The senator who pledged to make bureaucrats “squeal” is making them hiss.
On Saturday, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, launched a “Caturday” campaign on social media to expose nine examples of Washington waste, including a government-funded study on eating cats in Madagascar.
“Just like cats, waste in Washington has nine lives,” Ernst told The Federalist in an exclusive statement.
President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to appoint Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to eliminate waste throughout the federal government. On Thursday, Ramaswamy announced he was starting a podcast with Musk to launch the administrative effort and will call the new program “Dogecast.”
“Elon and I are going to start a separate track of ‘Dogecasts’ that explain exactly what we’re doing to the public to provide transparency on what is a once-in-a-generation project,” Ramaswamy said in a video posted to YouTube. “We want to bring the public along with us. To lift the curtain, to take us behind the scenes of what that waste, fraud and abuse in government looks like.”
Ernst highlighted nine examples topping at least $9.7 million in her weekend social media campaign she says illustrate how the federal government blows through taxpayer money.
“I am working paw in paw with the Trump administration, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and DOGE to claw back tax dollars from the fat cats and get Americans feline good that Washington is finally starting to work for them again,” Ernst told The Federalist.
The senator’s first example is a $6.8 million dollar study by the National Science Foundation to assess what toys, foods, scents, and humans cats prefer. Researchers examined a group of 50 cats, five of which were uncooperative, and reported whichever option the participant animals spent the most time engaging with was that cat’s preference. Cats picked tuna over chicken, moving toys over stationary toys, and catnip over gerbils.
“Good news: they like tuna, catnip, playing with humans, and moving toys,” Ernst reported. “Bad news: we aren’t within a whisker of all the waste.”
Her second example was a $178,000 “Catwalk” study wherein officials with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) “put 10 cats on a catwalk and another on a treadmill to study how they balance.”
Her third example cited a $390,000 study commissioned to answer the question, “how many shakes does it take for a wet cat to dry off.”
Ernst’s fourth example was a $331,000 investigation into whether cats or elephants urinate faster.
“It turns out it was a tie!” the senator reported. “18 seconds for these speed demons.”
“And, who could forget the time @NIH spent $1.3 million treating cats to a pawsh day at the spa with treats and classical music to see if they pooped outside the litter box less,” Ernst wrote in the following post.
Other studies examined the appeal of “cute kittens on the internet,” whether cats could still walk on treadmills after the deletion of brain function, and how cats and mice interact when glowing in the dark.
“It would be a cat-astrope to let this purrplexing spending spree continue,” Ernst said.