Representative Cory Mills (R-FL) signaled support for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) going through the Department of Defense (DOD), saying, "audits and oversight should not intimidate you" in recent comments to The Floridian.
"I believe in government efficiency, and so does our Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, and one of the things that we cannot ignore is that the DOD has failed their own internal audits for the last four times," said Rep. Mills.
"So we need to do a better job of accounting, being accountable to the American people, but also ensuring that our military has all of the necessary equipment it needs to be the most lethal volunteer armed forces in the world, both at home and abroad," Rep. Mills continued, adding that the need for a strong military is pertinent with President Donald Trump's declaration of the Mexican drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).
The Florida congressman has recently sought to uncover misappropriated funds, such as food allowances at military installations across the nation.
"One of the big things is that there was over $225 million that was taken from service members across the board for food. And of that, $152 million, approximately, was misused and not even used for food at all. That is a huge issue that we need to be looking into now," Mills described.
While there has been widespread misuse of taxpayer dollars at the Department of Defense (DoD) the need for a complete overhaul of the government agency is due after the apparent practice of issuing no-bid contracts to vendors, and in some cases, the appearance of solely using certain vendors over others.
Mills agreed, and suggests complete oversight into the practices of all government agencies, particularly the D0D.
"If you are a company who is doing the right thing, or you are a government department or agency or bureau who is doing the right thing, audits and oversight should not intimidate you," he added. "Audits and oversight should not be something that you push back against, they are something you should welcome. And so I think that every single one of our departments, agencies, and bureaus need to have proper auditing so that [Congress], under our Article I authorities, can be good stewards of taxpayer funding."
