The leader of the Senate‘s DOGE caucus has revealed that the cost-cutting group will now aim to slash pointless laws.
Sen. Joni Ernst has so far been working to quickly craft legislation that enables Elon Musk and Donald Trump‘s DOGE to effectively weed out government wasteful spending and abuse.
Now, the Republican from Iowa is introducing the Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome (SCRUB) Act to get rid of useless federal laws already approved by Congress.
Her SCRUB Act would task DOGE with ending legislation that is found to be completely unnecessary.
The bill would enshrine into law an executive order signed by Trump this week meant to review regulations that may be unconstitutional, or that unlawfully delegate legislative power to other government agencies.
And there are a lot of laws that don’t make sense, Ernst says.
Her SCRUB Act would address laws like CFR §133.195(a)(1), which makes it a federal crime to sell ‘Swiss cheese’ that does not have holes in it.
It would also impact 21 CFR §101.17(a)(1), which makes it a crime to sell food in spray cans without clearly labeling the container with a warning telling consumers not to spray the food in their eyes.
Elon Musk and Donald Trump have been slashing government waste through their recently created outside of government group DOGE. This week, Trump signed an executive order instructing DOGE to eliminate old and useless laws
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, reintroduced the SCRUB Act this week to enshrine Trump’s recent order into law
The SCRUB Act would force a review of outdated laws and regulations that could then be taken out of official U.S. legal codes
The law known as 18 USC §1716(c) & USPS Publication 52 §§526.5 will also be examined.
It makes it a federal crime to mail living scorpions unless the box clearly is marked ‘live scorpions’ and is also within another box also labeled ‘live scorpions.’
Laws that qualify for DOGE’s latest review must have been in place for at least 15 years; impose paperwork burdens; impose disproportionately high costs on small businesses; are excessively costly compared to modern alternatives; harm American business and several other niche criteria.
By Ernst’s estimation, many of the laws that would be addressed by the SCRUB Act already have modern solutions that could be enabled by new software or other tools.
‘Washington insiders might brush it off, but the bloated bureaucracy has gotten out of control,’ Ernst told DailyMail.com in a statement.
‘Burdensome and outdated regulations have railroaded Americans, and the only way out is to conduct a complete review. We need to SCRUB every old law on the books to identify the red tape that needs to be slashed.’
Other burdensome laws that Ernst suggested be eliminated include penalties for climbing trees on Supreme Court property and restrictions on washing fish in sinks that are not specifically dedicated for such cleaning activities.
And of course there’s laws surrounding loose tobacco and what font must be used on the labeling.
CFR §1143.3(a)(2)(iii), makes it ‘a federal crime to distribute roll-your-own tobacco unless it is labeled with a warning that nicotine is addictive, written in Helvetica bold, arial bold, or a similar sans serif font and contrasts with the coloring of the packaging,’ Ernsnt’s team noted, sharing that law could be eliminated.
The SCRUB Act, if passed, could lead to some of the most meaningful deregulation undertaken by Congress in years
Musk and Trump’s DOGE effort has upset many federal workers in Washington and across the country as they receive notice that their roles have been terminated.
This has led the media to aggressively pursue the DOGE duo with questions about the legality of the group’s cost-cutting measures.
“I signed an order creating the Department of Government Efficiency and put a man named Elon Musk in charge,’ Trump said this week.
Musk has said: ‘The people voted for major government reform and that’s what the people are going to get.’
