Iowa’s junior senator Joni Ernst is a unique individual. She was a career officer in the Iowa National Guard, commanded the 1168th Transportation Company in the Iraq War and retired as a lieutenant colonel. She was elected to the Senate in 2014 and, in her election campaign, emphasized her desire to eliminate government waste. She used the catchphrase “Make them squeak“With good success. It’s a term Iowans can identify with.
Now her hawkish stance on wasteful spending may find a recent outlet as she will lead the US Senate DOGE Caucus. Exclusive to the New York Post on Friday has the details.
She is poised to become the Senate’s top watchdog.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa)54, will lead and work with the newly formed Senate DOGE Caucus Tech guru Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy in the federal government “cutting pork.”
“Iowans elected me to cut Washington’s pork and make it squeal! From billion-dollar welfare conspiracies to politicians to trillion-dollar slush funds, my decades-long investigations have uncovered levels of abuse almost too crazy to believe,” Ernst told The Post.
“The Senate DOGE Caucus is poised to exert critical control in Congress and use our legislative power to fight the entrenched bureaucracy, trim the fat, and make Washington work for Americans again.”
Fighting government waste has always been a priority for Senator Ernst. And what’s even better is that she has a good feel for the occasional pun.
Want a perfect example of government waste?@NIH spent $1.3 million to study whether cats pampered with treats and classical music were less likely to poop outside the litter box.
All the little things aside, this is a brutal operate of taxpayers’ money that needs to be abolished @DOGE. 🙀 pic.twitter.com/TAvBPF4tWa
— Joni Ernst (@SenJoniErnst) November 20, 2024
Senator Ernst will also have a counterpart in the House of Representatives. As my colleague Susie Moore noted in her Friday Morning Minute:
Speaking of DOGE: it was Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene tapped to chair a House subcommittee (under the oversight umbrella) tasked with coordinating with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy – Delivering on Government Efficiency (also DOGE).
That, folks, is an compelling combination. This DOGE idea is clearly gaining traction, not only in the recent Trump administration, but also in Congress. This is a trend that should be encouraged.
See related: Can DOGE take a bite out of Washington?
NEW: Musk and Ramaswamy Pen detailed commentary on their plans for DOGE – these guys are stern
The Senate DOGE Caucus roster is taking shape, and it is a remarkable group:
To date, the Senate DOGE Caucus includes Senators Ted Budd (R-NC), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Roger Marshall (R-Kan. ) and James Lankford (R-Okla.)
The Hawkeye state senator met with Ramaswamy on Thursday evening and discussed plans she needed to “contain the bureaucratic state,” inspired by her decades-long crusade against federal waste.
During her run for the U.S. Senate in 2014, Ernst made a name for herself nationally as then-Senator cut an ad She recounted how she “grew up castrating pigs on a farm in Iowa” and explained, “Washington is full of big spenders – let’s make them squeal.”
Washington is indeed full of huge spenders, and not in a good way. There’s an senior apocryphal story (so maybe there’s a horse shortage, but it’s still true) where President Reagan heard someone comment that Congress was spending like drunken sailors. The Gipper protested to the speaker, rightly pointing out that drunken sailors were spending their own money.
That is a crucial difference.
Frankly, it’s demanding to believe that the federal government’s workforce couldn’t be cut by 70 to 80 percent without having such a major impact on our daily lives. (And the rest should be decentralized – get them out of Washington.) Remember that before the Depression and the New Deal, unless you were in the military, most people’s only contact with the federal government in some way was, as she went to the post office.
Would it really be so bad to go back to that and move as many of the imperative government functions as possible back to where they actually belong – with the states? As I recently described, the people in government and Congress working to get DOGE out shouldn’t nibble at the edges; They should not propose “rate of increase cuts.” They should wield a huge, metaphorical Viking battle ax against the federal budget. Abolishing entire agencies should be on the agenda – education would be a good first step, but it shouldn’t be the last.
Do it, Senator Ernst. As an senior former Iowan, when I talk to another Iowan, all I can say is, “Make them squeal.”
