Biden Spends on ‘Last-Minute Buying Spree’ on IRA and CHIPS to Get DOGE Check

Vivek Ramaswamy, co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency and former US presidential candidate, is not yet ready to give up his hand when it comes to where the new agency he will lead with Elon Musk under President-elect Trump DOGE, will seek spending cuts.

One immediate area of ​​focus where he isn’t holding back, however, is what he described as the Biden administration’s “last-minute spending spree” on major policies like the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act.

As an example, Ramaswamy cited a recent $6.6 billion loan to an electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian Automotive.

“Current last-minute IRA, CHIPS Act and countless other federal spending sprees approved under Biden, when suddenly spending goes up and dollars go out,” Ramaswamy said Wednesday at the CNBC CFO Council Summit in Washington, D.C. “In some cases not justifying it,” he said.

“The $6.6 billion loan to Rivian … I don’t think it will be repaid,” he said.

Ramaswamy described Biden’s approvals in recent days as potentially tantamount to a “fiduciary breach.”

In addition to the Rivian loan, which the U.S. Department of Energy’s loan program unit had been working on over a period of several years, the Energy Department said Monday it plans to allocate up to $7.54 billion to a joint venture of Chrysler parent company Stellantis and to borrow Samsung SDI is supporting the construction of two lithium-ion battery plants for electric vehicles in Indiana.

“This is fair game for review,” Ramaswamy said. He likened it to a company firing a CEO and a CFO who, in their final days, authorize spending based on an agreement but have not yet paid out the money. “The board would look into it,” he said.

It is not clear whether there will be enough time to complete some of the deals announced by the Biden administration. The Rivian loan was a conditional commitment and the loan was ongoing at the time of its announcement, November 25th. Rivian said in a recent statement that it will “work closely with the DOE to quickly close the loan.”

The DOE issues loan guarantees for privately financed debts, which only become the sole responsibility of the state in the event of bankruptcy, as well as for government-financed loans.

“These deserve special scrutiny,” Ramaswamy said. “Everything that happens in this eleventh hour, the midnight hour. …every eleventh hour made in response to the election deserves special scrutiny, and if it was done by the executive, it can be reversed by the executive.”

Rivian did not respond to a request for comment.

Electric vehicles were the target of several new Republican powerbrokers who spoke at the CNBC CFO Council Summit. New Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, a former car dealer who wants to be a “car czar” for Trump, said the electric vehicle tax credits are “catastrophically stupid.”

DOGE co-chief executive Elon Musk leads the largest publicly traded US electric vehicle manufacturer Teslawhich earlier in its history received and repaid a loan guarantee from the US Department of Energy, as well as SpaceX – which has significant contracts with the federal government and competes for those contracts – and Ramaswamy were asked whether Musk could handle conflicts of interest as head of a government agency with the ability to to influence government decisions.

“That applies to me, it applies to everyone else in government… Anyone who makes recommendations should always be viewed with skepticism. What are the reasons for making this recommendation? I say that’s the best advice I have.” Always be skeptical when someone makes a recommendation. What do we have today? when you as a regulator made this decision?

“So I think we need to apply that 360-degree approach and that’s a good spirit to bring to the exercise. However, I don’t think it should be a substitute for an actual debate about the merits. And I think in many cases.” In some cases, the debate over the merits is somewhat circumvented by procedural means. I don’t want that to happen,” he added.

Ramaswamy said “time is of the essence” for DOGE as it is designed to be automatically deleted as an agency within 18 months, on July 4, 2026. And he said DOGE will prioritize what is most important and use “early successes” to build on that and then move forward in a “logical, measured but aggressive” manner to target government waste and fraud.

But unlike Rivian, Ramaswamy said: “Three weeks before January 20, when we officially start, I resist the idea of ​​cherry-picking.”