Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chiefs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy journeyed to Capitol Hill last week to meet with legislators. Republicans in the House and Senate have been organizing to focus on DOGE, and some Democrats have expressed interest in participating.
The head of the new Senate DOGE Caucus, Iowa Republican Joni Ernst, sent Musk and Ramaswamy a letter with “a trillion dollars’ worth of ideas for trimming the fat and reducing red ink.” While the ideas listed aren’t specific enough to validate her figure, they contain some good suggestions.
One idea, however, points to problems with focusing on examples of wasteful spending. A section titled “Stop Giving Away the Farm” bemoans the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) “subsidizing cricket farms or teaching pigs to play video games, that do nothing to support agriculture.” To the average person, that certainly sounds wasteful. Perhaps it is—waste sometimes is a subjective term.
Last year, the USDA awarded Mighty Cricket, a Missouri company that makes protein powder from crickets, a $131,500 grant. Crickets are inherently nutritious and thus serve as a potentially markable alternative for consumers who eschew animal-based proteins.
My issue is that food markets free of government interference should satisfy the wants and needs of consumers without taxpayers being compelled to provide financial assistance. Otherwise, it’s fair to say farming crickets for food is an agricultural activity.
It’s also hard to see how spending $131,500 on cricket farming subsidies is “giving away the farm,” given the roughly $40 billion in total farm subsidies the USDA will provide this year at taxpayer expense. Chris Edwards explains that the USDA administers more than 150 programs that subsidize and support farm businesses, with most handouts going to corn, soybeans, and a handful of other crops. (Iowa is the largest producer of corn and ranks second for soybeans.) The average and median income for farm households is well above that for all US households, and the largest and wealthiest recipients of farm subsidies are the primary beneficiaries.
Again, taxpayers shouldn’t finance cricket farmers. But it is disingenuous to suggest that a tiny —albeit inappropriate—grant to Mighty Cricket is the main problem with USDA spending while billions flow annually to politically favored commodities. DOGE should use its platform to make this point.
If Musk and Ramaswamy are willing and able to share the gospel of Downsizing Government with Congress, that would be great. At the very least, it’s good we’re finally discussing federal bloat after years of unrestrained spending being treated like a free lunch (it wasn’t). It’s also not sustainable.
But getting Capitol Hill to agree to substantive cuts will be difficult.
Twenty years ago, I took a job with a senator after he told me he wanted to cut spending and thought I was the person to help him do it. My first (and last) shot was an amendment the senator offered to cut $11 billion in funding from a 1,000-page, $286 billion transportation bill. It was a relatively small sum, but it was enough for the office phones to ring off the hook with unhappy transportation interests back in the state. The amendment failed, receiving only sixteen votes in support. Walking out of the Senate chamber, the visibly irritated senator looked at me and muttered, “That’s the last g*ddam time I do that.”
Parochial interests blowing up your phones isn’t fun. But whether it’s road projects or farm subsidies, there must be a shared political sacrifice for DOGE to be successful. Hopefully, DOGE, with requisite strong backing from the White House, can convince members to make that sacrifice for the country’s betterment.