The relationship between the Department of Housing and Urban Development and DOGE is "tremendous" while working together to save money, HUD Secretary Scott Turner said Wednesday on Newsmax.
"We launched the DOGE task force inside of HUD," Turner said on "National Report." "Already, we found $260 million in savings."
Turner also said DOGE has also identified $1.9 billion in misplaced funding.
"The American people are hard-working, taxpaying people," he said. "We want to make sure to be good stewards of our taxpayer dollars, and so our relationship with DOGE is tremendous."
The goal, he added, is to shepherd HUD's resources and maximize the budget "to treat and to serve the people that we've been called to serve."
Turner, who is speaking at the annual CPAC event this week, said he is hoping to show some of HUD's actions to get people excited about what is happening.
One of HUD's first actions, he said, involved doing away with the "Equal Access Rule" for housing.
"I gave a directive, a secretarial directive to HUD to halt any actions going forward so we can ensure that any HUD funding for facilities, including shelters could properly identify and bring in people who come to the proper shelter as according to their sex at birth," Turner said.
The Equal Access Rule, originally published by HUD in 2012, prohibited discrimination on housing based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status. Turner, upon taking office, issued a directive that stopped enforcement of a rule from 2016 that allowed individuals to self-identify their gender without regard to biological sex.
"On President [Donald] Trump's first day, he signed the executive order to restore biological truth to our government and to our nation and so we want to uphold that when it comes to HUD-funded facilities to ensure the security and the safety of people going into those facilities," Turner told Newsmax.
Turner also on Wednesday had a message for Democrats who oppose DOGE's changes: "Remember who elected us, the American people."
"As a former elected official in Texas, in the House of Representatives, I always kept in mind the people who elected me to the office and the service that I was providing," he said. "Our mission here for elected Democrats, for elected Republicans, those that are appointed is to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars … let's remember who we serve, and that's the American people. We have to steward, well our hard-working dollars of the people that put us here."
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