The Pentagon could be in for a shake-up if Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) wins the presidency.
DeSantis echoed Republican talking points that the United States needs to bolster its military capabilities but argued the Pentagon is also riddled with bloat and is in need of significant structural reforms.
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"We need more capacity, but I think we have a huge bureaucracy that needs to be reduced. I think the civilian Pentagon needs to be reduced. I think we need to shake up the uniformed services, and I think you need to audit the Pentagon," DeSantis told libertarian journalist John Stossel. "There's a lot of bloat in the Pentagon that we should tackle."
Last year, the Pentagon failed its fifth annual audit in a row. Concerns about the efficiency of the military's spending have crossed party lines, with Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and others decrying wasteful spending.
DeSantis served in the U.S. Navy and is a veteran of the Iraq War.
"I want a very strong military. I want peace through strength, but what I don't want to do is get involved in some commitment, that there's not a clear rationale for what we're doing and there's not a concrete identification of what does victory mean," DeSantis added.
The governor elicited backlash earlier this year when he suggested that getting "further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia" was not a "vital national" interest. DeSantis later clarified that he views Russian President Vladimir Putin as a "war criminal" and backs Ukraine.
Stossel ticked through other government departments, such as the Commerce Department, Education Department, and Agriculture Department, to gauge which ones DeSantis may favor cutting. DeSantis wasn't explicit about which ones he'd cut but noted concerns about bloat in the departments listed.
"Part of it, too, is reducing the number of bureaucrats. You should simply reduce the federal bureaucracy through attrition," DeSantis said.
DeSantis also expressed interest in reclassifying large swaths of federal employees as "Schedule F." Former President Donald Trump did that via executive order during the waning days of his presidency, but that was later reversed by President Joe Biden. With that designation, the president would have more leeway to slim down the federal workforce.
"You can't have a situation where someone can get elected president and yet the other side controls the entire executive branch with the bureaucracy. So I think asserting more authority there, some of that may be directly firing, some of that may be reclassifying employees in like a Schedule F to where they can then be fired," DeSantis added.
Another area where DeSantis has gotten flack, particularly from Trump and Democrats, is entitlements. DeSantis backed entitlement reform packages as governor and noted that Trump previously backed similar reforms as well. He did not divulge a specific platform for entitlement reform during the interview and spoke of the matter broadly.
"I would not do things for people that are currently receiving these benefits because they've been made promises and we've got to fulfill them," DeSantis stressed.
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DeSantis is rumored to file paperwork for a 2024 campaign within the coming days, according to multiple reports.
He is polling as the top GOP primary competitor to Trump.