Iowa's junior Senator, Joni Ernst, is a singular individual. She was a career officer in the Iowa National Guard, having commanded the 1168th Transportation Company in the Iraq War and retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. She was elected to the Senate in 2014, campaigning in no small part on her desire to eliminate government waste, using the catchphrase "Make 'em squeal" to good effect. It's a term Iowans can relate to.

Now, her hawkishness on wasteful spending may find a new outlet, as she will be chairing the United States Senate's DOGE Caucus. A New York Post exclusive on Friday has the details.

She’s about to become the top watchdoge in the Senate.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), 54, will take charge of the newly formed Senate DOGE Caucus and collaborate with tech guru Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to “cut pork” in the federal government.

“Iowans elected me with a mandate to cut Washington’s pork and make ’em squeal! From billion-dollar boondoggles to welfare for politicians and trillion-dollar slush funds, my decade-long investigations have exposed levels of abuse that are almost too insane to believe,” Ernst told The Post. 

“The Senate DOGE Caucus is ready to carry out critical oversight in Congress and use our legislative force to fight against the entrenched bureaucracy, trim the fat and get Washington back to work for Americans.”

Attacking government waste has always been a priority for Senator Ernst. And, even better, she has a good eye for the occasional pun.

Want a purfect example of government waste?@NIH spent $1.3 million to study if cats pampered with treats and classical music are less likely to poop outside the litter box.

All kitten aside, this is a claw-ful use of tax dollars that needs to be eliminated @DOGE. 🙀 pic.twitter.com/TAvBPF4tWa

— Joni Ernst (@SenJoniErnst) November 20, 2024

Senator Ernst will also have a counterpart in the House of Representatives. As my colleague Susie Moore noted in her Friday Morning Minute:

And speaking of DOGE, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been tapped to chair a House subcommittee (under the Oversight umbrella) tasked with coordinating with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — Delivering on Government Efficiency (also DOGE).

That, folks, is an interesting combination. This DOGE idea is clearly growing some legs, not just in the incoming Trump administration but in Congress. This is a trend that's worth encouraging.

See Related: Can the DOGE Take a Bite Out of Washington?

NEW: Musk and Ramaswamy Pen Detailed Op-Ed About Their Plans for DOGE—These Guys Mean Business

The Senate DOGE Caucus's roster is taking shape, and it's a noteworthy bunch:

So far, the Senate DOGE Caucus will include Sens. Ted Budd (R-NC), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.) 

The Hawkeye State senator met with Ramaswamy Thursday evening and discussed plans she had to “rein in the bureaucratic state” inspired by her decade-long crusade against federal waste.

During her run for the US Senate in 2014, Ernst made a national name for herself when the then-state senator cut an ad recounting how she “grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm” and declared that “Washington’s full of big spenders — let’s make ’em squeal.”

Washington is indeed full of big spenders, and not in a good way. There is an old apocryphal story (so maybe horse squeeze, but it applies regardless) wherein President Reagan overheard someone commenting that Congress spent like drunken sailors. The Gipper remonstrated with the speaker, rightly pointing out that drunken sailors were spending their own money.

That's a key difference.

Honestly, it's hard to believe that the federal government's workforce couldn't be slashed by 70-80 percent without having that much effect on our everyday lives. (And the rest should be decentralized — get them out of Washington.) Bear in mind that before the Depression and the New Deal, unless one was in the military, the only contact most people had with the federal government in any way was when they went to the post office. 

Would it really be so bad to return to that and devolve as many of the essential functions of government as possible back to where they rightly belong — with the states? As I described the other day, the people in the administration and Congress who are working to let the DOGE out should not be nibbling around the edges; they should not be proposing "reductions in the rate of increase." They should be swinging a big, metaphorical Viking battle-axe at the federal budget. Eliminating entire agencies should be on the agenda — Education would be a good first step, but it shouldn't be the last.

You go for it, Senator Ernst. Speaking as one old former Iowan to another Iowan, I can only say, "Make 'em squeal."