A four letter acronym connected to the Trump administration is stirring a lot of chatter.

Cheers.

And for some worry, Doge, which stands for the Department for Government Efficiency.

Many conservatives are praising the bold moves to shrink the federal government and root out what is perceived as waste and abuse.

Central Kentucky's sixth District Congressman Andy Barr, cosigned the actions taken by Dodge, especially when it comes to USAID or the United States agency for International Development.

Charged with delivering humanitarian assistance overseas, Barr questioned some of the agency's allocations to efforts he says run contrary to U.S. interests and even security.

More about this in the third installment of my interview with Barr and our Congressional Update segment.

There's been a lot in the news made of Elon Musk and him being over the Department of Government Efficiency, which you are a member of a caucus of that of Doe's.

And there are some who are concerned about a non-elected being allowed such great latitude to possibly come in and reshape government.

Are you comfortable with his role in this administration?

I am.

77 million Americans voted for change.

They voted for Donald Trump because they recognize the country is on the wrong track.

One of the reasons why the country is on the wrong track is we have a $36 trillion national debt.

I pointed this out to the Federal Reserve chairman the other day in our hearing.

We are right now, according to BlackRock, we are issuing $573 billion in Treasury bonds every single week in America.

Now, think about that, $573 billion in new issuance of Treasuries.

Now, some of that's maturing, but some of it's new debt issuance because we simply can't cover the bills in this country.

We have a $2 trillion deficit annually.

We had this huge $5 trillion blowout in spending over the last four years, partizan spending most mostly after covid.

On top of all of that COVID money and as a result, we're simply in an unsustainable place right now.

I mean, we had a hearing in the Foreign Affairs Committee the other day and I pointed out some of the waste coming out of the USAID that Elon Musk has uncovered.

And I just mean just some of this stuff.

It's unbelievable.

$2 million to conduct sex change surgeries in Guatemala through a trans led organizations.

You have here $31 million to provide us eight employees with resilience, wellness and work life balance.

Should the taxpayers really be on the hook for that?

A half a million dollars for Indonesian coffee companies to become more climate and gender friendly.

We had a grant to Uganda that actually undermined our national security because it was promoting LGBT rights in a in a very socially conservative culture that that pushed the Ugandan people who are fighting terrorists with the United States and Somalia towards a belt and road project for out fought with with the communist Chinese a a $5 billion East African oil pipeline.

Now look, we may disagree as a culture with their preferences when it comes to LGBT rights, but that's not the question.

The question is what is the role of the State Department's diplomacy?

What is the role of USAID?

And if it undermines our national security by pushing would be allies to our adversaries and empowering our adversaries.

It's not only wasteful spending, it actually undermines our diplomatic and national security objectives.

There are some who feel that if there is a pause that becomes permanent on USAID, that that will embolden countries like China to fill in the void where America has been.

Do you lend any credence to that argument?

Well, as a member of the East Asia and the Pacific Subcommittee, I recognize that American soft power diplomacy and some foreign assistance can actually play a role in advancing American interests overseas.

But when we're giving $122 million to organizations, according to the Middle East Forum, organizations affiliated with radical Islamic terrorist organizations, designated foreign terrorist organizations, when we're giving money to the Taliban, from American taxpayers, when we're giving money to terrorists in Yemen, in Syria, when we're giving money to Hamas in Gaza that are antisemites.

Is this what American taxpayers should have their hard earned money go to?

I don't think so.

And I think this kind of review of wasteful spending is long overdue.

There are some who are puzzled, I'll say, by Congress's seemingly inaction or resistance to act when there are pink slips given to federal employees, shutting down of agencies and the stopping of funding that's been approved by Congress.

Part of your duties and Article one of the Constitution is there not some concern within the Republican conference that the president, the chief executive officer of this nation, is overextending his authority unchecked and abusing his power unchecked?

Well, no, I don't, because and I believe that the power of the purse, the appropriations power for Congress is a very important power.

That's why I've been trying to get my colleagues to support my legislation called the the TABS Act that taking account of Bureaucrats Spending Act, the Dodd-Frank law created this unaccountable agency called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is exempt from the congressional appropriations process that gets its funding to harass credit providers and small lenders across this country through the Federal Reserve System.

So totally outside of the appropriations process, this means that this agency is unaccountable to the American people through the power of the purse, that that's what makes our oversight meaningful.

So I'm a defender of Congressional Appropriations Authority.

But remember, look at, for example, this US Aid review, this part when we appropriate money to USAID.

Congress did not authorize money to go to a drag show in Ecuador.

We didn't do that.

We gave USAID a pot of money and we gave them a mission and we gave them parameters.

And they've gone beyond the mission that we gave them.