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A discussion taking a look at the incoming Trump administration and efforts to make government more efficient with John Hart.
He's the CEO of Open the Books joining us now.
Thanks for giving us your time.
You bet.
It's a pleasure to be on.
Before we go into the discussion, a little bit about Open the Books for those who aren't familiar with it.
How do you describe it to other people?
Yeah, Open the Books is a transparency organization.
We started about 13 years ago, and we came about in part through a law that I helped work on when I was in the Senate working for Senator Tom Coburn.
And there was a bill that we passed in 2006 with Barack Obama, and Coburn and Obama met in 2004.
And it's called the Federal Funding Accountability Transparency Act that put all federal spending online.
And the hope that Coburn and Obama had is that would create an ecosystem of organizations that would take that data and make use of it and make sense of it.
So Open the Books is an organization that did that.
Adam Anjievsky was a co-founder.
He was a good friend of this program.
He passed away unexpectedly.
Sorry to hear that.
I appreciate that.
And so I recently took over just three weeks ago.
So I know the issue well.
Again, I've worked on the bill that helped create open the books.
But we're a first principles organization.
I think transparency is a building block of a free society.
If you remember from science class, carbon is a building block of life.
Transparency, when you connect it to things like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, it brings those principles to life.
So what we're trying to do is really reinvigorate what we think of as a free society through transparency.
For the people watching, how easy is it to get information about what the government spends, what the government does, et cetera?
Well, that's a great question.
Well, thank you, it's become a lot easier because we forced the government to put all federal spending online.
But our organization tries to put every dime online in real time at all levels of government.
So it can be easy, but it can be very, very difficult.
A lot of localities will play hide the ball with spending and send us forms and files that are impossible to search.
So we have a very get the data team that makes sense of that information.
And on the federal level, when you start to go down the contractor subcontractor level, it gets more and more difficult.
So what we try to do is we're like the James Webb Space Telescope.
We zoom in on an area of spending and bring all those things to light and help the American people understand what government's doing with their money.
We'll talk about some of those specifics in a little bit, but to this idea of spending or at least making government efficient, what do you think of the names that have emerged at the head of this, Elon Musk, Nvive, Ramaswathy, and what they've been tasked to do?
Well, frankly, I'm ecstatic that they're doing this.
Coburn was on the Simpson Bowles Debt Commission.
That came about after the financial crisis of 2007, 2008.
There was a quest to find a grand bargain to deal with our long-term entitlement problems.
And at that time, our debt to GDP ratio was about 90% or 100%.
Now it's 120%.
We're spending more on interest on the national debt than we are on defense.
So there's a real national security threat to the spending we have.
And back 40 years ago, President Reagan put the Grace Commission together, found that one out of every three tax dollars wasn't being spent efficiently.
And Congress has not done a good job of bringing that down.
Coburn helped bring it down for two year colleagues in the Senate to 2012, 2013.
That was the first real spending cut since the end of the Korean War.
He got rid of earmarks.
But a lot of that work has been undone.
So we need to tackle that looming fiscal problem we have.
What do you think about the specific approaches that they plan for, taking a look at the minutiae, taking a look at the workforce size itself, and what ultimately ends up for the taxpayer as far as will services be impacted?
Will other things be impacted because of the shrinking of government, so to speak?
Well, I think, you know, actually services, I think, will get better.
You know, one of the key findings that we were able to pull out of GAO, we forced GAOs to do an annual report on duplication.
And one of their key statements was, if you downsize and streamline government in the right way, you improve the quality of services because you make it easier for government to even communicate with itself.
So I'm very optimistic that we could have fairly dramatic downsizing of government and improve the quality of services.
And I view this, this is not a demolition project, this is a restoration project.
I think we're in a 1989 moment in the United States, where that was the year the Berlin Wall came down.
This could be the year the bureaucratic wall comes down that separates the people from the government.
And we've been on a 100-year path of increasing spending since Woodrow Wilson, really.
So this could be the end of an era and the move back to restoring our founders' vision of limited government.
You said this is not a demolition project.
And I think a lot of people have the perspective that the approach that Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramislaw might have might just do just that.
Well, I just disagree with that.
I think what we've seen is Congress has really outsourced a lot of their decision-making to what's called the administrative state.
So Republicans tend to describe it as the deep state.
And I think that's the deep state is real.
There are people within the federal agencies that will obstruct and don't want to support the president's agenda, even though that's their job is to do that.
But we also have what I call the default state.
We've just been doing things a certain way for decades.
And it's going to be very helpful to have people on the outside who have, you know, Elon Musk is a historically significant figure.
So to have him apply his expertise, you know, I wish we would have had that when I was working in the Senate with Coburn.
That would have been very helpful to have his outside counsel supporting the work we were doing.
So I think it's going to be a very positive trend.
Yeah, of course there's going to be people that are upset.
And that's why we're having, that's why our organization is so important because our job is to bring the spending to light and let the public have a free and open fight about what is in their interest.
The gentleman put out an op-ed this week about what they hope to do and it reads in part like this.
We are assisting the Trump transition team to identify and hire a lean team of small government crusaders, including some of the sharpest technical and legal minds.
The team will work with the new administration, with the White House Office of Management and Budget.
The two will advise us.
Doge, as it's known, is every step to pursue three major kinds of reform, regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions, and cost savings.
We will focus particularly on the driving change to executive action based on existing legislation rather than passing new laws.
Those three approaches, regulatory, administrative, and cost savings.
Right.
You look a lot into that world.
What are they facing as they hope to do that?
Yeah, I think if you look at just the duplication of the federal government, there are different buckets you can find significant savings pretty quickly.
One is duplication, that's about $100 billion.
And then improper payments and fraud in Medicare, Medicaid, that's about $100 billion.
And then there's a lot of just questionable, wasteful, silly spending.
You know, the Bridges to Nowhere, Shrimp on a Treadmill, Cats, or drag shows in Ecuador.
And you can get another significant block of savings in that category.
So their focus right now, and again, I would caution everything we're seeing.
They've been very forthright and public about what they want to do, but President Trump hasn't even taken office yet.
And so I think Doge is going to be a work in progress.
We don't fully know the scope of what they're going to do other than their charge is to come out with a report in 2026.
But you also have to keep in mind that we already have a standing debt commission in this country.
It's called the United States Congress.
And Congress is going to get to have a say on what they want to do.
So my feeling is Musk and Vivek are going to put pressure on Congress to act.
And it's in Congress's interest to act now and not wait on their report.
And that's what the founders intended, is that there would be a competition, a separation of powers to have a discussion of what is the best optimal size and scope of government.
This is John Hart joining us.
Open the books.
He serves as their CEO.
And if you want to ask him questions about this idea of efficiency and the work of their organization, 202748-8000 for Democrats, 202748-8001 for Republicans.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
Federal workers, if you want to give your thoughts too, 202-748-8003 is how you do that.
You can always text us at that same number, 202-748-8003.
You talked a little bit about your work with Senator Coburn on this from what your experience was.
What challenges might these two face?
I know it's a different kind of situation, but clearly you probably have lessons learned from these efforts.
What challenges do you think they face?
Well, I think every dollar in the federal government is protected by a special interest or a constituency.
So every dollar of savings is going to be a fight for them.
And I describe, you know, serving in the arena is a little bit like swimming in the ocean.
Like you can study swimming in the ocean, you can read about it, but until you're there and do it, you don't quite understand the currents.
And there's really two currents at work here.
There's the surface level current, and then there's the undertow and the undercurrent.
So there are two trends on the surface and below that are going to really help Elon and Vivek.
One is that we've had a political realignment in this country.
So the GOP is now the working class party.
So one of the hurdles that we faced was The left would argue that anything we would do to reduce spending would be harmful to low-income Americans, to working-class people.
So now the base for the working class is with the GOP.
So the people advocating for those savings are now on that side.
So that's going to be a very helpful dynamic.
And then, secondly, I think we've seen over the past, really in the digital age, that we're living through the biggest disruption and change in information technology since the printing press.
So power is moving away from centralized institutions, whether it's the media, whether it's political parties, and this administrative state, this fourth branch of government, power is going to be flowing away from that.
So those are two big trends that I think bode well for the chances of Does to do, to make significant savings.
We have some calls lined up for you.
Let's hear from Iris.
Iris is on our independent line in Michigan for John Hart of Open the Books.
Iris, good morning.
Go ahead.
Good morning, Pedro.
Good morning, America.
Sarah, is there anything in the writings and the laws of this country that allow one man to come to office and remake the way America works by establishing sanctuary cities for people who are coming here and just move all over the place?
I cannot believe what I saw when I first saw that list of sanctuary cities.
It was like the whole country was a sanctuary.
Is that legal?
Is that what they call constitutional?
Could you please tell us?
Thank you.
I'd appreciate it.
Thank you.
Well, yeah, I don't think the facility of sanctuary cities, I mean, one of the key priorities of the administration is going to be getting our immigration system under control.
And they're going to prioritize removing people who have illegal immigrants who have broken the law.
And there's a big question of, well, how much deportation can they do effectively in a short period of time?
So I think that's going to be the priority, and that's how they're going to go after these immigrants and sanctuary cities.
Republican line, Michael in Florida, Clearwater Beach.
Hi.
Yes, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
Real quick, my call is about the unionization of government employees, which I guess makes it harder to get some of these people out of these jobs.
