Costumed government mascots that have cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars would be sent packing under one GOP senator’s plan to slash spending amid the government shutdown.
Iowa Senator Joni Ernst is taking aim at characters including Franklin the Fair Market Fox, from the Department of Housing, and Puddles the Blue Goose, from the Fish and Wildlife Service, as she appeals to Trump’s budget chief to cut costs.
Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said in a memo issued before the shutdown that ‘Reduction in Force (RIF) notices for all employees’ working in programs that are ‘not consistent with the President’s priorities’ should be sent by individual agencies.
Ernst, who chairman of the Senate DOGE caucus, plans to ask during a floor speech on Friday that riff-raff like government mascots and other ‘do-nothing bureaucrats’ be fired immediately.
A single outfit for a mascot at the US Embassy in Singapore cost taxpayers a whopping $22,000 in February, and the government spent a jaw-dropping $250,000 at a costume company in Ohio in 2019, according to Ernst’s office.
Ernst told the Daily Mail last week that keeping 750,00 non-essential workers on the government payroll costs $400 million every working day.
The total cost of keeping these workers has crossed $2.8 billion since the government shutdown began, she said.
Ernst’s other potential cost-cutting measures include eliminating the positions of federal employees and contractors who were not even working before the shutdown, and others who have said that they get paid to take naps and watch Netflix.
Hellbound and Down 