Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has ordered staff to work overtime so they can spend cash as quickly as possible before Donald Trump assumes the presidency, which a Republican senator called “extremely concerning.”
“I’d like to have really almost all of the money obligated by the time we leave,” Raimondo told POLITICO, in reference to the $53 billion microchip program, which Congress passed as a part of the CHIPS Act. Raimondo set a “clear deadline” and asked her staff to work weekends to accomplish it, she said.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), chair of the Senate DOGE Caucus, criticized Raimondo in a Wednesday letter.
“Shoveling out heaps of taxpayer dollars as fast as possible, with little to no oversight, is part of the reason the United States government is nearly $36 trillion in debt today,” she wrote, saying $280 billion in COVID money may have gone to fraudsters under…
