‘Positive for Florida’: Ron DeSantis hails DOGE, FEMA reforms

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Gov. Ron DeSantis is endorsing the Donald Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which Elon Musk is using to ferret out governmental inefficiency, along with proposed changes to the Federal Emergency Management Administration’s funding formula.

And naysayers are lying, he adds.

“So I think what they’re looking to do with the Trump administration is going to be very positive for Florida. If the media is spinning it that somehow it’s going to be negative, they’re not giving you the truth about what the administration is contemplating doing,” he said at the Florida State Fair in Tampa.

During remarks Thursday, DeSantis said “what Elon is doing … is really good,” and “the first significant intrusion into the bureaucrats’ aura of invincibility.”

DeSantis said “they’re identifying and rooting out taxpayer dollars that are being wasted by the many hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of dollars, depending on the agency. So you have these things like USAID. They’ll talk about a big game about what it’s accomplishing, but really, I mean, it’s almost like a corrupt scheme where they’re funneling money to political supporters and trying to promote (an) ideological agenda. And so they’re doing a good job exposing really deep corruption into how the federal administrative apparatus actually operates.”

He posed a seemingly rhetorical question thereafter.

“How did it get to the point where any of this would be happening with your tax dollars? And the basic reason is that Congress has failed at its core responsibilities to use the power of the purse (to) conduct the oversight that they are empowered with under the Constitution.”

The Governor also endorsed President Trump’s suggestions that FEMA, as it is now, may be a thing of the past, saying “what he’s talking about doing makes a lot of sense,” to deal with the agency’s “insufferable bureaucracy.”

“If you had a disaster and you can look at what’s the typical cost of a Category 4 hurricane or any of these other things that happened? And look to see how much FEMA has actually spent on those throughout the past, and then if a disaster comes, you can take whatever that amount is, send 80% of that block grant to the state, cut the bureaucracy of FEMA out entirely, and that money will go further than it currently does at greater amounts going through FEMA’s bureaucracy. So that’s what he’s talking about doing. And we would be able to administer this so much quicker,” DeSantis said.

He also noted that Florida committed its resources to out-of-state recovery efforts during last year’s storm season, raising questions among those who were helped about why the feds weren’t responding.

“So we have our Florida State guard is out rescuing people in North Carolina a couple days after Hurricane Helene, and, you know, the people were very, very appreciative, but some of them were like, ‘well, wait a minute, why is Florida here doing this? Why don’t we have others?’ But there was a mistake made in North Carolina to rely on FEMA to do some of those operational things,” he said.

Last month, President Trump ordered “a full-scale review, by individuals highly experienced at effective disaster response and recovery, who shall recommend to the President improvements or structural changes to promote the national interest and enable national resilience.”