Gov. Ron DeSantis said tech leader Elon Musk did his best to trim government waste and overspending through the Department of Government Efficiency, but was not successful.
“You know, we can look back over the last year and a half and and just acknowledge Elon and DOGE fought the swamp and the swamp won. Not even close. People criticize how some of this stuff was done and maybe there was (reason to do so), but the idea was we were really going to do something about how government’s spending money,” DeSantis said at an American Enterprise Institute event Wednesday.
DeSantis said the effort drew strong interest from Republican base voters back home who were excited, but it ultimately did not succeed.
While speaking on a panel about a federal Balanced Budget Amendment, DeSantis said DOGE’s failure showed how Congress is resistant to change.
“One of the reasons why is because there’s no constraints on them doing more of the same. Their incentives are just to kick the can down the road. That’s how somebody who’s in Congress, ultimately, is going to think and see about these things. It’s less of a pain for them to do status quo and just try to get to the next election than it is to actually exercise some leadership,” said DeSantis, who served three terms in the House of Representatives before becoming Governor of Florida.
He said DOGE’s failure showed why a Balanced Budget Amendment is needed.
“If DOGE had come in and they had really upended Washington and changed the trajectory, that would probably have taken some of the wind out of the sails of this effort,” he said, arguing that the amendment is “the best vehicle that has a chance of actually coming to fruition that would actually make, I think, a generational difference in the trajectory of this country’s finances.”
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