GOP presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis promised to halve the "footprint" of all D.C. federal agencies should he be elected president in 2024.
"We're going to let the economy function again. We are going to — our goal is going to reduce the footprint of all agencies in D.C. by 50 percent," DeSantis told CNBC's Brian Sullivan on "Last Call."
DeSantis stated that he plans to decrease the agencies through layoffs, transferring employees out of Washington, D.C., and through attrition after people retire, saying that "some of that will be reduction through attrition as people retire, some of that will be transferring to other parts of the country getting them out of D.C. Some of it will involve layoffs and using Article II power to do it. But the agencies in our government have grown 50 percent since 2019. If you look at their funding levels, I don't think there's any American that thinks they're 50 percent better off for those agencies having grown by 50 percent."
DeSantis has previously stated his idea to move some agencies out of D.C. to counter the "accumulation of power" in the city. He has also suggested eliminating certain agencies, including the Department of Education, Department of Commerce, Department of Energy and the Internal Revenue Service.
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Jeremy Frankel ✉
Jeremy Frankel is a Newsmax writer reporting on news and politics.
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