But it also flies in the face of the taxpayer who's paying for these employees.
Washington, D.C. voted about 90-some-odd percent Democrat.
It happens in a lot of big cities.
So the unions and the government become in bed together.
And the taxpayer is paying the bills.
We vote.
And they're more or less leaning in a fashion that helps the Democrats.
And it's kind of a payoff.
It's a pay-for-play scheme.
I'd like to see these unions eliminated.
What's your opinion on how that affects this particular problem we're looking at with the budget?
Well, yeah, there's going to be a very significant debate on something called Schedule F, which is a new classification of federal employees that the Trump administration wants to put in.
And the designation is any bureaucrat that has a policymaking role should be subject to firing from the administration.
So if they go through with that, they could eliminate a significant part of the workforce.
And we've done deep dives on all these, on all the agencies.
So if you think about EPA, for example, there are 14,000 staff at the EPA.
And we found that since 2018, we spent $100 million on 223 public affairs officers.
And why is that?
I mean, that seems like a large number.
But in Coburn's office, we had two PR staffers, me and one other assistant.
And so I think the caller is getting at is that there are these protections to keep these people in place that are probably inappropriate, and the administration is absolutely going to go after that.
You used the word bureaucrat.
Does everybody fall under that category when it comes to a federal employee working day in and day out for the government?
Well, no, I think, you know, that's a great question.
What's happened with the administrative state is Congress has not wanted to take responsibility for decision-making authority.
And so when they outsource that, it's a heads-eye-win, tails-you-lose game, where if the quote, bureaucrats make a decision they like, the members of Congress takes credit for it.
If they make a decision they don't like, they blame the bureaucrats.
So I think what Trump is trying to do is this is not an executive power grab.
I think the biggest problem in Washington is not executive overreach.
It's legislative underreach.
And by downsizing the administrative state, the president is actually moving power out of the executive branch and putting the onus back on Congress to own these decisions and own this responsibility.
And one of the cases that Vivekan and Elon have highlighted is EPA versus West Virginia.
So back when that was decided, some members of Congress blasted the Supreme Court on the Democratic side and said that this is a death sentence for the planet because it took away power from the EPA to regulate power plants.
And never before has one branch of government been more mad at another for giving their power back.
So the founders want this jealousy and this rivalry between the branches.
And that's what I think this Doge project is going to help restore.
I guess it's a scenario, but do you see an instance, is this going to be more of a workforce reduction in order to save, or do you see elimination of whole departments?
And do you think that's a good idea?
I think it's going to be both.
I think the sequencing that I think they have laid out is they're going to start with executive orders.
And so the purpose of this op-ed that they wrote is to prepare the, is to lay the groundwork for those executive orders.
They're just saying they have legal action.
To say they have legal action, and they can take fairly dramatic steps, I think, to do that.
And that would be upheld.
And then Congress is going to look at that and think, okay, well, if we're going to pass appropriations bills, maybe we shouldn't provide the same level of funding if we're not going to have the same size of workforce.
So there's going to be a back and forth debate.
And then hopefully in 18 months, they'll come out with a reorganization plan of some kind.
And that will have to go through Congress to restructure federal agencies.
And I will ask you about what you think Congress is going to do with that once they get it.
But let's hear from Eva.
Eva, Mississippi, calling online for Democrats, also a federal worker.
Eva, thanks for calling.
Go ahead.
I want to know why are they downsizing the federal jobs?
Because you've got a lot of veterans.
That's what they do when they get out the military.
And Donald Trump, they're talking about insurance and everything for us.
Which we had insurance, now we have a union.
They broke that.
It's nothing but privatizing jobs and giving it to someone else and taking all the rights away from the federal workers.
And I heard him saying that we are elite.
It's not elite.
It's getting paid.
We pay him to go out and play golf every day.
He brought his whole family in, but he paid his family, but we want to downsize.
How can you downside the government when you're getting more people in the United States?
You can't downsize anything.
And Eva, Eva, if I may ask, what do you do for the federal government?
Our works of veteran affairs.
Okay.
Eva, thanks for giving your perspective.
Well, I think she mentioned Veterans Affairs, but the biggest agency is Department of Defense.
And the DOD has not been able to pass an audit for seven years.
So there is need to downsize everywhere.
But they're going to do this in a very thoughtful, compassionate way.
Their goal is to not just drive people out of their jobs.
Their goal is to help transition people into different kinds of employment.
But history is full of technology changing how economies work.
And we're in the AI era now.
So back in the Industrial Revolution gave people more muscle power.
The AI revolution is going to give us more mental power.
So what that means is we're going to have to downsize and redirect and reorganize.
A lot of the jobs that used to be done by people are going to be done both by people and AI.
And that's not going to destroy the total number of jobs.
It's going to create a whole new sector of jobs that I think will give that caller more opportunity and more people like her, more opportunities that we have today.
You said the Pentagon, there was just a story out earlier saying the seventh in a row, the Pentagon says that it's failed, but saying progress is made.
What has opened the books done with looking at the Pentagon?
Yeah, we've spent years looking at the Pentagon.
One of the things that is interesting about defense spending is it's called, we call the DOD the Department of Everything.
So the Pentagon doesn't just do defense, it does a lot of other things, education.
They've invested in DEI within the Pentagon that has nothing to do with warfighting capabilities.
And even apart from the Pentagon, we found that there are more federal agencies with law enforcement and weapons authority than there are U.S. Marines.
So we've given federal agencies the authority to carry firearms, and we've spent $35 million at the IRS, for example, on military-style equipment since 2006.
So there's a lot of waste in the Pentagon.
There's a lot of waste in other agencies.
This is John Hart joining us, by the way, with the organization Open the Books.
He serves as their CEO.
Let's go next to Peter.
Peter in New York, Democrats line, good morning.
You're next up.
Yeah, Mr. Hart, thank you for the work that you do.
There was a very good article in the Wall Street Journal dated September 12, 2024, and it's titled Welfare is What's Eating the Budget.
Means tested programs, not Medicare and Social Security, are behind today's massive debt.
There's well over 100 welfare programs in the federal government and local government that cost $1.6 trillion in 2023.
And they keep talking about Social Security and Medicare, but in 2023, Social Security from the fund paid out 88.9% of the benefits.
So these are benefits that we were taxed, and that money was put aside.
It's not just coming out of the, I understand it's coming out of the general funds, but this is funds that were already appropriated for this.
And 49.7% of Medicare was already funded by the American people.
Caller, if I may, what's the question for our guest, if I may?
The question is, is that I keep hearing from commentators, and also one other thing, before you cut me off, that it's Social Security and Medicare that are really the big problem.
It's not.
It's this other funding.
But I never hear anybody talking about a balanced budget amendment that needs to be passed and only extra spending to be done when it's absolutely necessary that we need to have a balanced budget.
Okay, thank you.
And I want to follow up quickly because the American prospect talking about this Doge effort said this in their recent piece online saying the only possible way to achieve must-cost-cutting goals would be to take a wrecking ball to entitlement programs, particularly Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, saying that the budget for federal discretionary spending, which is determined annually, is $1.6 trillion, which the caller mentioned, about 26% of spending.
And they say even if that figure were zeroed out, fully abolishing, for instance, the FDA, the EPA, the USDA, and NASA and their others, Musmo would be well short of his goal.
So, sort of, is it if they take a look at everything but entitlements, will they do the job?
It's going to be very difficult to get to $2 trillion without rethinking how do we protect, I would describe it, how do we protect the safety net?
And the challenge with Social Security and Medicare is that we're promising people $2 in benefits for a dollar of taxes.
And I'm not in favor of raising taxes.
So you have to think, is there a way to restructure these programs to protect them for low, particularly lower and middle-income Americans?
And that's the debate that the Simpson Bulls Commission had.
And there was a senator who made a statement that the only way to save Medicare as we know it is to change Medicare as we know it.
And that wasn't a Republican, it was Joe Lieberman, who was Al Gore's running mate.
So there is an understanding that if we really want to protect these programs for future generations, and particularly low-income Americans, they are going to have to think about should we have something like means testing, where some of the benefit is redirected and you really protect the people that need the program the most.
And the debate on entitlements always comes down to, is it going to be a universal entitlement or is it going to be a welfare program?
And I think the future is going to be a hybrid of both of those.
And the argument in favor of entitlements is that a program for poor people is a, quote, poor program.
I don't think that's true.
I think you can shift and have means testing.
And there are higher income Americans who understand that there is an interest in society to not have people destitute.
And I think the Doge Commission is going to bring those issues to the surface whether they want it to or not.
And I think the president has said he's not going to, quote, go after Medicare and Social Security.
But the truth is, is if we don't look at how to make them sustainable, we're going to have massive benefit cuts in the future.
These are always been known as third rails, right?
Do you think there's their mentality changing when it comes to the sanctity or these kind of things and willing to take on these issues?
I think there is a potential for a change.
And the reason is back to that point I made earlier is that these two trends and dynamics is that the GOP is now the party of the working class.
So when you have the trust and support of the base and working class Americans, you can speak to them in a way with credibility that you couldn't if the shoe was on the other foot, which was the case during the Simpson Bulls era and during the Grace Commission.
So I do think there's a new political dynamic, and it remains to be seen whether they're going to take advantage of that and come up with creative ways at attacking these vexing problems.
Because the caller is right, is that there's when you pay into a system, you have the right to expect that money back.
