Waste in Minnesota and Beyond
by Senator Steve Green

We’ve talked a lot about the fraud in our state – it has to stop and we have to get it under control. But another big topic is the fraud happening at the federal level. As many have heard, President Trump has created the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). They’ve been digging into areas of waste within our government, of which there are many.

The first big area they found waste in is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which allegedly spent $20 billion in taxpayer dollars. They also unsurprisingly found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) used $59 million to house illegal immigrants in luxury New York City hotels. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there were also signs pointing to the Pentagon using a good amount of their budget to fund things like re-heatable coffee cups and soap dispensers. So far, DOGE claims to have saved $54.63 billion of taxpayer dollars. I applaud it.

Frankly, I’m glad Elon and DOGE are digging into this waste. Taxpayers should know where their money is going. Considering our state has seen its own fair share of waste, fraud, and abuse, we should be implementing similar measures in Minnesota. Instead, Democrats have actively fought against transparency. It’s alarming.

I’ve discussed a lot of the waste in our state – it’s never-ending. The waste and fraud investigations continue, both at the federal and state level. But a new avenue of waste has come up that’s cause for alarm, and that is the waste involved in the Northstar rail line.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) recently released a report detailing costs associated with the Northstar rail line and a possible expansion. The train currently goes from the Twin Cities up to Ham Lake, but advocates want to expand it to St. Cloud and even further on to Fargo. The most alarming part of the report says that the full extension could cost almost $3 billion. That is unacceptable when our state is already facing a looming deficit of $5 billion. It’s even worse when you consider ridership has dropped from 790,000 riders in 2017 to fewer than 100,000 in 2024. This is the latest example of government waste in action. It’s happening at the federal level and it’s happening in Minnesota.

My point in sharing all this is that we don’t have to be afraid of fraud investigations. They don’t always mean cuts to essential services. They mean getting to the bottom of waste and creating transparency where it has been lacking. I’m very disappointed that Democrats in Minnesota have leaned on fraud investigations as a way to employ scare tactics. They keep trying to scare folks by saying “there will be cuts to essential services.” That’s not always the case. In fact, you can track exactly what DOGE has been finding so far. What they’re doing at the federal level is exactly what we need to consider doing in Minnesota, only then can we get to the bottom of the constant waste and fraud.