Senator Hagerty: Trump Giving Government Workers Buyouts To Be ‘Humane’

 Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) said that the Trump administration’s buyout of tens of thousands of federal workers was only the first step in its mission to make the government more efficient and to reduce wasteful spending.

Hagerty made the remarks during a Sunday interview on CBS News’ “Face The Nation” when asked about the cuts and buyouts.

“I think what President Trump is trying to do is be humane in the process of allowing them to make plans to find other employment, but I certainly think the government is far too big, far too bloated, and we’re on a path now to start to see it shrink,” he said. “This is the first step only, but we’re moving in the right direction.”

He sad that each department and agency would conduct reviews to see where money was being wasted and ways things could be made more efficient.

“This is not unusual, to take a hard look at these programs and also to look for opportunities to cut bloat and waste,” he said. “Look, we’re $36 trillion in debt. Clearly, the American — the American public need to see more accountability, more visibility, more performance for their taxpayer dollars.”

Hagerty also addressed the administration’s plans to target the CFPB, which he argued has been “out of control for some time” and is effectively “unconstitutional.”

“It has no oversight,” he said. “It’s been basically a reckless agency that’s been allowed to go way beyond any mandate that I think was originally intended. So it’s time to rein it in, and I’m applauding anything that we can do to bring more stability, more control to the federal government and take agencies like this back, you know, back into some sort of sense of accountability and oversight.”

He also ripped USAID, saying that the organization was also out of control and had “refused” to be accountable for a long time.

“I’ve, you know, asked them to be very clear about, for example, their role in funding Hamas in Gaza. They would not comply,” he said. “They will not tell us what they do. Now that we start to find out some of the programs that AID has been funding, if you think about it, sex change operations in Guatemala, LGBTQ programs in Serbia this is ridiculous. This is so beyond the pale.”

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