For the first time in decades, the federal government is being forced to answer a question every family across Florida’s 14th Congressional District — Brandon, Riverview, Plant City, Valrico, and Sun City Center — answers every month: where is the money actually going?
The Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, is the audit Washington has refused to run on itself for forty years. The findings so far confirm what Hillsborough County families already knew. Federal money is being spent in ways no household, no small business, and no Florida county government would tolerate.
This post breaks down what DOGE has actually found, what every dollar of federal debt costs an FL-14 household, and the structural fix Washington keeps refusing to make.
What DOGE Has Found — and Why It Matters for FL-14
DOGE’s mandate is straightforward: inventory federal spending, identify duplication, identify waste, and report back. The early findings are damning.
- More than $300 billion annually in federal consulting contracts, with major chunks going to firms whose deliverables were never used or never measured.
- Over 100 separate workforce training programs spread across 15 federal agencies — most with no evidence of improving employment outcomes, many duplicating one another.
- Tens of billions of dollars in improper Medicare and Medicaid payments every year, including payments to dead people, payments to deregistered providers, and payments to addresses that do not exist.
- Federal real estate vacancies at levels that would bankrupt any private-sector landlord — buildings paid for by taxpayers, sitting empty, with maintenance and lease payments still on the federal books.
- Grant programs with no audit trail, no measurable outcome, and no sunset clause — programs that started in one administration and have run on autopilot through every administration since. See our deeper analysis of federal program sunset clauses and reauthorization.
For FL-14 — a district where median household income is meaningfully below what Washington bureaucrats and federal contractors take home — these findings are not abstract. They represent thousands of dollars per household that paid for nothing.
The Direct Connection to Your Family’s Budget
Federal waste is not a Washington problem. It is a Hillsborough County problem.
Every dollar Washington borrows to cover wasteful spending is a dollar borrowed against future taxes — and against the purchasing power of the dollar in your wallet today. The cost of groceries for a typical Brandon or Riverview family has grown by 25 percent in five years. Insurance premiums, electricity rates, and mortgage costs have followed the same trajectory. Federal deficit spending and the monetary expansion that funded it are direct contributors. Read our inflation and cost-of-living analysis for the full picture.
The math is unforgiving. The national debt has crossed $36 trillion — more than $107,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. For a four-person FL-14 household, that is more than $400,000 in federal debt obligations attached to their family before any tax bill is calculated. In 2025, federal interest payments alone exceeded $1 trillion. That is more than the entire defense budget. More than Medicare. More than the federal government spends on all infrastructure, all veterans care, and all border security combined. See our federal interest payments and the FL-14 household burden breakdown for the per-household impact.
Every dollar of interest is a dollar that does not pay for veterans’ care for FL-14 retirees, Social Security checks, or border security.
What DOGE Is — and What It Is Not
It is worth being precise about what DOGE actually does and does not do.
DOGE is not a budget-cutting agency. It cannot, by itself, cancel a single program. Spending decisions remain with Congress.
DOGE is an auditor. It identifies waste, duplication, fraud, and outdated programs. It produces public reports. It hands those reports to the executive branch and to Congress. What happens next depends on whether elected officials are willing to act.
DOGE is also a political reckoning. Every program DOGE flags has a constituency — usually the contractors and bureaucrats who run it. Eliminating waste means saying “no” to people who have been receiving federal money for decades. That is why Congress has not done this on its own. It takes external pressure to force the conversation.
For FL-14 voters, the question becomes: which candidates will use DOGE findings to actually shrink the federal footprint, and which will protect the status quo because the status quo benefits the political class?
The Balanced Budget Amendment: The Structural Fix Washington Refuses to Make
DOGE alone is not enough. Even if every dollar of waste DOGE identifies were eliminated, the federal budget would still run a deficit. The structural problem is that Congress has no enforceable obligation to spend less than it takes in. Forty-nine of fifty states have some form of balanced-budget requirement. The federal government has none.
That is why a Balanced Budget Amendment to the United States Constitution is the only durable fix. A constitutional amendment cannot be repealed by a single Congress in a single year. It would require Washington to live within its means the way every Hillsborough County family already does.
The opposition to a balanced-budget amendment is not principled — it is institutional. Washington’s spending culture is built on the assumption that future generations will pay for today’s promises. A balanced-budget amendment would force every Congress to make the trade-offs honestly, in public, in front of voters. That is exactly why Congress refuses to pass one.
What Washington’s Debt Costs Every Family in This District
The mechanics of federal debt are easy to describe and devastating to live through.