But we need to tell future generations the truth that we live in a world of finite resources and we're putting our national security at risk and the security of lower and middle income Americans by not having a way to fund these programs without raising taxes massively.
Let's hear from Melvin.
Melvin joins us from Florida, Democrats line.
Good morning.
Yes, good morning.
There you go.
You know, I was sitting here listening.
First of all, the first thing he brought up was Ronald Reagan, what he did when chasing his budget policy.
I guess he must have forgotten that Ronald Reagan tripled the debt and the deficit when he got into office and left the country in a recession.
Then we come along with his work, trying to work with Trump in his last administration.
He spent twice as much as any other president in one term, $8 trillion.
So I really don't understand what he's talking about with respect to how he's going to follow these particular individuals and trying to monitor the budget and see what they're spending or cut down on the money that the federal government is spending.
A lot of people will find out.
When you start cutting them federal people, things are going to get a lot different and a lot harder for them to get the services that they really need.
Thank you.
That's Melbourne there in Florida.
Well, I'd say both parties are guilty of overspending.
I mean, there's the tax and spend party, and then there's a tax cut and spend party.
And Democrats and Republicans are both guilty of driving up the deficit for sure.
I think in Reagan's defense, he did drive inflation way down during his term.
But it's true that Democrats and Republicans have, together, increased spending.
And we passed the bipartisan transparency law with Barack Obama.
But again, when I look at this as a 100-year trend, this is an opportunity to reverse something that is bankrupting the country.
And it's going to produce incredible amounts of economic growth.
That's one.
So we tend to focus on these buckets as these fixed items, but the federal pie is not fixed.
The federal pie can grow based on pro-growth economic policy.
So if you have deregulation, if you shift more funds to the private sector, Cobram believed that every dollar saved in Washington was a dream realized somewhere in America.
And that politicians want to grow federal agencies, but we're trying to grow your agency and your ability to pursue happiness on your terms with your own resources.
If that's the mentality that prevails, we're going to have economic growth that is going to far exceed any of the cost of cuts to serve.
The caller brings that up.
It's a cause and effect, at least in his perception.
If you cut things, ultimately things will be affected on the services.
And how hard is it to change that perception?
Well, I think people change perception based on lived reality.
And Democrats were so upset after the election because, oh, they said the economy is doing well, there's inflation, but it's global.
But people didn't feel like they were doing well.
And if you look at the trends over the past 40, 50 years, the size of government has gone up about quadrupled in terms of per capita spending.
And by quite a few measures, real purchasing power has either increased a little bit or flatlined.
So people feel like they're not able to afford basic things of life, you know, groceries, gas.
And then when they see federal agencies quadrupling in size, they scratch their heads and think, well, why are we doing it this way?
Why do we have 14,000 employees at EPA and 223 public affairs officers?
It doesn't make sense.
It doesn't compete with them.
Nelson.
Nelson is in Florida as well.
Republican line, you're on with our guest, John Hart.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
Can you hear me okay?
Yep, you're coming in fine.
Go ahead.
Mr. Hart, as you know, the reason why lawfare was launched against Donald Trump was because he shook the apple tree of the status quo when some of the apples actually fell.
Thus they panicked, and they've been trying to destroy him ever since.
I believe that that's going to continue.
The fact that they are attacking numerous of his picks for the cabinet is indicative of that.
With that in mind, do you believe that the Trump administration will actually be successful in making some of these changes and eliminating such departments like the Department of Education, which has done a wonderful job of destroying our educational system along with the teachers' union?
And I'd be curious to hear what you think as to the possibility that the national debt will actually begin to be controlled and this deficits that we are generating for future generations will begin to subsist and perhaps even not just slow down, but even be reversed.
Thank you, Colin.
Thank you.
Yeah, I'm optimistic because this is a unique period of time in history when it's not since Gregor Cleveland has a president lost or won and lost and come back into office.
And typically, the most significant accomplishments happen in the first year of an administration, even if you have eight years in office.
So this is Trump's second first term in a way.
And if he makes this his top priority, this can be his defining legacy.
And it can be something that historians will remember for decades.
If he changes focus, it's going to be very difficult to do a lot.
And Congress is, again, going to have a lot to say about this as well.
But right now, he needs to build on this momentum, in my opinion, and to move as quickly as possible.
And Congress, it's in their interest as well to move quickly and to not wait until 2026.
But again, assert their authority as the standing deficit commission and take action now in this year that is going to support the findings that Musk and Vivek officially report on in 2026.
Republican Congress, Republican House, Republican Senate, to what degree do you think there will be a unified acceptance of what these recommendations will be?
I know it's hard to show, but it's the willingness at least to make these changes.
Yeah, I think what they'll end up doing is something called budget reconciliation, which not to get too far in the weeds on process, but it enables Congress, when you're dealing with the size and scope of overall spending, and that allows them to pass things on a 51-vote threshold in the Senate.
So Elon and Vivek are going to discover that the Senate includes 100 CEOs.
So they're outside CEO experts, which is wonderful.
But every senator is going to have their own perspective.
And typically it takes 60 votes to get anything done in the Senate, but you can do a lot with 51 votes.
And the House has a very narrow margin.
But again, this is the reason to move very, very quickly and to focus on things that are pro-growth, because the mandate really is to increase affordability, lower inflation.
And a lot of the deregulation work can do that very quickly.
Making energy more abundant is going to lower the price of everything.
Because typically, the party in charge doesn't do well in the midterm elections.
There's only been one election, I think, in the past 40 years, which was Bush in 2002, where the party in control gains seats in the midterm.
Typically, they lose seats.
Typically, there's an overreach, and the public corrects and punishes the party in charge.
So they should not assume that they're going to have four years to do this.
They should assume they only have two years to do this.
There was an announcement this week that Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene is going to head a subcommittee on working on Doge specifically.
What do you think about that move?
I think there are going, I hope every member of Congress puts out their $2 trillion plan.
In all seriousness, I think every member, again, is a part of this commission.
And it's an interesting point because people tend to look at Washington and think there's this really carefully orchestrated plan behind the scenes.
But the truth is Washington is not house of cards.
It tends to be house of chaos.
And people in high positions face a challenge.
They look around and ask, well, what should we do about this?
There's not a master plan.
So if Marjorie Taylor Greene has a great plan, go for it.
If another member has a great plan, we should let all those great plans compete and the American people will decide what's the best.
This is from the New York Times.
If you want to talk about her ascension to head this subcommittee, taking a look at Doge Matters, let's hear it from Tom, Tom in Pennsylvania, Democrats line for our guests.
Hello.
Hi, good morning.
Really love your show and your guests.
My question is with Pennsylvania, of all the federal tax dollars that are generated by the citizens, how much of those actually come back to the state?
My one concern is if they're going to try to push all the agencies out at a state level, won't a smaller state that has a smaller tax base get shortchanged and a larger state like Pennsylvania, New York, California get more of their money back?
Well, there is an idea to shift some of the agencies back to regions, and I think that's probably a good thing to do.
And I think it's going to put people more in touch with their government to do it that way.
But it remains to be seen whether they're going to be effective in doing that.
One of the criticisms, or one of the highlights that both Elon and Mr. Ramaswathi make is this idea of working from home.
Do you think it is as serious as they lay out as far as people showing up at their claims once a week or once a month or whatever?
Yeah, well, it's a serious problem.
Well, it's a serious problem because we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on federal agencies all over DC that are vacant.
So you can't have it both ways.
If you're going to allow work from home, you need to close down federal agencies and not put taxpayers on the hook to both subsidize people working from home while at the same time paying for their office space.
So Joni Ernst has done a lot of great work on that.
So we're going to be following that very closely as well.
I'm pulling up your website.
This is just one of the highlights there when it comes to this was for the Environmental Protection Agency.
How often do these type of reports come out and what do people get when they click on the links there?
Yeah, we do these reports sometimes once a week.
You know, we've done, we have a report coming out on misinformation where the federal government is actually spending money combating misinformation, $275 million, which raises the question, why is the government playing referee in the public square?
We just did a report on Fauci had $15 million of special security protection.
Why are we spending $15 million on Fauci?
So we do these reports very consistently, and sometimes we'll do a deep dive on an agency every month or two, but we do smaller reports very consistently, sometimes once a week.
This is from Linda.
Linda is in Utah, Independent Line.
Go ahead, you're on with our guest.
Hi.
Thank you for taking my call, and good morning.
I was interested.
I looked at your side a little bit, just learned about it today.
And I want to know how much the major contractors, Northrop Gram and L3, were receiving in government contracts, and how much is the U.S. government paying for the medical research that, again, is turned over to the pharmaceuticals.
And basically, they get to charge whatever amount they want when we pay for the research.
And how much the government's paying on the national security, the bombs, and the airplanes.
And I couldn't seem to find it.
It's not broken down by contracts, contractors.
Okay.
Yeah, it can be difficult.
That's a great question.
We'll look into that.
We've looked into that sum.
But there is a bit of a scandal on royalty payments where there's a big kickback that NIH and other agencies are getting through big pharma.
And we've done reports on that that you can find on our website.
From Rich, Rich is in Ohio.
Rich joins us on our Republican line.
Hi, Rich.
Yeah, wow.
We've got some real good competition going trying to save our big debt that we don't pass on to another generation.
It seems like there's some common sense things we could do really quick.
