The magnitude of corruption, waste, and fraud uncovered by the DOGE team’s audit of the U.S. Agency for International Development this week sent shockwaves throughout Washington, D.C., and beyond. Elon Musk’s army of young tech wizards discovered that, for decades, USAID has been handing over U.S. taxpayer dollars to support left-wing causes around the world.
Among the more frivolous examples of waste were the agency’s funding of a transgender clinic in India, the installation of electric vehicle charging stations in Vietnam, and even helping Indonesian coffee companies become more climate and gender friendly.
But the most egregious finding of all was the agency’s largesse to radical organizations around the world, including “groups aligned with foreign terrorist organizations.” According to the Middle East Forum, USAID has funded groups controlled by Hamas that have “called for their lands to be ‘cleansed’ from the ‘impurity of the Jews.’”
Naturally, after decades of relying on USAID to advance their progressive interests abroad, Democrats are fighting back with everything they have. Knowing full well that USAID’s corruption is indefensible, they have shifted their focus to blocking DOGE from continuing its work. In particular, Democrats are freaking out over its next target: the Treasury Department payment system.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) delivered a disingenuous, hyperbolic attack on DOGE during a meeting of the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday. Despite the fact that Musk’s analysts have been given “read only” access to the Treasury Department’s federal payment system, Warner insisted that the DOGE team might “manipulate payments” or even “alter code.”
Following Warner’s willful distortion of the truth, the affable Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) took to the floor to “put in perspective what many of my Democratic friends have been talking about today.” With his signature wit and candor, he delivered a much-needed reality check. His speech was sharp, truthful, and compelling – so much so that, as one X user observed, it “left the room speechless.” (Please scroll down for a full transcript and video of Kennedy’s speech.)
The biggest takeaway from Kennedy’s 16-minute monologue came when he turned to his colleagues and asked: “What the hell happened to all the money?”
Answering his own question, Kennedy said, “And that’s what Mr. Musk is finding out. That’s all this is about. And I’m just shocked that my colleagues have decided that this is a hill they’re gonna die on. How can you look the American people in the eye and support this kind of waste, support this kind of spending porn?”
He reminded his colleagues that President Trump campaigned on “going through the entire [federal] budget and review[ing] all the spending line by line.” And he made no secret of his plan to appoint Elon Musk to audit federal spending.
Kennedy explained that Musk, a successful businessman with a top-secret security clearance, was not only conducting the audit but had already uncovered wasteful and often controversial expenditures. He proceeded to enumerate several of USAID’s most egregious disbursements.
The core issue, he argued, is the vast waste of taxpayer money. He lamented that his Democratic colleagues were more focused on questioning the process and Musk’s involvement rather than the actual findings of wasteful spending.
He called on the Senate to support Musk’s efforts, and rather than attacking him, allow him to conduct further audits across all federal agencies.
He presented a chart of the national debt which has ballooned to more than $36 trillion as a direct result of unchecked government spending under both the Biden and Obama administrations.
Much of the Trump administration’s spending came as a result of the pandemic, Kennedy said. He explained that our economy had come very close to failing at one point, and he commended the efforts of Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, to keep it going.
Now some of this money we had to spend during the pandemic, and it was a bipartisan effort during the pandemic. Republicans voted for it and Democrats voted for it because we had no choice. I was there. I saw it from the inside. We came this close to losing the American economy. And you know who helped a lot? Doesn’t get enough credit? Jay Powell of the Federal Reserve. I watched it.
Kennedy criticized the Biden administration for passing massive – and unnecessary – spending bills, such as the American Rescue Plan and the Green New Deal, as the U.S. was pulling out of the Covid recession. He claimed that such spending practices, combined with inflation, were hurting American families, which was why the American people supported the idea of auditing and cutting wasteful government spending.
Ultimately, Kennedy concluded his speech by reiterating that the focus should be on saving taxpayer money. He expressed support for Musk’s continued auditing work. He also praised Musk’s work as an essential tool to identify and eliminate waste, mismanagement, and fraud within government programs.
Kennedy ended by suggesting that instead of criticizing him, “We ought to be giving Mr. Musk a medal. We ought to be thanking him.”
I’m pretty sure that most Americans would agree with Kennedy’s appeal to his Democratic colleagues. But fear has gripped the party. Humiliated by the results of the USAID audit, a department that accounts for less than 1% of the federal budget, Democrats now seek to prevent taxpayers from uncovering the vast waste that permeates the remaining 99%.
Democratic candidates will have to explain why they fought so hard to stop that from happening ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Bravo Sen. Kennedy. Well done.
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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