Republican Senator Demolishes Trump Budget Director’s ‘Word Salad’ Defense of DOGE

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) eviscerated President Donald Trump‘s budget director Russell Vought Thursday during a fiery exchange over DOGE.

Tillis touted his time working for PriceWaterhouseCoopers while shredding Vought and those who ran the Department of Government Efficiency for their lack of experience, demanding transparency over its claims of having saved the United States government more than $200 billion.

“At the end of the day, we’ve got to be honest with the American people. We had people running through here and talking about all the savings. At the end of the day, book it,” Tillis said.

“Every single one of these things should have before, after net savings, and run rate for cost,” he added, warning Vought not to give him more “word salad” in response.

“I am not DOGE,” Vought answered.

Tillis wasn’t satisfied, slamming DOGE for the way it repeatedly fired swaths of federal workers before recalling them.

“All that stuff is amateur stuff that would have gotten me fired in my job at Price Waterhouse in a week,” Tillis spat.

The senator continued:

THOM TILLIS: No, let me back up. The reason I’m I’m targeting you is because I look at you as the guy who books the savings. After we work, let’s say, we work with whatever department it is.

Then we got the savings. We come to you and we say, “Mr. Vought, this is no longer going to be a part of our expense run rate.”

You can actually tell the administration that we can decrement that cost because we’ve cut the savings. Give me the best example of where DOGE has done that.

VOUGHT: Well, I I have been saying in terms of —

TILLIS: No, because give me the best example of where a DOGE initiative once they completed the work came to you and said, “Mr. Vought, you should be aware that our baseline run rate for expenses have gone down.” Give me one example —

VOUGHT: We have an appropriations process, Senator.

TILLIS: I’m sorry.

VOUGHT: There is an appropriations process. We have put forward a budget that’s $160 billion in DOGE savings.

TILLIS I’ve heard a lot of people, including you, talk about the DOGE savings.

I’ve worked in the business world. My understanding is the last time you worked in the business world was at B. Dalton Books when you were putting yourself through law school. Good on you. But you don’t have this experience.

And a lot of people that were involved in this do not have this experience. I love the idea of DOGE, but what I don’t love is the idea of DOGE sh*t that we’re picking up because people did it wrong.

I spell it with a dollar sign, by the way, Mr. Chair. But at the end of the day, we’ve got to be honest with the American people.

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