One is on energy, that if we pre-up our energy, we then don't have Iran getting money, Russia get money, and send terrorists into all these other countries.
Israel's paying a lot of other ones, these bad countries get a lot of money.
That could be a real problem.
Another one could be done really quick is just close the door on immigration.
Suddenly we won't have the problem will save money.
And by the way, we won't have people come in from North Korea, China, Russia, plus a whole lot of other people.
One time in our country, in order to come into our country, you had to be for our country, not figuring ways to blow up our buildings.
I'll hang up and listen to your answers.
That's Rich in Ohio.
Well, I want to talk about energy because we haven't spent a lot of time on that.
There are two axioms that I approach this question with.
One is that the best way to make something expensive is for government to make it affordable.
And then the best way to make something unsafe is for government to make it safe.
So with energy, what the Trump administration, I think, wants to do, and Chris Wright is a phenomenal pick for energy secretary.
He's going to argue that free economies are clean economies.
If we have more energy abundance, more energy dominance, that's going to help produce good economic and environmental outcomes for the public.
And when you think about the size of the administrative state, a good example is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
One of the great errors we've made in judgment in our history in the past 50 years is not building nuclear plants 50 years ago.
And had we done that, we would have had lower energy prices.
We would be exporting energy and fossil fuels.
And one of the reasons Russia invaded Ukraine is that Europe decided to not produce their own energy, but to buy it from Russia.
So that incentivized, that was one of the factors that led Putin to invade Ukraine.
So the caller is absolutely right.
There's a major global national security dynamic at play here.
And energy abundance will lower the price of everything.
As far as cutting things, though, would you cut out climate research and things associated to that?
No, here's what I would cut is the regulatory footprint.
So between, I think 2000 and 2020, there were 460 deaths associated with coal plants that would not have otherwise happened.
And then that's actually 1,000 times more people than died from Chernobyl.
So we've had the kind of progressive left saying nuclear energy is not safe.
Yet had we built nuclear plants 50 years ago, how many lives would have been saved?
And so the point is that when agencies say that one technology is not safe, it increases the cost and increases human suffering in ways that are hard to calculate.
So that's what I think we need to do, is just make energy, all of the above energy, more abundant and more affordable.
One more call, and this will be from Whitney in Washington State.
Democrats on.
Hi, thank you for taking my call.
I guess my question is about if we are removing a lot of federal employees from many different agencies, a lot that do data collection, data management, data analysis that is used by congressional members to help them inform and pass laws.
Does that all get outsourced into the private sector?
And then it seems like then there is a more like is that just going to lobbyists?
Is that just going to corporations who have the money to pay for those studies?
It seems like it becomes a very ambiguous and could-be greedy style of government where there's no public input and there's no public openness about how these things are designed and how data is managed.
Whitney in Washington State, thank you.
Well, I'd make a couple comments on that.
One, at Open the Books, you know, we've built the largest database of government spending in human history.
We call it the Spending Genome Project, and we want to make that database more robust.
So, to the caller's point, is we absolutely want to have access to clear data, and we're going to fight for that.
And she raises an important point is that when you think about cutting government, across-the-board cuts are the worst way to do it.
It's sort of like if you've ever gardened, you don't mow the flowerbed, you pull the weeds.
You have to get on your hands and knees and look down at the ground and figure out, okay, this is a weed, this is good growth, and make smart, informed decisions.
And I think Elon and Vivek are going to do that.
They're business guys.
They understand that you can't just clear-cut.
It doesn't mean they're not going to be dramatic with what they do.
There's this idea that you can't use a scalpel, or brother, you can't use a machete if you use a scalpel.
Well, the scalpel can have an awfully long blade.
And I think that's how they're going to approach this.
But to the caller's point, is you don't want to eliminate key functions, and one of those is data, is that the American public has the right to know how the government is spending their money.
And we're going to make sure that that continues.
OpentheBooks.com is the website for our guest organization.
He serves as the CEO, John Hart.
His first visit to our studio.
Hope you come back.
I bet.
Would love to.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Coming up, we're going to get another perspective from Everett Kelly.
He's the head of the American Federation of Government Employees, talking about the future of the federal workforce under plans in the Trump incoming Trump administration.
We'll have that conversation when Washington Journal continues.
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Washington Journal continues.
This is Everett Kelly.
He is the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees here to talk about the incoming Trump administration, the future of the federal workforce.
Mr. Kelly, good morning.
Good morning, Pedro.
Who do you represent?
Well, I represent about 800,000 federal and D.C. government employees.
And to what range do they do?
What kind of things are they involved in?
Well, we're virtually in almost every occupation, anywhere from scientists, doctors, nurses, DOD workers, FEMA, Department of Education, Bureau of Prisons, Border Patrol.
I mean, you name it.
Any array, in every occupation you can think of, we represent those employees.
And fair to say, you're their union, so to speak.
That's correct.
And so as the organization that you had and the people that you represent, when they hear of efforts of the incoming administration when it comes to possibly future impacts on the workforce, what goes through your mind and those you represent?
Well, of course, there's a lot of uncertainty, okay?
We know from the last administration when President-elect Trump was president, we know that we had tough times, okay?
We know that people were fired for no apparent reason.
We know that as union representatives, we wasn't able to represent the employees that we represented.
We was kicked out of our offices.
You know, a lot of things just came directly at us.
This time around, though, a whole new organization looking directly at this idea of cutting costs and cutting size of government, led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, when you heard about this effort, what went through your mind?
Well, you know, I think it's a little asinine to even think of the possibility of cutting 75% of the federal workforce.
I see it as a direct attack against veterans, of which I am a veteran myself, because of the workforce, about 642,000 of that workforce are veterans.
So when you say you're going to cut 75%, you know, that means it does a direct attack on veterans itself.
And I'm appalled by that.
When you say that every federal employee is a necessary employee.
Absolutely.
Why so?
Well, think about it.
Think about the people that we represent, okay?
We represent the people at the VA, okay?
These are the people that we provide a service to the veterans that are returning home from war, okay?
That's a necessary job.
When you think about Social Security, you know, they're the people that take care of, in my opinion, the most prized possession of this nation.
And that's our elders, making sure that they get their social security checks on time.
When you think of FEMA, okay, they're not running away from disaster.
They're running to disaster to provide a service to the American people.
When you think about the Bureau of Prisons, these guys are out there making sure that our community is safe every single day.
We sleep easy at night because criminals are behind bars.
So, and any array of these organizations of these agencies, rather, you know, we make sure that we are servicing the American people.
If the recommendations are made by the two gentlemen and the staff that they're going to use, and if cuts are made to either employee size or departments itself, what's the potential impact on those services that you talked about?
Well, I mean, it will be a drastic impact because, like I said, you know, we are the ones that's making sure that social security checks are out on time, okay?
You start cutting 75% of that, you know, it's not going to happen.
When we're making sure that veterans are taken care of, you start cutting 75% of that, you know, it's not going to happen.
But the truth of the matter, okay, it's not that they're trying to make the government more efficient.
What they're trying to do, really, in all essence, is contract out these jobs so that, you know, and when they do this, you know, then it's a matter of not the patriotism that the people that I represent display, but it's about the bottom line.
It's about making a dollar, okay?
And that's what it's all about.
You know, and, you know, I remember, and I'm a retired Department of Defense employee.
And I remember the saga when I was employed with the Department of Defense when contractors was bidding on our jobs, bidding on various portions of our jobs, right?
And the sad thing that I remember is contractors were charging the government $600 for a hammer, okay?
This is the type of thing you get into when you start contracting out jobs, you know, and things like that.
It's not a cost savings at all, okay?
But I would enjoy the opportunity to sit down with the administration to talk about how we make the government more efficient.
Okay, we're not saying that it shouldn't be.
We're saying we should sit down and have those conversations.
For instance, if you really want to talk about making the government more efficient, let's look at Medicare, okay?
Okay, I think that there's an opportunity that we can save about $60 billion there.
When you look at the RS, you know, let's look at that.
Let's have this conversation because there's about a trillion dollar savings when you start looking at those that will evade taxes just this year.
You know, so let's have those conversations and talk about how we can be more efficient.
Everett Kelly joining us, and if you want to ask him questions, it's 202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, and Independents 202-748-8002.
If you're a federal employee and you want to give your perspective on this, 202-748-8003, you can use that same number to text us.
Earlier this week, it was Vivek Ramaswamy on the Sunday shows talking about this effort.
I want to play a little bit of what he had to say about it, get your response.
Okay.
Washington, D.C., here's the dirty little secret in the federal bureaucracy today.
Most people don't even show up to work.
So if you require most of those federal bureaucrats to just say, like normal working Americans, you come to work five days a week, a lot of them won't want to do that.
And by the way, that creates a logic for many of those agencies being outside of D.C. in the first place.
So these are, again, examples.
It's a great point you just brought up.
So would you have to move?
You could move the energy department to Texas or to Pennsylvania.
You could move agriculture somewhere else.
Is that what you're thinking?
Well, look, I think that, yes, absolutely.
But I think even bigger picture than that, many of these agencies should be downsized wherever they are.
And for whatever does remain, move many of them out to be where they're more accountable to the people.
And by the way, if you have many voluntary reductions in force of the workforce in the federal government along the way, great.
That's a good side effect of those policies as well.
And so our goal is not to be cruel, by the way, to the individual federal employees.
