Joni Ernst

Happy Sunshine Week, the annual celebration of openness in government!

Information provides the power to hold the powerful accountable. Notably, during the Biden administration, Washington became more intrusive and less transparent by hiding billions of dollars in secret spending and supersizing the IRS to increase audits of Americans.

If you’re required to report every dollar you earned under the threat of an audit, shouldn’t Washington have to account to you, the taxpayer, for how every one of those dollars is spent?

That’s exactly what’s happening right now, thanks to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). From canceling unused software subscriptions to ending unnecessary contracts to water plants, DOGE reports saving $115 billion since January, which amounts to $714 per taxpayer.

While DOGE keeps delivering savings, Washington politicians are more upset by the effort to stop wasteful spending than by the misuse of tax dollars.

As I always say, if you can’t find waste in Washington, there can only be one reason: you didn’t look.

Well folks, I’ve spent the last ten years making it easier for everyone to spot waste by writing laws increasing transparency for how taxpayer dollars are spent.

My COST Act requires projects financed by many agencies, including the Pentagon, to include a public price tag displaying the cost to taxpayers. That way when you see something silly supported with tax dollars, like a shrimp on a treadmill, you know immediately how much you paid for it.

My Billion Dollar Boondoggle laws require transportation and infrastructure projects that are massively over budget or five years or more behind schedule to be reported to the public every year. This will help bring gravy trains to a squealing halt before they can take taxpayers for a ride.

Yet, despite these requirements being signed into law, none of my transparency laws are being carried out.

That is why I am giving the former Biden administration my March 2025 Squeal Award for condoning secret spending by granting unelected bureaucrats a veto over the transparency laws they don’t like.

I am also calling on the Trump White House Office of Management and Budget to enforce these laws and require every department to provide the same level of transparency.

As the founder and chair of the Senate DOGE Caucus, I’m ending Washington’s game of playing hide-and-seek with your tax dollars. But to stop it, I need your help! My transparency laws provide the tools to empower every taxpayer to be a DOGE deputy. When you see suspicious spending, report it to my office on my DOGE tip line and let’s make ’em squeal together.

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Joni Ernst, a native of Red Oak and a combat veteran, represents Iowa in the United States Senate.