WASHINGTON – Today on the floor, U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) outlined ways the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) can reform the Pentagon to ensure America’s armed forces are efficient, effective, and able to reestablish dominance on the world stage following years of weakness and irresponsible use of taxpayer dollars under President Biden. Excerpts of Sen. Cornyn’s remarks are below, and video can be found here.

“One of the priorities I’m looking forward to working with DOGE on is to accomplish, as a founding member, is to reform and, hopefully, revitalize the Pentagon.”

“We need to make sure that the money that is spent is spent efficiently and accurately.”

“The lack of competition in this area, combined with our penchant for requiring unique defense systems, has hampered our bargaining power and led to waste and abuse.”

“The goal should be deterrence—preventing the next war.”

“The Pentagon should move away from cost-plus contracts, toward reliance on fixed-price contracts. Under a fixed-price model, cost overruns are borne by the contractor instead of the buyer, which in this case is the Pentagon.”

“Newer, nontraditional defense companies like Anduril and Palantir, as well as Elon Musk’s SpaceX in my home state of Texas, have made a strong case for this commonsense business approach.”

“I’m optimistic that the Pentagon can and will, with our help and encouragement, make progress on all of these fronts in order to be prepared for the challenges that our country faces ahead.”

“I’m confident that under new leadership, including that of Secretary-designate Hegseth, in collaboration with people like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy at the Department of Government Efficiency, we can continue and build on this process and make additional needed reforms at the Pentagon.”