Most of them, I do want to say this, are individually good people, and we want to be compassionate and generous in how we handle this transition.
But the real issue is there's just too many of them.
We don't need 4 million, and we shouldn't have 4 million civil servants who can't be elect, or aren't even elected or can't be removed from their positions.
Mr. Kelly, that was him from earlier this week.
What's your response?
Well, I think that, first of all, he should educate himselves on federal employees.
Because to call federal employees bureaucrats, to call federal employees deep state, you know, in my opinion, is an indictment against federal employees.
Now, as I said before, the federal employees that you're calling bureaucrats are the nurses that take care of the veterans that's wounded.
They are the social security workers.
They are the BOP employees.
They are the TSA workers that make sure that our skies are safe.
They are the meat inspectors to make sure that the food we eat is safe.
So to say you're going to cut them, you know, without first of all analyzing, you know, and see what the federal government really need, I think is misguided.
Okay.
And, you know, so I welcome the opportunity to have a sit-down to talk about how do we make the government more efficient, you know, and to think that you can take the federal employees and D.C. workers inside of D.C. and send them out into the states to work, well, guess what?
Only 15% of the federal employees work inside of D.C. They're already dispersed throughout the United States.
Okay?
So I just think that they need to educate themselves on what federal employees really do and where they are located.
We have a call lined up for you.
Let's hear from some of them.
This is Eric in West Virginia Republican line for our guest, Everett Kelly.
He's the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees.
Good morning.
Good morning.
You know, I worked around that city for 27 years.
I lived in College Park.
I know about the liberal working conditions of the federal government.
I do know if a federal worker woke up and looked out and seen it snowing, they went back to bed.
Now, my question is, all these federal employees working from home now, if they wake up and it's snowing, can they turn their computer off and go back to bed and still get paid for it?
You're asking me, you know, that's really so far away from the truth.
You know, only about 20% of the federal workforce has ever even worked remotely.
You know, the unguided truth, you know, that are being pushed out to the American public is just so untrue.
Only about 20% maybe has even worked remotely.
So many of our employees, most of them, that job won't even allow them to work remotely.
So to think that it's just not true.
What's the policy work from home policy generally in the federal government as of today?
Well, it's a negotiation between the union and the agency.
And, you know, whatever that negotiation, and it varies between agencies and whatever that negotiated agreement is, we just expect to adhere to that, right?
Is it an average of you showing up once or twice a week?
I've heard once a month.
What's the truth there?
Good.
That's far away from the truth.
And again, it varies.
It's anywhere from a lot of time people are working remotely, two days out of the Pay period, which is two weeks, okay?
Okay.
You know, the fact of the matter is of the hours that federal employees have to work on site, over 80% of that time is on site.
Of the 2,080 hours, okay, that an employee has to work, 80% of that time is right there on site.
And so to have these misnormers to go out like this, I think that is an indictment against federal employees and it shouldn't happen.
And people that's making those comments, you know, about federal employees, you know, in my opinion, should not be leaders anywhere because federal employees are being threatened.
You know, they're called names.
You know, and the idea, based on what I'm hearing, is to threaten federal employees so that they'll just quit and go home, right?
You know, that's not a leadership person to me.
Let's go to Meryl and Andrew.
Independent line, you're on with our guests.
Good morning.
Hell either.
As an independent, I just feel like I can, you know, see criticism on both your guests.
Like your first guest thought he brought up such a great point that Saatchi had a $15 million security cost, but he just ignores all the fraud going on.
Like just recently, there's a $2 billion Medicare fraud from the private industry groups, insurance carriers, defrauding the government.
And then your current guest, I think, you know, is supposed to defend federal workers, but I'm sure that he'll never say anything terrible about Biden's 2% raise for federal employees, which is below inflation.
So as an invented, I said criticisms for both your guests.
And, you know, your guest can comment now.
I'm curious what he would say to both those kinds of things.
Okay.
Andrew, thank you.
Okay.
So first of all, I criticize heavily the 2% pay increase because I do believe that there should be pay parity.
I think that the federal employees should be getting the same as military.
You know, that's my opinion.
And I have made that clear across the board.
I mean, you can check my record.
I am definitely for paying federal employees adequately because what I know is that federal employees are about 24% behind the pay gap right now.
And I'm fighting desperately to make sure that we close that gap.
Democrats line Herbert is in Upper Marlborough, Maryland for our guests.
Go ahead.
Hello.
It's good to call in.
Pedro, I have a lot of respect for you.
I wanted to say a couple things about what's going on.
One, the caller earlier was talking about snow events and things like that.
For one, if it's snowing and one has a car accident, you take more time out getting your car repaired than missing one day.
Two, another point about that.
When someone is, when it snows and we are working remotely, you are required to work.
So the days when the city might be shut down, you're required to work from home and it could be an entire week.
Whereas if you were working in the office, you might not be able to get into the office and work.
So you're required to do more work.
Another thing that I wanted to mention is that with the EPA, for example, there have been hiring freezes with the EPA over a period of years.
Not one continual hiring freeze, but several hiring freezes and things over periods of years.
And the workload that individuals in the EPA have in many offices is simply overwhelming.
We are understaffed.
There's so much work that the individuals are not able to do it.
So the fact that they need to come in and be more efficient is funny.
Okay, Herbert there in Maryland.
Okay.
I totally agree with this, brother.
Okay.
You know, the data is really on the side of those that are able to work, those few that are able to work remotely.
The data says that more work is being done.
For instance, I know that in certain agencies, that was backlogs and all those things.
The only reason why we were able to go to and experiment remote work in the first place was because of the pandemic, okay?
And the data show that we were able to produce a whole lot more work, you know, during those times than when we were at the office many times because people tend to work even beyond their duty time sometime to get the work done.
So I agree with this, brother.
There was reporting in recent days saying that the president-elects has said in the past that we reissue an order that released in the waning days of his first administration that ends merit-based hiring for a number of federal jobs that work on policy instead creating a new class of federal employees, Schedule F, that could be hired and fired like political appointees.
Can you elaborate on what that would do if that's enacted again?
Well, you know, I think you're talking about maybe 500,000 federal employees that could be affected there.
Because what this administration want is Schedule F employees that will be at-wheel employees that will be loyal not to the Constitution of the United States, but be loyal to whomever the president is.
And, you know, that do away with merit-based, that do away with expertise.
You know, you have a person, and you can probably see some of this now.
You have a person that's running these organizations or in charge of certain agencies that's just based solely on friendship, okay?
And not necessarily one that has the expertise to operate.
And so you're going to have more of, you know, cronyism, if you ask me.
And that's why we are very concerned about that.
Because to replace federal employees, and if I can say this, I call, you know, what is the Schedule F is for flunkies, fans, and, you know, things like that, right?
But that's exactly what we're going to have.
And we shouldn't have, the government should never be based on, you know, whether or not I'm loyal to you as an individual.
But it should be based on whether or not I have the expertise to do the job that I'm hired to do.
That's why I feel about Schedule F.
This is Everett College joining us.
He's the head of the American Federation of Government Employees.
Let's hear from Clayton.
Clayton joins us from New Jersey.
Republican line, you're next up.
Hi.
Yeah, how you doing?
I just want to say, you know, good luck with your job, buddy.
And the thing is with Elon Musk and that other businessman that's going to cut, when they had a business and say they had 5,000 employees, they didn't have 30,000 employees.
They had 5,000 employees.
So my mother told me a long time ago to save your money.
And the reason is in Virginia, foreclosure time, baby.
Okay, that's Clayton in New Jersey.
Can a private mentality or private industry mentality work in the federal government when it comes to this idea of cutting?
I don't think that that will come together.
I really don't.
Because number one, you know, these individuals have never worked in the federal system.
They don't even understand, in my opinion, how the federal government works.
And they're not reaching out to talk to anybody about it to figure it out.
So I don't think it will.
Give me an example.
What's the difference?
If I'm a private employee, why would it be different being in the federal system?
And a private employee, I'm going to just use this.
You know, the government is the agency that sets the standards as to how you should work with your employees, right?
They're the ones that set the standard.
They say, look, you know, you should treat your employee with fairness, with dignity, and respect.
And they negotiate with the local unions about how to do that, right?
In the private industry, sometimes they just don't do that, right?
There is a cut, and they can say, okay, you go, you go, you go.
But in the government, you know, there is a system that we go by to determine, and it might be seniority and maybe veteran preference.
It may be a lot of other things that has to be accounted for before you riff those employees.
And that's why I think the government system works a whole lot better because it's not about firing my friends, right?
It's about the standards.
Mr. Kelly, have you ever heard someone tell you that if I'm a federal employee, I can never get fired.
I'll have a job for life.
Thank you, Federal Employee.
You know better than that.
You've heard that, though.
You know, I've heard that stated, not by federal employees, but I've heard that stated.
And the fact of the matter is, you know, that's so far away from the truth.
You know, we are not here to support bad employees.
Okay.
We're here to make sure that rules and regulations are adhered to.
Give me, go forward with that.
Tell me more.
Well, okay, for one, an employee may be late for work.
Okay.
Supervisors say you're fired.
Okay.
All right.
We may investigate and find out that the reason the person is late for work is because they have a medical condition.
And the doctor has said that there may be days when they're not able to get up and come to work.
And we also find out in many instances that they called in and the supervisor said, no, you've got to be here and you got to be here 15 minutes.
Okay.
