Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis says he has been trying to return unused federal funds for years, but was unable to until a meeting with Elon Musk took place. “Other states should follow Florida in supporting DOGE’s efforts!”DeSantis said in a post on X, which began with the following statement:
“For years, Florida has been trying to return federal funds to the federal government due to the ideological strings attached by the Biden Administration—but they couldn’t even figure out how to accept it. Today, I met with @elonmusk and the DOGE team, and we got this done in the same day.”
DeSantis’ post included a letter from his office to the U.S. Department of the Treasury which specified that after his visit with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the state of Florida returned $878,112,000 in taxpayer dollars to the federal government.
Last month, DeSantis revealed the creation of the Florida DOGE task force which is set to “further eliminate waste within state government, save taxpayers money, and ensure accountability in Florida,” according to a press release.
“Florida has set the standard for fiscally conservative governance, and our new Florida DOGE task force will do even more to serve the people of Florida,” DeSantis said in a statement. “It will eliminate redundant boards and commissions, review state university and college operations and spending, utilize artificial intelligence to further examine state agencies to uncover hidden waste, and even audit the spending habits of local entities to shine the light on waste and bloat.”
The Florida task force is set to eliminate bureaucratic bloat and modernize the state’s government “to best serve the people of Florida.”
“Almost a billion dollars of your taxpayer money saved,” Musk said in response to DeSantis’ post.