When the federal government borrows, it competes with private borrowers — small businesses, families taking out mortgages, farmers buying equipment — for the same pool of capital. That competition pushes interest rates up. Higher rates raise the cost of every mortgage, every car loan, every business expansion across the district.
When the federal government’s interest payments grow, the share of every tax dollar that goes to interest grows with it. Interest payments do not buy anything. They do not fund veterans’ care for FL-14 retirees, they do not fund Social Security and Medicare for Sun City Center retirees, they do not fund border security or local infrastructure. They are pure overhead — the price of past spending paid by today’s working families.
When deficit spending exceeds the economy’s capacity to absorb it, the result is inflation. The 25 percent grocery price increase Hillsborough County families have lived through is not a mystery. It is a direct consequence of a federal government that printed money it did not have to cover spending it could not justify.
A Smarter Government, Not Just a Smaller One
This is not an argument for tearing down legitimate federal functions. National defense, border security, federal courts, veterans’ care, Social Security, and Medicare are core obligations. The argument is for honesty about the difference between core obligations and grafted-on bureaucracy.
A federal government that does fewer things and does them well is more likely to deliver for FL-14 than a federal government that sprawls across 100 duplicate workforce programs, hundreds of billions in unmeasured consulting, and trillion-dollar interest payments on debt that no one in Congress is willing to address.
The DOGE findings give Congress the receipts. The question is whether Congress will use them.
What John Peters Will Do in Congress
As FL-14’s representative, John Peters will:
- Vote to codify DOGE recommendations that have been validated by independent audit, ending duplicate programs and recovering wasted funds.
- Cosponsor and vote for a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
- Vote against any spending bill that does not pay for itself or include explicit offsets — no more “must-pass” packages stacked with unrelated giveaways.
- Demand a line-by-line federal budget review for any program that has run for 20+ years without an outcome audit.
- Treat federal real estate, federal contracting, and federal grant programs the way a small business treats its own balance sheet — with a constant question of “is this delivering value for the price?”
After nine terms — eighteen years — Kathy Castor has voted for every major federal spending package that brought America to $36 trillion in debt and $1 trillion in annual interest payments. Many of those packages carried congressional earmarks and pork spending wrapped inside must-pass omnibus bills. FL-14 deserves a representative who treats the federal budget the way Hillsborough County families treat their household budget.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is DOGE and what does it do?
DOGE is the Department of Government Efficiency — a federal initiative tasked with auditing federal spending, identifying duplication and waste, and reporting findings publicly. DOGE itself does not have authority to cancel programs; spending decisions remain with Congress. Its role is to surface evidence so that Congress can act.
How much federal waste has DOGE identified?
Early DOGE findings include over $300 billion annually in federal consulting contracts (much of it unmeasured), more than 100 duplicate workforce training programs across 15 agencies, tens of billions in improper Medicare and Medicaid payments, vacant federal real estate at levels that would bankrupt a private landlord, and grant programs running for decades on autopilot without outcome audits. Many of these line items are recoverable. Recovery requires Congress to vote.
How much is the national debt and how does it affect FL-14 families?
The national debt has crossed $36 trillion — more than $107,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. In 2025, federal interest payments alone exceeded $1 trillion, more than the entire defense budget. For Florida’s 14th Congressional District, the cost shows up as higher grocery prices (up 25 percent in five years), higher mortgage and car-loan rates, higher insurance premiums, and a federal government that spends more on debt service than on most of its core obligations.
What is a Balanced Budget Amendment and why does it matter?
A Balanced Budget Amendment is a constitutional amendment that would require Congress to spend no more than it takes in over each fiscal year. Forty-nine of fifty states have a balanced-budget requirement. The federal government has none. Without a constitutional anchor, every Congress can spend beyond its means and pass the bill to future generations. A constitutional amendment cannot be repealed by a single Congress and is the only durable structural fix to chronic federal deficits. See our full analysis: the case for a Balanced Budget Amendment.
Where does John Peters stand on DOGE and federal spending?
John Peters supports DOGE and would vote to codify validated DOGE recommendations into law, ending duplicate programs and recovering wasted funds. He cosponsors a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He commits to voting against any spending bill that does not pay for itself or include explicit offsets, and he supports a line-by-line review of any federal program that has run for 20+ years without an outcome audit.
Stand for fiscal sanity in FL-14
Federal waste is not abstract. It is the price of groceries, the cost of a mortgage, the value of a paycheck. Every dollar Washington wastes is a dollar your family does not get to keep. After nine terms — eighteen years — FL-14 deserves a representative who treats the federal budget with the same seriousness Hillsborough County families bring to their own.
Donate to John Peters’ campaign or contact the campaign. See John’s full plan on fiscal responsibility and the issues that matter most to FL-14.