In an exclusive revelation, Senate leaders from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are set to unveil an NCAA-style bracket featuring the most outrageous examples of federal waste, ripe for elimination.
The public will be given the opportunity to vote for their top choices in successive Elite Eight and Final Four rounds, much like the popular college basketball tournament.
As reported by Fox News, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the leader of the Senate's DOGE caucus, made it clear that while the frenzy of March Madness is confined to a single month, the federal government's "spending madness" is a relentless, debt-inducing spectacle that occurs throughout the year.
"The Senate DOGE Caucus is dividing and conquering to bring waste to a squealing halt," Ernst declared, adding, "This March, we will be scoring buckets for taxpayers by increasing transparency, stopping the silly spending, and making government actually start to work for the American people it serves."
The tournament will feature sixteen "seeds" of waste, each one representing a specific instance of federal overspending. These will be posted in a bracket and subjected to public polling to determine which eight are egregious enough to advance to the next round. This process will continue until the final two wasteful expenditures are left standing.
Each member of the DOGE caucus has selected or been assigned priority waste items for the tournament. While there may not be any major upsets, like Lehigh Universitys 2012 win over #1-seed Duke, each items introduction to the public may cause the same surprise.
Sen. Cyntha Lummis, R-Wyo., for instance, has chosen a Biden administration appropriation of $4.5 million to "combat disinformation" in Kazakhstan. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., has selected an allocation of $168,000 for an "Anthony Fauci Exhibit" at the National Institutes of Health Museum in Maryland. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., has picked a $7.9 million expenditure on teaching journalists in Sri Lanka to avoid "binary-gendered language." Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., has chosen a $45 million Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) scholarship program for Burmese people.
Ernst herself will be represented by the $4 million that the Departments of Agriculture and Interior spent on setting up a farming infrastructure for insect-based food consumption for humans. Other notable entries include billions in costs associated with the ATF illegally miscategorizing bureau employees as "law enforcement" (Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa), $690,000 to study cannabis use among "sexual-minority gender-diverse individuals" (Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo.), $12 million for a Las Vegas pickleball facility (Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont.) and $1.75 million for MoMA a New York City museum with already $5 billion in assets (Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah).
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., has included in his bracket $2 billion sent to the Taliban since the Biden administrations 2021 withdrawal. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., is represented by a six-figure line item for vegetable gardens in El Salvador, and Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., has a $1.3 million subsidy for equity and advocacy for Long Island transgender "youth of color."
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has chosen a $100,000 EPA grant to a major citys teachers' union foundation to hold a 14-day Environmental Justice Freedom School. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., has selected a $22 billion allocation from the Department of Health and Human Services to provide free housing and vehicles for illegal immigrants.
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., has highlighted millions in wasteful spending on gender transition procedures for U.S. service members. The final spot in the bracket is for $1.45 billion in FEMA funds for luxury hotels for illegals, an item called out by Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, who has introduced legislation to end the practice.
As the tournament unfolds, the Senate DOGE caucus will also announce that it is dividing "priority areas" for groups of senators to focus on. These include acquisition reform, digitizing antiquated government systems, transparency efforts, restoring "service to the civil service," fraud, non-strategic foreign aid, and cost-efficiency.
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