Joni Ernst’s plan to end gov­ern­ment ‘abuse’ includes press­ing Cab­i­net nom­i­nees

Ernst is the chair­woman and founder of the Sen­ate DOGE Cau­cus, which aims to sharp­en gov­ern­ment effi­cien­cy like Elon Musk’s and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment Effi­cien­cy.

At the end of the report, Ernst lays out five ques­tions for Trump’s Cab­i­net nom­i­nees that they “must answer.”

They include a ques­tion about whether they’d share their dai­ly sched­ule, how they will achieve a 60% space uti­liza­tion rate, how fre­quent­ly they will require employ­ees to show up to work, and what the con­se­quences are for those who don’t. Oth­er ques­tions con­sid­er whether they would dis­close the “loca­tions, titles, and job descrip­tions” of employ­ees and whether they would pro­vide a six-month report on back­logs with­in the agency along with wait­ing times and details on unan­swered phone calls.

The report is a key cog in Ernst’s cru­sade against gov­ern­ment remote work, which she sug­gests makes gov­ern­ment employ­ees hard to reach and unre­li­able. The report par­tic­u­lar­ly empha­sizes a pic­ture of a gov­ern­ment employ­ee work­ing in a bub­ble bath as an exam­ple of “abus­ing tele­work.”

Ramaswamy has pre­vi­ous­ly said he will seek to make cuts with­in gov­ern­ment agen­cies by requir­ing work­ers to come back to the office, which he says may trig­ger vol­un­tary res­ig­na­tions. Ernst has agreed with his sen­ti­ment.

“For years, I have been track­ing down bureau­crats relax­ing in bub­ble baths, play­ing golf, get­ting arrest­ed, and doing just about every­thing besides their job,” Ernst said in a state­ment. “It would almost be fun­ny if it wasn’t hap­pen­ing on the tax­pay­ers’ dime and at the expense of vet­er­ans, seniors, small busi­ness own­ers, and Amer­i­cans in need of com­pe­tent ser­vice from gov­ern­ment agen­cies. Fed­er­al employ­ees need to return to work, but if they don’t want to, I will make their wish come true.”

Anoth­er key part of Ernst’s argu­ment in the report is the government’s inef­fi­cient usage of space. One fact that’s cit­ed is that the “EPA is spend­ing $90 mil­lion a year for its head­quar­ters, but uses just eight per­cent of the office space.” The House passed a bill ear­li­er this year that would require 60% of fed­er­al gov­ern­ment space to be in use.

Ernst’s report says that can be met by either cut­ting down on gov­ern­ment space or forc­ing more employ­ees into the office. Either way, it’d force the space to be used more effi­cient­ly.

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Deal­ing with gov­ern­ment per­son­nel and their space appears to be a top pri­or­i­ty for Ernst as DOGE looks to trans­form the gov­ern­ment.

“The DOGE team has our knives out, and we are ready to trim the fat on the over­stuffed bud­get and bil­lion-dol­lar gravy trains to nowhere,” she said in a Novem­ber state­ment. “It is time to make the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment go cold turkey on waste.”