Greene Opens Hearing on Codifying DOGE Reforms

WASHINGTON—Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency Chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) delivered opening remarks today at a hearing on “Locking in the DOGE Cuts: Ending Waste, Fraud, and Abuse for Good.” In her opening statement, Subcommittee Chairwoman Greene highlighted the $180 billion in savings the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has identified and achieved with cuts to the federal government. Subcommittee Chairwoman Greene emphasized the need to lock in the DOGE process to continue saving American taxpayers money, and urged members of Congress to codify the cuts already made to increase transparency in the federal government. 

Below are Subcommittee Chairwoman Greene’s prepared remarks:

Good morning and welcome to today’s hearing.  

I certainly wish that my Democrat colleagues felt the same way as their former Democrat leaders felt and worked to try to reduce our deficit and reduce the size of our government. Unfortunately, these former Democrat leaders failed at what they were trying to do. But today’s DOGE Subcommittee is actually delivering on those exact promises, and we are delivering the results. It’s too bad that my Democrat colleagues constantly mock DOGE, attack DOGE, and criticized the hardworking people in DOGE. 

They also attacked the Committee and attack what we’re all about. But that’s today’s Democrat Party. They’re for big government, big spending, and doing nothing for the American people. They’re “America Last.” 

This Subcommittee has highlighted where DOGE has staunched the flow of waste, fraud and abuse in federal spending. 

DOGE drove the Administration to turn off the spending spigot that was delivering billions of dollars to corrupt, anti-American NGOs, to illegal DEI programs, and to a vast array of wasteful, unnecessary federal grants, contracts, leases and personnel.

President Trump drove this massive effort by creating DOGE via Executive Order on Inauguration Day. He then issued a series of White House directives empowering DOGE teams to work with agency leaders Government-wide in an unprecedented effort to root out wasteful spending using all means at their disposal.

And that effort has borne fruit. The DOGE website identifies $180 billion in savings achieved in just a matter of months. We need to make sure we lock in those savings. It should be the first installment we pay on our Nation’s $36 trillion debt.  We need to tackle that debt, on behalf of our children and future generations.

That’s why Congress needs to act. DOGE has shown how our Government can cost less and deliver more. It’s shown how we can turn down the spigot. Its shown we don’t need to spend all the dollars that Congress appropriated for this year. 

Congress can reverse that unnecessary spend by rescinding dollars it appropriated. 

That’s why the Administration recently sent a $9 billion rescission request to Congress. It would prevent dollars from going to corrupt international organizations, to woke NGOs, to NPR and to PBS. The House adopted that legislation earlier this month – H.R. 4, the Rescissions Act of 2025.

But we need to do more – much more. $9 billion is just the tip of the iceberg of the waste that DOGE has identified, and of the spending that the Administration has paused or shut off. So, Congress needs to work with the Administration and DOGE to rescind billions more of the dollars it has appropriated for agencies to spend.   

And DOGE is creating savings that will lower the cost of Government for years to come. For instance, the Administration is rightsizing the federal bureaucracy by eliminating several hundred thousand staff positions. That reduces discretionary spending costs for next year and every future years by tens of billions of dollars.

So, we need to adjust the levels of new appropriations to align with the streamlined Government DOGE is creating. That’s what the President proposed last month, when he submitted to Congress a budget for next year that reduces non-discretionary spending by $163 billion.  

If we lower the spending baseline in that way, we can save two trillion in that portion of the budget over the coming decade.

We need to lock in DOGE savings for taxpayers. And we should also be thinking about locking in the DOGE process that has produced those savings. DOGE has attracted enemies because it’s taken on Washington’s culture of spending.

We should make that a permanent battle. We should institutionalize the battle against waste, fraud and abuse in Government. I hope that is something with which my Democratic colleagues can agree.

DOGE is working with agencies to reduce the rampant fraud that GAO says costs taxpayers as much as a half-trillion dollars annually. To enhance fraud detection, agencies are now providing the Treasury Department more information about financial awards. And they are making more use of Treasury’s “Do Not Pay” database, to avoid funding fraudsters. DOGE is also lowering the barriers that prevent agencies from sharing data to identify duplicate awardees.

What’s more, DOGE has pioneered what the President calls “radical transparency” concerning wasteful spending. The DOGE website and individual federal agency sites continually update for public view the specific grants, contracts, leases and other payments that they are flagging for termination.

This is how you change the culture of spending.