That's not reasonable.
Let's go to Christy.
Christy is on with our guest.
She's in Georgia, Democrats line.
Hello, Christy.
Hey, yes.
Gosh, I am a federal employee.
I work for the FAA.
I am not a controller.
There's so much I want to say, but you guys don't have time.
I'm ex-military.
I did Air Force and then I went to work for the FAA as an electronics technician back in 1990.
And what I can tell you is what I have seen over my 38 years with the agency.
It seems like when I first came in, things were more efficient.
And that being because everything was inherently governmental.
Our parts that we received, we got those from Oklahoma City.
They were repaired out there.
Went long.
They were outsourced to a vendor to have those repaired.
And the price of parts went sky high for us to repair our systems, our navigation systems.
And what I have seen over my time was I can tell you where the inefficiency has been.
They cut some of the workers, that being technicians, I think even some of the controllers at some point and other occupations within the agency.
But they had more layers of management.
So you tell yourself, well, what does that do?
Well, I'll tell you what that does.
Nobody makes a decision.
I mean, nobody.
I mean, you know, I go to my boss and, you know, I need something approved.
And he can't do it.
He's got to ask so-and-so.
And then they've got to ask their management.
And it's the most inefficient way of doing business that I have ever seen.
Okay.
We have a union.
We have a union.
Christy there in Georgia.
Thank you for the perspective, Mr. Kelly.
You know, I do agree with the sister there.
You know, there was a point when, you know, that was work that was considered inherent governmental work.
And we began to contract out some of those jobs and those positions and things like that.
And that goes back to what I was saying earlier.
You know, I have nightmares about the fact that, you know, private contractors, some private contractors, they bid on jobs for the government, right?
And they low-bid, okay?
They low-bid those jobs.
And then when it's time to renew that contract a year later, guess what?
It's three or four times the size it was when they bidded on those jobs.
And, you know, that's not efficient, okay?
Because we know that the private contractor, especially when you start looking at service contracts, you know, we spend about $750 billion in those contracts to contractors and only about $200 billion for federal employees.
Okay.
So to make the statement that, you know, contractors should be doing this work, it's not efficient for the government.
You know, when you start bringing those jobs back inside of the government, then you see some efficiency and you'll see some cost savings.
So you're saying if you want efficiency, focus on federal contracts?
Absolutely.
Federal jobs.
Federal jobs.
Federal contractors, especially the service contracts, we spend about $750 billion versus $200 billion for federal employees.
The Congressional Budget Office in April of this year saying 2.3 million workers are in jobs that represent 650 occupations, more than 100 agencies.
And to your point, in FY 2022, $271 billion spent on compensation when it comes to those employees.
Yes.
How are they compensating compared to the private sector?
Again, you know, we are about, the pay gap is about 24%.
Private contractors get paid 24% more than federal employees.
Okay.
And as I was saying earlier, we're trying our best to close that gap.
We are constantly encouraging the administration, regardless of which administration it is, that we need to close this gap.
Jerry is in Long Beach, Washington, Republican Line.
Good morning.
You're next up.
Yes, good morning.
First, I want to make a statement, and then I've got a couple of questions.
I worked at Human Resources for over 40 years.
I write size downsize, straightened out a couple of different companies.
And one of the things I think the government needs to do is it's not just about laying out employees.
It's about taking the processes, restructuring them so they're more efficient.
I mean, that's a given.
A lot of the stuff that you're saying is just red herring stuff, you know, these numbers you throw out.
But I have two questions for you, and I'm going to hold on to hear what you have to say.
Number one is, what's your total turnover rate in the federal government?
And we want to know of that turnover rate, what is percent of retirees versus what are percent of people that are terminated for personas?
Thank you.
Okay, now, first of all, I wouldn't know the turnover rates for the federal government.
That's something that an HR specialist probably wouldn't know more so than me.
So I'm sorry I can't answer your question.
From Shelly.
Shelly is a federal worker in Virginia, Springfield, on our line for federal workers.
Hello.
Yeah, hi.
Good to be on today.
I'm just like the caller a while back from Upper Marlboro, Maryland.
I've worked in the federal government for more than 30 years.
And the idea that we don't work when it snows is ridiculous.
I mean, since we have telework agreements in place, if it snows and you can get on your computer, you work, right?
That's just what it is.
So that sort of like myth has long been, you know, ended.
The other thing, too, is depending on what you do in the government.
For instance, my job, my job involves sitting at a computer all day long.
And it actually does not matter if I'm sitting at a computer in a particular office building or if I'm sitting at a particular computer in my home.
You know, I have my government laptop.
And when they went to full-time remote working due to the pandemic, you know, we all just buckled up and got down and figured it out, right?
So, you know, I just get a little discouraged when I get these same calls, you know, when I'm listening to C-SPAN of people disparaging government workers and how we don't do anything.
I mean, I work all times, all days, you know, I work at night.
Even when I've had to go home due to a family emergency, I've had my computer with me and I've worked.
So, you know, the people I've worked with throughout the last several decades in my organization are some of the best and brightest people I've ever met.
And I have nothing but praise for these people.
You know, there's no people sitting there, you know, lollygagging on the job or drinking on the job or not getting things done.
So we're all trying to do our jobs.
Thank you, Shelly.
You know, and I agree with this, sister.
You know, I am proud of the workforce that I represent.
I know there is a lot of patriotism.
I know that they're interested in getting the job done.
And do people make mistakes sometimes?
Certainly they do.
There was a question asked earlier about employees being lazy and those type of thing.
And we represent bad employees.
That's just not true.
You know, as a pastor, you know, for so many years, I pastor for 31 and a half years.
And I believe that people are subject to make mistakes, okay?
And because of our contracts, you know, then we're able to help those employees that might need some help.
I remember vividly one instance where there was an employee, had just been a major mess up, if you will, in certain times through his career, okay?
So the agency proposed to fire him, okay?
And I put on a pastor's hat at that point, right?
And I began to talk to the individual.
And I found out that he has some issues, right?
I found out that he really needed some help.
And I began to minister to him and asked the agency to give him one more chance.
And they did.
And guess what?
That individual became the best supervisor the agency had ever had.
You know, so sometimes people just need an opportunity for someone to listen to them, right, and give them another chance.
That's why I'm proud of the people that I represent.
Sometimes they just need somebody that will take a chance and give them an opportunity.
To what extent have you reached out to the incoming Trump administration to talk about these concerns?
Well, we are reaching out and we welcome the opportunity to have those conversations.
Now, this is the thing.
You know, AFG has been around for 90 years and we've worked with every president, whether you're Democrat, Republican, whatever, it doesn't matter.
We want to have those conversations.
We're reaching out and we welcome the opportunity.
Then let me ask you this.
When he was president before, what was it like working with him on these issues?
Well, we didn't get a lot of response before.
You know, I'm hoping that the president have learned, you know, that, you know, we all need to work together, okay?
That we need to collaborate, right?
If we're going to really figure out how to really move the federal system in the direction that it needs to go, I feel like this.
Only way that you can figure that out is talk to the people that's really doing it, okay?
And that is the federal workforce.
So we welcome the opportunity to do that.
How much have you heard from those you represent since the election concerning these concerns about the future of the workforce and their jobs ultimately?
We're hearing quite a bit from my workforce, right?
Because like I said, it's a lot of uncertainty.
They know what they faced before, right?
So, you know, there is that uncertainty.
But one thing I know is we learned a lot as well.
And AFGE is prepared to deal with whatever come up, you know, and we will deal with it, you know, as it come up.
Is there a legal recourse for you if these things come into place?
Certainly is.
You know, and we have attorneys on staff.
They are prepared.
I'm proud of the staff and attorneys that we have.
You know, they're already working to make sure that, you know, if the event come to pass, we're prepared to deal with it, the logistic of it, the legality of it.
And, you know, we're ready to litigate if we have to.
Here is Paul.
He's in Pennsylvania, Independent Line.
Hello.
Hi, Your Honor.
Go ahead.
Yes, thank you very much.
Listen, Edward Kelly here failed to mention a couple of things.
I've been a recipient of it, but just briefly, he didn't say there are at least 25, if not more, young people under the age between 18 and 26 or something like that that go into the VA after they've served in the carnage of war in Iraq and Afghanistan and wherever.
But they come home and they go to the VA for help.
And they actually, now this isn't 100%, but it's pretty prevalent, that they're actually either dismissed or not listened to or given the wrong treatment and are not being helped.
So they even quit and they go out and take a 9mm or a 38 or whatever they can get and blow their brains out.
Now for us elderly guys like me, I'm 86.
And what happens to us when we go in, they practically laugh at us or just make fun of it and they don't listen to us.
And when we do get diagnosed, most of the time it's not diagnosed.
Now this has happened prevalently since Biden got into office.
When Trump was in office, he was straightening some of this out.
This is my opinion.
So Paul, thank you for the perspective.
Let me ask you, what do you want to ask our guests, though?
Well, see, you're wanting to cut me off there, but that's fine.
I want to know from him why he don't put those statistics out that thousands of us elderly guys are dying because of this same kind of routine.
Now this doesn't happen 100%, but it's happening very prevalently.
Now thank you.
Thank you, Paul.
Thank you.
Okay, let me say this.
You know, I'm a veteran myself, and I sympathize with veterans, what they go through.
But what I will say is this.
You know, most of what he's describing is due to the fact that some of the services to veterans are being contracted out.
