Tennessee U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn Introduces DOGE Acts to Cut Wasteful Government Spending

Tennessee U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced a package of seven bills called the DOGE Acts to help root out and cut unnecessary spending within the federal government on Wednesday.

Blackburn’s DOGE Acts include the Federal Freeze Act; the Commission to Relocate the Federal Bureaucracy Act; the Federal Employee Performance and Accountability Act; the Stopping Home Office Work’s Unproductive Problems (SHOW UP) Act; and a three-bill package to implement 1 percent, 2 percent, and 5 percent across-the-board spending cuts.

Under the Federal Freeze Act, a one-year freeze on increases in federal civilian employees’ salaries would be implemented to “direct federal agency heads to establish a cap on the number of workers that can be employed over a period of three years, and decrease the number of employees at federal agencies.”

The Commission to Relocate the Federal Bureaucracy Act would establish a plan “to relocate non-national security related agencies to states across the country based on financial efficiency, existing infrastructure, and related industries,” as an effort to “decentralize the power held by unelected bureaucrats in Washington D.C.”

Under the Federal Employee Performance and Accountability Act, a “performance-based pay structure” would be implemented in order to “incentivize high performance” among federal employees.

When it comes to federal employees working in-person, Blackburn’s SHOW UP Act would require federal agencies to return to pre-pandemic telework, or work from home, levels within 30 days. The bill would also prevent federal agencies from permanently expanding telework without submitting to Congress telework plans certified by the Office of Personnel Management.

The final legislation included in the DOGE Acts is a package of three bills that would implement 1 percent, 2 percent, and 5 percent across-the-board spending cuts for non-security discretionary appropriations made available for Fiscal Year 2026 and every fiscal year thereafter.

“The American people have had enough of outsized bureaucracy and wasteful government spending. The DOGE Acts are the first step to achieving government efficiency by requiring federal employees to get back in the office, moving federal agencies into the heartland of America, cutting bloated federal spending across the board, and freezing federal hiring and salaries until we can rightsize the federal government,” Blackburn said in a statement.

All bills included in the DOGE Acts were introduced by Blackburn in the Senate and by U.S. Representative Claudia Tenney (R-NY-24) in the House.

The DOGE Acts come days after billionaire Elon Musk and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy visited lawmakers on Capitol Hill to discuss how the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will work to identify and cut unnecessary spending within the government.

– – –

Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Image “Sen. Marsha Blackburn” by Sen. Marsha Blackburn.