These criticisms came after U.S. Department of Agriculture Inspection Service employees were fired last week as the bird flu crisis continues to threaten farmers and increase the price of eggs. Millions of chickens have died from the virus, leaving egg production suffering and increasing prices by 15.2% in January alone. Klobuchar blamed DOGE for these firings and suggested these employees might not return while on ABC News’s The View on Monday.
“How many of them are going to come back?” Klobuchar said of the USDA staff. “Or when you say, oh, we accidentally fired the people watching over the nuclear stockpile, and then maybe 20% of them goes, I’m not going back to that place. This is going to have a profound effect on our government and what’s happening. It doesn’t mean that you never make any cuts. It’s how they’re doing it for shock and awe instead of actually making our government more effective, which is what we should want.”
Klobuchar lamented that many of the victims of these mass layoffs have been among “the most eager employees” or “people that have years of experience.”
“I want to see reform, and we all want to see our government work better. To me, what we want is it to be more effective. You want veterans to get their benefits, you want things to move faster, and you want projects to move faster,” Klobuchar said.
President Donald Trump has defended DOGE since its inception, saying no decision is made by the department without his approval. Trump even said he thought DOGE head Elon Musk’s email asking federal employees to report on their accomplishments over the past week was “great” during a Thursday press conference.
USDA TO REHIRE RECENTLY FIRED STAFF WORKING ON BIRD FLU OUTBREAK
In the first month of its creation, DOGE identified government contracts, leases, and grants deemed wasteful spending and cut them, sparking legal battles. According to the department, this has already saved $55 billion. Trump claimed to have found “hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud” on Thursday.
While a lawsuit attempting to keep DOGE out of Labor Department data was dismissed, and another attempt from 13 Democratic attorneys general was similarly thrown out, one U.S. district judge ruled against the department accessing the U.S. Treasury.