The ones that's evaluating the veterans, that's contract out to private doctors.
That's why you see some of this, right?
That's why I think that we need to bring those contracts back in-house so that you have people that of like mind that have gone through, because 30% of the VA workers are veterans themselves, and they care.
And that's the reason why I think that to contract out these jobs doesn't make sense at all, right?
It costs more money.
The wait lines are longer, and the evaluations are not thorough.
But in the VA, it's totally different.
So I agree that some of these stats are true, but I don't think that the caller understands that this is due to the fact that private contractors are making these evaluations.
From Bobby, Bobby in West Virginia, Democrats line.
Good morning.
Bobby in West Virginia.
Good morning.
Can you hear me?
Yep, you're on.
Go ahead.
Okay.
I'm a Social Security recipient.
I'm a retired United Mine Workers recipient.
I depend on my pensions.
I depend on my Social Security check.
And my question to Mr. Kelly is prior administration, well, George, Bush administration, Georgia W, they wanted to put Social Security in the stock market.
And that would have been a disaster from my end.
And my question to you, sounds like this present, not the present, but this, well, the administration coming in, the Trump administration, is trying to downsize in every direction that they can.
And they're wanting, sound like to privatize, Mr. Kelly, a lot of the government jobs and lay off a lot of people and everything.
And I heard you say a few moments ago that when you're contracting these jobs out and privatizing them out, that the money is excessively more than what you guys are normally getting right now, even though you're seeking raises, which is understandable cost of living.
And we all face that factor.
But what can you do to assure us guys out here?
I know you're limited in your position and everything, to not worry so much about having cuts and losing our Medicare and our Social Security checks.
Thank you, Bobby.
Thank you.
Before you answer, he talked about privatization.
Do you think that's going to be a tool that the new administration uses to make these to streamline, as it would?
I think they would do that, but they're doing it in the blind, okay?
Because I think that what this Social Security need is proper funding.
I think that there's been deliberate over the past years.
He talked about back in the Bush years, they have deliberately underfunded these entities so that it could make the case of privatization.
They have understaffed these agencies so they can make the case.
I think that what we need to do, not just as AFGE, but as the American public, we need to begin to call Congress and the Senate and say, look, we need you to adequately fund the Social Security because it's not right for us, including myself, to work all of these years and then have the fear of not even having a pension at the end of my career.
That's not right.
And I encourage every citizen of the United States of America to call Congress and call the Senate and say you need to adequately fund this agency.
That's the problem.
When it comes to possible future changes to the workforce, what the administration have you talked to members of Congress specifically about those concerns?
We are talking about those concerns.
Yes.
And what responses are you getting generally?
Well, it depends on who the person might be, who the congressman might be.
There are some that's really eager to try to help, and there are some, you know, that's kind of nonchalant.
But we can't give up the fight.
We've got to continue to keep this before Congress, you know, that this is what we need.
But it helps when the entire nation begins to sing the same song.
From Georgia, this is John joining us next in Georgia, Republican line.
Yes, good morning.
I believe in the beginning you said that this was a matter of, I think you said, outsourcing and saving a dollar.
Well, that's correct.
We're trying to save the country money.
But private companies outsource things because it's more profitable for them.
It's more efficient for them.
If the company you outsource something to doesn't do the proper job, you can fire them and get someone else, another company, to do the job.
You can't do that with federal employees.
Why do you think federal employees should not be subject to the same things that a person working for a private company is subject to when that company needs to get itself fiscally responsible?
When a company needs to change their ways and do things to make them more profitable, one of the first things they do is lay off people.
Why should federal employees not be subject to the same thing?
You also said that, hold on, you also said that in hiring, you should look for someone who has the best criteria for that job.
Well, I guess that kind of flies in the face of DEI.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you, Caller.
You know, again, you know, when you have people that just don't understand, okay, we get these kind of comments.
Now, I've never said that federal employees shouldn't be subjected to being fired or any of those.
I think that, you know, it's understood that if you have a person that's not willing to work and do their job, they should be fired, okay?
But I said that there is a process that we believe should occur.
I will stand by that.
I will stand by the fact that, you know, and I gave an example of giving people a chance, right?
When it comes to being laid off and downsizing, we all for that if that's what it calls for in the federal government as well.
You know, but that process is what we're looking for to make sure that everybody is treated with dignity, fairness, and with respect.
Every single person deserves their rights.
Okay?
The website of the American Federation of Government Employees is AFGE.org.
Everett Kelly serves as the national president of the organization.
Thanks for your time.
Thank you, Pedro.
Thanks for having me.
Okay.
We'll finish the show with open forum.
And if you want to participate, here's the numbers you can call.
202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
We'll take those calls in open forum and Washington Journal continue.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
I appreciate your time.
Talmadge Boston considers himself a full-time lawyer and a full-time historian.
His latest book is called How the Best Did It: Leadership Lessons from Our Top Presidents.
He chose the first four of eight off the face of Mount Rushmore, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.
In addition, Mr. Boston chose 24 distinct leadership traits he says were exhibited by these presidents.
The other four presidents, by the way, included in his best leadership category are FDR, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan.
71-year-old Talmage Boston lives in Dallas, Texas.
Lawyer and historian Talmage Boston with his book, How the Best Did It, Leadership Lessons for Our Top Presidents, on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
BookNotes Plus is available on the C-SPAN Now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Washington Journal continues.
This is open forum, and the phone lines are available to you.
Pick the best one that represents you.
And if you've called in the last 30 days, hold off from doing so today.
As far as events to watch for on the C-SPAN networks today, Deputy Secretary of State Kirk Campbell and other foreign policy experts will talk about the Biden administration's Indo-Pacific strategy.
It's hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
You can see this event live at 3 o'clock this afternoon on a variety of platforms.
Our main channel, C-SPAN, our free video app at C-SPAN Now, and you can always follow along on the website at c-span.org.
The Financial Times has a follow-up story taking a look at those arrest warrants that were issued by the international, The Hague.
This is the headline, Hague Court issues arrest warrant for Netanyahu over, quote, war crimes in Gaza.
In writing about this, saying that announcing the decision yesterday, the court said that there were, quote, reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and Galant bore criminal responsibility for, quote, the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.
It added that they intentionally and knowingly deprived Gaza civilians of food, water, medical supplies, fuel, and electricity.
That's the follow-up story.
The issuing of these arrest warrants prompted a response from the Israeli prime minister himself, Benjamin Yetanyahu.
Here's what he had to say about it yesterday.
It is falsely accusing me, the democratically elected prime minister of the state of Israel, and Israel's former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, of deliberately targeting civilians.
That's fine.
This one we do everything in our power to avoid civilian casualties.
We issue millions of text messages, phone calls, leaflets to the citizens of Gaza to get them out of harm's way, while the Hamas terrorists do everything in their power to keep them in harm's way, including shooting them, using them as human shields.
The court in The Hague accuses us of a deliberate policy of starvation.
This one, we've supplied Gaza with 700,000 tons of food to feed the people of Gaza.
That's 3,200 calories for every man, woman, and child in Gaza.
And these supplies are routinely looted by Hamas terrorists who deprive their people of much-needed food.
Yet, just in the last few weeks, Israel facilitated the vaccination of 97% of the people of Gaza against polio.
This doesn't prevent the court from accusing us of genocide.
What in God's name are they talking about in The Hague?
The truth is simple.
No war is more just than the war that Israel has been waging in Gaza after Hamas attacked us unprovoked, launching the worst massacre against the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
The decision to issue an arrest warrant against me, the democratically elected prime minister of the state of Israel, and our former defense minister, was made by a rogue prosecutor who's trying to extricate himself from sexual harassment charges and by biased judges who were motivated by anti-Semitic sentiments against the one and only Jewish state about those arrest warrants.
The Washington Post reports under the headline warrants could affect the travel of both men listed, saying the ICC does not have a police force, so it relies on its 124 member states to carry out arrest warrants.
Israel is not a member state and claims that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over Israelis.
The ICC said Thursday in announcing the warrants that it could, quote, exercise its jurisdiction on the basis of territorial jurisdiction of Palestine.
Netanyahu and Galan would be arrested only if they traveled to a member state that chose to enforce the arrest warrant.
In Israel, they are not at risk of arrest.
The court also does not try defendants in absentia, with a few exceptions, meaning that both men probably won't face trial unless they travel to an ICC member state, are arrested and brought before the Hague.
We'll start off this open forum with Dwayne in West Virginia Independent Line.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I have this simple statement to make.
Social Security used to be conducted to your guests used to be charged at 15 point, I think, 2 or 6%, and was taken out strictly as Social Security, which means your employer paid 7.8% and you paid 7.8.
The question I have is to the American people: when they changed it to Social Security separate from Medicare, did the corporation still have to pay the 1.6% or did they get a free tax ride of 1.6% taking away?
You should tell that to your listeners and maybe do some research on it.
Okay, John in North Carolina, you're up next.
Independent line.
Come on, how are you doing?
I'd like to say one thing.
The previous segment, I think, is an issue that we need to put into focus.
The DEI and the woke situation is having an effect on the cost cutting.
People see the minority areas where people have grown and successfully arose to success.
When they didn't want to come into the government, they went to other ways to earn their money.
And now, those jobs out there are scarce, and they see the government jobs as one of the ones that enhance the availability for children, for families, and the military.
