessarily go back to the Treasury.”
Paul said that the Trump administration challenging the Impound Control Act faces a long and uncertain legal battle.
Cutting the wasteful spending found by DOGE with a recission package would cement the cuts.
But it would also force RINOs in the Swamp to actually follow through on their campaign promises to cut spending.
Stay tuned to Unmuzzled News for any updates to this ongoing story.
