Simone Del Rosario:

Vivek Ramaswamy is ready to put President Joe Biden’s quote “last minute spending spree” under a microscope.

The incoming co-lead of President-elect Donald Trump’s newly created Department of Government Efficiency is taking issue with deals he says are being done in the 11th hour.

What’s raising eyebrows on the other side is what’s high on Ramaswamy’s list of spending to claw back: a $6.6 billion loan to EV maker Rivian from the Department of Energy announced last month. Rivian is a rival to Tesla, where DOGE co-chair Elon Musk is the CEO.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY:

Anybody who’s offering recommendations, you should always have a skeptical lens to look at. What are their motivations for making that recommendation? I say that’s the best advice I’d give the public. Always be skeptical when somebody’s making a recommendation

Simone Del Rosario:

During a Q&A at CNBC’s CFO Council Summit this week, Ramaswamy says he doesn’t think the loan will be paid back.

The Rivian loan is to build a factory in Georgia. It won’t be final until the Energy Department and Rivian sign a contract, which The New York Times reports is expected to happen before Trump’s inauguration.

These loans do become the government’s responsibility if a company goes bankrupt. The Obama administration’s loan to solar panel company Solyndra is a prime example. In that case, taxpayers took a half-a-billion-dollar hit.

As of the end of September, DOE had financed $44 billion in loans, taking $1 billion in losses.

The DOE says its “Loan Programs Office provides attractive debt financing for high-impact, large-scale energy infrastructure projects in the United States.”

Ramaswamy said no program is off limits for DOGE, including “last minute [Inflation Reduction Act], CHIPS Act, and countless other federal spending sprees authorized under Biden.”

The IRA and the CHIPS Act are two of Biden’s biggest signature policies passed during his 4-year term.

After Trump won presidential election, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo talked about the race against the clock.

Gina Raimondo:

“I’d like to have the, really, almost all the money obligated by the time we leave. That’s the goal.”

Simone Del Rosario:

At that time, Ramaswamy posted on X, “This is highly inappropriate: they’re accelerating spending ahead of the transition of power.”

It’s not clear under what authority DOGE would have to claw back any spending.

In most cases, the funding has already been appropriated as part of large legislation or in funding to agencies that disperse the money. Only Congress has authority to change appropriations.

Ramaswamy and Musk took their DOGE pitch to lawmakers on Capitol Hill Thursday.

This week, Ramaswamy compared Biden’s spending to a company firing an executive, who in their final days approved spending that hadn’t yet been doled out.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY:

And I think if you view the way the federal government spends the taxpayer money, and that was in a corporate context that would be a fiduciary breach. Hands down. I think the officers of that public company would, at minimum, be fired, and at worst, be civilly or worse, in court over the dereliction of duty

Simone Del Rosario:

For his part, when Trump was a lame duck president following the 2020 election, he signed a new $2.3 trillion spending bill to fund the government, which included $900 billion in COVID-19 relief.