Ricketts Shares Proven Solutions to Cut Waste and Make the Federal Government Work Better
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday on the Senate floor, U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts (R-NE) shared Nebraska’s successes in cutting waste and making government work better. Ricketts is a founding member of the Senate DOGE Caucus, led by Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA), which aims to streamline federal services. The DOGE Caucus will work with the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
“The private sector figures out how to do a better job of providing services while reducing their expenses,” Ricketts said. “We can do the same thing in government. Now in the private sector you have competition that's going to drive inefficient businesses out. In the government sector, it's going to require people like Elon and Vivek, the Senators here in this room, to be able to drive that through our government agencies to get that efficiency.”
When Ricketts was Governor, the State of Nebraska trained 30,000 teammates in Lean Six Sigma, a process improvement methodology. This led to Nebraskans spending less time filling out forms, waiting on hold, and standing in line.
“And by implementing all of that, we were able to save over 900,000 hours of our teammates' time,” Ricketts continued. “We did over a thousand different projects. We saved $115 million in hard savings. And because of those processes, for example, we were able to reduce the square footage that we were occupying in the state of Nebraska by 60,000. 60,000 square feet we took off our rolls. We reduced our employment by 3.5%. And we were able to control spending.”
“And that is why this Department of Government Efficiency, the DOGE, and what this incoming administration is going to do is so important,” Ricketts closed. “We've got to be able to get our spending under control. It is a risk to our country. We've got to get this under control. And we can do it. We can do a better job of providing services and keep our expenses down, just like the private sector does, by leveraging tools like Lean Six Sigma. Just like the private sector does.”