Washington's New Math: MTG plus DOGE equals big crew cut for government

Elon Musk re-invented space travel, made electric vehicles affordable and right-sized a monstrous but failing social media giant. But his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort with Vivek Ramaswamy to shrink and reimagine the federal bureaucracy will require more than President-elect Donald Trump’s executive fiat. Some changes will need the approval of an oft-dysfunctional Congress.

And that’s where Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia firebrand, may become the second of a double-barreled assault on the “deep state” as Trump likes to call it,

Greene has been tapped by House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer to chair a new DOGE subcommittee designed to be Congress’ bully pulpit. The goal is to expose and shame the sheer magnitude of government waste and bureaucratic incompetence that has squandered trillions of American tax dollars and to put the defenders of big government in Big Labor and Big Media on the defensive.

It’s a role the social-media savvy Greene is well-suited to, and eager to assume. She also has already zeroed in on some early targets, knowing the stakes are high and the resistance from Big Government liberals will be fierce.

“We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to change the course that we're on, and the American people deserve it,” Greene told Just the News in a wide-ranging interview Tuesday in the John Solomon Reports podcast in which she identified possible targets for cuts ranging from the U.S. Postal Service to the Pentagon, and government-funded media to sanctuary cities. 

Greene said her role running a small business – a commercial construction firm – that had to make sure ends met every month influences her bottom line for defining success.

“It shouldn't be about any of us in Washington. It truly should be what I've called for all along: the American people are the customer and the federal government needs to make sure that it's delivering the best customer service possible,” she added.

Greene already has some targets in mind. She told Just the News she doesn’t believe the federal government needs to be in the business of news reporting, meaning the nearly $1 billion a year enterprise known as the United States Agency for Global Media will be an early target for review.

“They're definitely up for reevaluation, and I think it's right to do so,” the Georgia Republican said. “You know, with the internet today, and thank God Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X, the fight that we're taking on right now to stop censorship and to protect free speech and protect the First Amendment, a free press, the government should not be funding that this.

“I think the press and the media overall should be independent of the federal government, because they play a very important role,” she added. “The whole reason why we need a free press is to hold government accountable, and you can't do that when the government is funding its own press.”

The USAGM runs the World War II-era Voice of America (VOA) and Office of Cuba Broadcasting as well as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Middle East Broadcasting Networks and Open Technology Fund.

Its last director in Trump’s first term, the award-winning documentarian Michael Pack, exposed significant problems inside the operations including potential national security risks but Congress never acted. His initial inquiry and others like it could be roadmap for early hearings.

Greene told Just the News another target is the tens of millions of dollars a year in federal monies that flow directly and indirectly to National Public Radio.

NPR’s funding is classically Washington murky: it gets a small operating grant from the taxpayer funded Corporation for Public Broadcast but then gets tens of millions more by syndicating its content back to local public radio stations funded by CPB. In essence, money leaves Washington and then comes back to it.

NPR’s leftward tilt has increasingly angered conservatives and earlier this year the departing Rep, Bob Good, R-Va., sponsored legislation to defund all direct and indirect federal monies to NPR. Greene is a fan of such an approach.

NPR “is so heavily left leaning and the amount of propaganda that they have put out – it's like, how does that help the country in any way?” she asked.

Greene has some other big targets, including reclaiming unspent and oft-wasted COVID recovery funds, frivolous university research grants, Green New Deal subsidies and the tens of billions of dollars the Biden-Harris administration has been doling out to sanctuary cities and states to harbor and care for illegal aliens who have crossed the border.

“These governors and mayors are coming out and saying they're going to harbor illegal aliens and they're going to fight President Trump's administration. They're going to fight (border czar) Tom Homan, they're going to fight ICE and they're planning to use their own police forces to do it,” she noted.

“I think that's a place we can take a massive spending cut if we're going to have mayors and governors virtually committing treason against the administration, against the American people, by harboring noncitizens that don't belong in our country,” she added.

Greene, who has opposed funding Ukraine’s war against Russia without a clear plan for victory, also put the military industrial complex they could be in for a financial crew cut too.

“I really think, John, that we've got to look hard at any type of funding of foreign war,” she said. “We've got to look at the funding of military bases around the world. We've got to look at defense contracts and look at everything that we're building.

“You know, Elon Musk recently has been posting about the F-35 (fighter jet) and how they're really outdated. And you know, the future of warfare, as we all know, is drones. And so there's so many things we can look at to make cuts,” she said.

Like Trump, Musk and Ramaswamy, Greene shares a clarity of vision for the mission and is aware some of her colleagues on the House and Senate Appropriations committees may be slow to yield the power of big spending. Her plan is to use regular hearings to force suspect programs and agencies to justify their existence.

“There’s so many government programs that are outdated, and so that shouldn't be a problem,” she explained, “And that's what I look forward to, is doing hearings to basically bring in department heads, bring in grant recipients, bring in many people, the unelected bureaucrats that have been in charge of federal spending, federal programs, federal departments, and all types of grant recipients and ask why do you think the American people should continue spending on this, And we let them make their case. 

“I look forward to breaking it down. And if it makes sense, then perhaps it's something that I recommend to DOGE,” she added,