Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., plans broad accountability and increased investigations now that Republicans have taken control of the upper chamber in Tuesday’s election. Those plans include a promise to work quickly to reduce Biden-era government waste and to investigate the corporate capture of major health agencies.

Johnson is slated to chair the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s Oversight Subcommittee, where he will wield new majority authority, including subpoena power and a larger staff.

Johnson shared his plans on Wednesday’s episode of TV’s “Just the News, No Noise” after GOP control of the Senate became clear, with a projected majority of 52 or more votes.

“It’s about getting the truth out there,” Johnson said of his accountability plans.

Big Food, Big Pharmacy

“I often say, I will be like a mosquito in the nudist colony. It’s a target-rich environment,” he joked. “But listen, I’ve written more than 60 oversight letters to the Department of Defense, our federal health agencies in terms of what’s happened with COVID, vaccines, the entry of vaccines, that’s going to be a big focus of what I want to I do.”

“Look at the capture of these federal health agencies, other federal agencies, by big corporate interests, whether it’s big (agriculture), food processing, Big Pharma — again, that’s the corruption of the system. When you have a government that is massive, the entities that the government regulates figure out a way to capture that government,” he explained.

“That’s what happened, to the detriment of the American public. So that would be our objective … to expose that corporate capture of that corporate corruption of our federal health agencies,” he added.

Johnson was critical of federal health agencies to help suppress lab leak theories about COVID-19 and promote vaccines while eliminating potential side effects. He led an effort to get data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about the adverse side effects of COVID-19 vaccines, but was blocked while in the minority.

In the same vein, Johnson also promised that his committee would work hand-in-hand with Elon Musk on plans to improve government efficiency and reduce waste in the federal bureaucracy. He pointed to Musk’s streamlining of the workforce when he acquired the company, then known as Twitter before Musk renamed it.

“I would love to work with Elon Musk to make government much more efficient. I mean, I love what he did at X, you know, he went in there but got rid of 80% of their staff. And X seems to be working pretty well now,” Johnson said. “But again, we need a complete overhaul of the federal government. We must shrink its size, its cost and its scope, its influence on our lives.”

Republicans are designed to take over of the Senate by a potentially considerable margin. With record results for four contested races, Republicans currently lead in two, which would push their majority to 54 seats and give Johnson and his fellow committee and subcommittee chairs new powers to subpoena documents and testimony from federal agencies .

Johnson has also floated proposals to recover funding from the COVID-19-era glut, either as part of large-scale relief packages or signature spending initiatives from the Biden administration, such as the Inflation Relief Act.

“Everything we can recover, we should,” Johnson said.

145 billion dollars

President-elect Donald Trump, who is set to begin his second nonconsecutive term in January, has also proposed clawing back the unspent funds. “It actually sets us back as opposed to moving us forward. And (I will) rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Relief Act,” Trump told the Economic Club of New York in September.

Much of the money from various funds in the act, including direct spending on climate and energy projects — up to $145 billion — has yet to be officially paid to recipients, leaving them vulnerable to a likely Republican Congress clawback.

Similarly, up to $9 billion in clean energy rebates are unlikely to be granted before the end of the Biden administration, making them just as vulnerable.

At the beginning of this year, Political reported that “hundreds of billions” of $1.6 trillion in spending in key legislation backed by Biden had yet to be paid for, and that federal agencies were unlikely to be able to do so before the election.

Assassination probes

On the minority side, Johnson helped lead Republicans during the commission’s bipartisan preliminary investigation into the first assassination attempt against then-candidate Trump at a political rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. However, Johnson was strongly critical of the Biden Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service for slow responses to document requests.

Immediately after the July incident, Johnson’s office made public preliminary findings from its own separate investigation of the attempt.

Johnson’s committee is likely to pursue a deeper investigation into the Secret Service, an agency that many Republicans still have concerns about after a second assassination attempt against Trump in the same election cycle.

Retaking the Senate is just the first step — a new Republican leader for the House will have a big influence on how far Johnson’s proposals or investigations could go.

When longtime Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced he was stepping down from the role after nearly two decades, it sparked a race to replace him. There are currently three candidates candidates for elections to the role of their fellow Republican senators.

They include Sen. John Cornyn of Texas and GOP Whip John Thune of South Dakota, who remain the most likely candidates to replace McConnell. Florida Sen. Rick Scott is also running as a McConnell critic outside the Senate leadership and advocating on behalf of a more conservative wing of senators. However, his candidacy is seen by insiders as a long shot.