FAREWELL TO DOGE

On 2026-07-15, Representative Val T. Hoyle (D-OR-4) delivered a floor speech titled "FAREWELL TO DOGE" in the House.

FAREWELL TO DOGE

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 115 (Wednesday, July 15, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 115 (Wednesday, July 15, 2026)] [House] [Pages H4531-H4534] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] {time} 1740 FAREWELL TO DOGE (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Ms. Stansbury of New Mexico was recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.) General Leave Ms. STANSBURY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material in the Record. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentlewoman from New Mexico? [[Page H4532]] There was no objection. Ms. STANSBURY. Mr. Speaker, we rise tonight to acknowledge that DOGE is, indeed, dead. Mr. Speaker, the scandals, the gossip--when New Mexicans tune in to see what is happening here in Washington, it feels like they are tuning into an episode of a reality TV show rather than another day in the people's House, but the messiest House isn't an overseas villa. It is the White House. The President has a lot of messy friends and a lot of messy breakups, but the biggest breakup of all was the breakup between President Trump and Elon Musk 1 year ago. One day, Elon is sending a love letter of hundreds of millions in campaign donations to the President's campaign, and the next, he is wondering where it all went wrong. After all the insults, all of the public arguing, and a very public divorce, today, we are here to say to Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency: I am so sorry, but you have not been chosen, and you will be dumped from the villa. Now that the season of DOGE is over, it is time to look back and have a reunion episode and answer the question on everyone's mind: Where did it all go wrong? Was it all talk, or did Elon actually deliver on his promises because when DOGE was created and Americans heard what they were up to, there were some very big promises. He said that he could save $2 trillion by cutting waste, fraud, and abuse across the Federal Government. Well, the honeymoon is over, and I think the numbers say it all. He didn't even save a fraction of that amount. In fact, what we know is that due to disruptions in government services and firings and litigation, he may have actually cost the Federal Government more money than he saved. In fact, here is what we know about DOGE's impacts: Large-scale loss of experienced Federal employees. Our agencies lost tens of thousands of employees through layoffs, deferred resignations, early retirements and hiring freezes. They reduced the institutional knowledge of generations across our agencies and made it impossible to do basic functions that our communities needed: Forest Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and our nuclear agencies who protect the nuclear and national security of this country. They disrupted government services. Agencies were unable to process basic functions. They attacked Social Security. They laid off thousands of veterans across our Federal Government who had served this great country and given their sacrifice in service, only to find themselves eliminated by a cheap date in the West Wing. Legal challenges--we don't even know how many lawsuits there have been in the wake of DOGE--personnel actions, agency restructuring, illegal orders, withholding of funds, and many, many more that are still awaiting to be adjudicated by the courts. Let us not forget that they stole your data. That is right. They came in talking a big talk, saying that they were going to digitize our Federal Government and modernize it and help us actually make the government work for the people. It was a front for stealing your personal data--your IRS data, your Social Security data, your bank account data. They not only went into the most private systems of the Federal Government and stole your data, but they exported it and gave it to private companies. This is not just a run-of-the-mill exercise of modernizing the government. They stole your data for a profit, for campaign advancement, and to ensure that they would be able to continue to access your data for power. In addition to that, they broke key aspects of our Federal Government. They disrupted contracts. They gave themselves private contracts. They gave away billions of dollars in Federal taxpayer dollars for defense contracts to their friends, for NASA contracts for their friends, for weather service contracts for their friends. They disbanded decades of scientific research on every single continent across this planet. The reductions in workforce not just impacted the functioning of the Federal Government but disrupted local economies across the country, especially in our rural communities. Let us not forget the most consequential impacts that we know came as a result of Elon Musk's dangerous date with the White House, and that is the dismantling of the USAID. We know that, as a direct result of the dismantling of public health programs that have been in place across the world for decades, that literally thousands of children across the world died as a direct result. Medicine, food--they came in claiming that they were trying to cut waste, and they left food for starving children to sit in warehouses and rot while children did not have anything to eat. They let medicine expire in warehouses and actually threw it away rather than give it to people for whom it would save their lives. What do they have to answer for it as they have come here to testify before Congress? Is there any remorse for the lives that were lost? Is there any remorse for the thousands of children whose lives were taken because they could not access medicine? Is there any remorse for the thousands of nonprofit organizations who serve our communities every day who have been impacted? Is there any remorse for the hundreds of thousands of Federal workers who they fired and whose lives they disrupted? No. There is no remorse. And let me tell you this: This has been one toxic relationship since the very beginning. So here is what we know. DOGE, you are voted off the island, and we do not want to ever see you back here again. The American people want efficiency. The American people want a government that serves them. The American people want to make sure that their leaders care for the communities that they live in and will care for them. The American people do not want toxic billionaires trying to steal their taxpayer dollars and dismantling the basic services that keep them well. So we bid good-bye to DOGE. We say farewell. We won't miss you. We won't miss you as you leave the island and take your big exit. What we will say is that we will continue to fight every single day for the American people. We will continue to actually work to make this government work for the American people, to actually cut real waste and real fraud and real abuse and the real abusers who are sitting in the White House and committing waste, fraud, and abuse on the American people every single day. We will commit that when we take back this House, when we take back the White House, that we will fight for a nation that fights for our people. We will bring a new deal to this country that serves the working people of this country, that invests in housing and healthcare and food, that protects the environment, that fights for climate action, and that cares for the human dignity of our people. {time} 1750 That is our promise. We don't want any more toxic relationships. We just say this: The American people deserve better, girl, and we are here for you. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Oregon. Ms. HOYLE of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of the 119th session, I was ready to work with anyone to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in the government. We are here to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars, and we should want our government to be efficient. That is not what happened. We started with a bipartisan congressional effort, and then President Trump appointed Elon Musk, who stood there with a chainsaw, brought in a bunch of unqualified DOGE bros, who said that they were going to make $2 trillion in savings from the Federal budget, but made no meaningful impact in spending. They tortured and went after our public employees that cost the taxpayers $10 billion through the deferred resignation program. Mr. Speaker, 300,000 Federal workers were fired or urged to retire, including 100,000 veterans. This wasn't done in a strategic way. People were fired without understanding what their jobs were. For instance, off the Oregon coast, they fired the people who knew how to operate the tsunami warning system. That isn't rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse. They shut down promising innovations, like direct file, at the request of big businesses that stood to financially [[Page H4533]] benefit. That hurt low-income and working Americans who now have to pay to file their taxes. They slowed response time to complaints made to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had previously helped return $21 billion to Americans. They purged USAID by getting rid of 83 percent of USAID projects. Impact Counter estimates that 757,000 people died, mostly children. We lost the benefit of soft power that we had when we invested in this very effective program. They tried to end NIOSH and canceled $3.8 billion in NIH grants. They laid off 1,300 critical Federal workers from NOAA. If you want to talk about government overreach and small government, that is not what happened with DOGE. They gained access to personal data, like our Social Security numbers, our tax returns, and our health records. Waste, fraud, and abuse still exist in the Federal Government. For instance, if we want to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, let's start with the Pentagon that failed the last eight audits. There is a ton