Department of Government Efficiency co-leader Vivek Ramaswamy Sunday said entire agencies are at the risk of being axed by their newly set up department if those agencies are doing nothing. “We want to go right in through executive action…the dirty little secret is that the people we elect to run the government, they are not the one who actually run the government. It’s the unelected bureaucrats in the administrative state that was created through executive action– it’s going to be fixed through executive action. Think about the Supreme Court’s environment over the last several years… ” Ramaswamy said on Fox News.
‘We are not going to cutting ribbons, we are going to cutting costs,” Ramaswamy said as he was asked what happens next after they make their recommendations on downsizing. “Over half a trillion dollars that’s spent every year right now was not even authorized by Congress in the first place. The Pentagon has just failed its seventh consecutive audit, nearly a trillion dollars of budget. They can’t even tell you where it goes,” he said.
Are you expecting to close down entire agencies like education department? To this question, Ramaswamy said, “We expect mass reductions, we expect certain agencies to be deleted outright.”
On whether some departments like energy, agriculture, education would be moved out of Washington, Vivek Ramaswamy said that would be done to make these bureaucrats more accountable. “Here’s a dirty little secret in the federal bureaucracy today: most people don’t even show up to work,” he said adding that if they are asked to come to work like most hardworking Americans five days a week, they won’t do that.
“That creates the logic of many of these agencies being outside of DC in the first place. These are just examples,” Vivek said. “The bigger picture is many of these agencies should be downsized wherever they are and for whatever does remain move many of them out to where they are more accountable to people,” Vivek said.
The DOGE will be cruel in handling these civil servants who probably are good people individually but the government does not need so many unelected staff who can’t be removed from their positions, it’s anti-democratic, Vivek said.