If they put that into perspective, take the woke situation and the DEI situation and put it together, you'll find out where the issue is they want to cut stuff because of the minorities.
Thank you.
In Texas, we'll hear from Laura, Independent Line.
Hi.
Hi.
I'm a former federal employee.
I've worked for the private sector and I've worked for the government.
And I've seen this playbook that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy want to put in place.
And it is not going to save anything.
It is going to cost, it's cost-shifting, is what it is.
They're going to fire a bunch of people, not to enhance the government, but to destroy it.
These guys, in my opinion, are both malignant sociopaths.
They don't care whose life they destroy.
They don't care about the government or efficiency.
They just want bragging rights that he put a bunch of people on the chopping block without cause and cut them to enhance the policy known as starve the beast.
They want to ruin government, and they want to make people matter because the systems that are in place, which are admittedly working, just barely working, but it's not because there are too many people.
There are not enough people.
The country grows and government has to grow with it in order to stand between us and these oligarchs who do not care about the people whose lives they are about to destroy.
And if I'm a little bit angry, I've watched it.
I've watched it unfold.
It doesn't save anything.
It costs more in the long run.
That's Laura in Texas.
We'll hear from Rick in Montana, Democrats line.
Yeah, good morning.
My question regards privatizing the TSA, which is represented by the AFGE.
You know, the TSA was created as a result of private security failure leading to the 9-11 attacks.
So I want to ask, does the American public trust their security and lives to the lowest government bidder if highly trained and experienced TSA officers are eliminated by private security?
And number two, are President Trump, Republican senators, and House members, along with the Heritage Foundation, you know, preaching from their ivory tower, prepared to take responsibility for another 9-11 type incident or incidence for the failure of the lowest government bidder.
And also that guests from open the books.
Those are my comments, and thank you.
The Philadelphia Inquirer this morning has this headline, Senator Bob Casey conceding his race against Bob McCorby, a bid recount ending a Senate career after Dave McCorbic, sorry, after three terms, saying that Mr. Casey conceded to Mr. McCormick on Thursday, formally ending his reelection bid, acknowledging defeat two weeks after the Associated Press declared McCormick's victory, and after a statewide recount of the race had been triggered.
Casey had resisted conceding, citing thousands of votes but still needed to be counted entering court fights to maximize the number of ballots included.
But as final ballots were adjudicated Thursday, Casey's roughly 16,500 vote deficit was too large to overcome and so large that a recount would not affect it.
Dave McCormick sending out on his page X saying that Senator Bob Casey dedicated his career to bettering our Commonwealth.
Dina and I want to extend our sincere gratitude to Senator Casey, Trees, and their family for their decades of service, hard work, and personal sacrifice.
I'm so honored to represent every single citizen.
It goes on from there, but you can find more on Dave McCormick's XSpeed when it comes to the Pennsylvania Senate race and the conclusion there.
Let's hear from Marshall.
He's in Nashville, Tennessee, Republican line.
Hey, Pedro, how are you doing?
This is my first call since the election, of course.
And first, I want to address something that has been going on over C-SPAN.
I've heard several people because of what the news media and the Democrats are saying who have called in.
And I don't question their angst.
It's serious.
And they are terrified that Donald Trump is going to send goon squads after American citizens.
I want you to know that's completely false.
Number two, in giving Pam Bondi instead of Matt Gates, I think the government has more to be concerned about because she is sharp, she's intelligent, and she knows the law.
Now, as far as who we should go after, and these are the enemies within, I'm going to name names, but please don't cut me off, Pedro, because behind those names are distinct actions that they took.
We need to look at ethnically, well, anybody in the cabinet who was aware of Joe Biden's cognitive state for the last three years.
And we need to hold them accountable, along with the news media, for hiding that away from the American people for three years.
Okay.
Larry in Nebraska, Republican line.
Hi.
Hi.
Me?
Yep, you're on.
Okay, thank you.
Yes, there's a few things I want to talk about, but at the end, I want to make a suggestion for your Christmas program, you know, on Christmas Day, if I could.
Okay, first, I would like to talk about civility in this country.
It's very, very poor.
And I think we got to, on C-SPAN, especially, kind of temper down a lot of these callers that have hate in their heart because that's going to destroy us.
And the one thing I wanted to suggest is on Christmas, if you can ask your Democratic callers not to talk about hate and for this one day.
On Christmas, we should not talk about hate this one day.
I mean, we should not bear false witness on a special day like that.
And these Democrats got to stop bearing false witness against my neighbor.
Okay, that's Larry there in Nebraska.
Thanks for the suggestion for the Christmas program.
Speaking of which, right after this program or shortly thereof, the U.S. Capitol will be the scene of the arrival of the Capitol Christmas Tree, a yearly tradition here in Washington, D.C.
No Christmas tree there yet, obviously, but that is yet to come.
And we'll show you that when it happens right after this program or shortly thereafter.
But we'll take calls on this open forum again.
North Carolina next Democrats line.
Cara, hello.
Hey, good morning.
I was a federal employee, also a union steward member, and the Accountability Act was enacted under the Trump administration, and we believe that the VA misused that act.
It should have come in and done away with upper-level management that was abusing their position of power and just coming in and getting paid and not really doing their job.
But instead, they were firing housekeepers, electricians, lower-level people.
And it was to make that stand out.
And we don't want to see that happen again.
That's why the union is important.
We save so many jobs under that Accountability Act.
And I just saw Eric Kelly on there and just wanted to say that, you know, people can say what they want about the union, but we save veterans' jobs when the agency was abusing something that wasn't meant to hurt employees that were making under $60,000 a year.
That's something we don't want to see happen again.
Kara there in North Carolina, the New York Times headline to show you this morning that the president-elect telling the Republicans to stop a reporter shield bill that was passed unanimously by the House.
Charlie Savage writing that the president-elect on Wednesday instructed congressional Republicans to block the passage of a bipartisan federal shield bill intended to strengthen the ability of reporters to protect confidential sources, dealing a potential fatal political blow to the measure, even though the Republican-controlled House had already passed it unanimously.
The call by Mr. Trump makes it less likely that the bill, the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act or Press Act, will reach the Senate floor and be passed before the current session of Congress ends next month.
Even one senator can hold up the bill, chewing up many hours of Senate floor time that could be spent on confirming judges and passing on legislation deemed to be a higher priority.
The story goes to that it was in his first term that President Trump demanded a crackdown on leaks that eventually entailed secretly seizing the private communications of reporters, including some from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN.
More there from the New York Times.
If you want to read that, let's hear from Frank, Independent Line.
He's in Florida.
Go ahead.
Hello, Pedro.
Good morning.
Morning.
I'm directing it at Mr. Kelly, okay, the federal workers.
The federal workers are promoted by seniority, not performance.
So most of the skilled and hardest federal workers are actually underpaid.
That's a big, I'd like to hear him answer that on TV.
Number two, they also get complete child care for nothing.
Okay, their compensation is much higher than the private sector.
Why won't he allow Mr. Trump or anybody else come in to see if they could trim the workforce?
That workforce is embedded with low production.
And the only way we're going to find that out is to allow a couple of independent firms come in to see what's going on.
I wonder how many are at home that do not belong at home.
That's our problem.
It's infested too long.
Don't promote unionism when it's costing the taxpayers and the corporations money.
The corporations pay half the Social Security, and the employees do.
So people got to understand that rather than picking on the corporations, our corporations are much more efficient than our government.
Thank you, Pedro.
Nicole's next in California, Democrats line.
Hi, this is Nicole, and I have a theory.
And my theory is that I worked in mergers and acquisitions.
I studied mergers and acquisitions in college.
And I think Elon Musk is going to go in there and outsource the hell out of government.
He wants to get rid of 20% of the budget.
He and his cronies and Trump and all their friends are going to cream from the crop.
You know, like, for example, the HHS is $3 trillion.
So if they take a trillion out of there, they're going to take the top 5% for their pockets.
They're going to fire everybody and they're going to gut it, just like Elon Musk did to X, how he gutted his own business.
And then eventually the quality is going to go down.
And I want to know if there's a history of this, because this is just a theory I have.
But is there a history of outsourcing government departments, et cetera?
Good question.
You may want to check out our website, the video library there.
If you type those search things into the box, it may give you a better sense of things that have been said over the years in Washington about that very question of yours.
That's the website there if you want to do that.
Tom is on our line for Republicans.
He's in Maryland.
You're next up.
Hi.
Good morning.
I pay attention to your show every morning, and I'm still concerned about the blame that Trump has gotten for supposedly not performing on the COVID thing.
And I want to point out two facts.
On January 15th, 2020, in a press conference, Dr. Anthony Fauci stated, and you can look it up, he stated, this virus poses no threat to the United States.
January 15th, on February 1st, Donald Trump banned travel from China.
He was castigated, excoriated, called a racist and a xenophobe and a reactionary.
If he had not moved that quickly, one can only imagine the death toll in this country.
So everybody says he did a lousy job on COVID.
He saved millions of lives in this country.
And one can only imagine if Hillary Clinton had been president at the same time, we'd still be waiting for a vaccine.
That's all I have to say.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Tom, there in Maryland, the Wall Street Journal reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the West against further escalation after Moscow fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads at Ukraine for the first time on Thursday.
He said that Russia used a new type of missile called the Orshnik to strike a major Ukrainian defense plant.
The missile, which carried a conventional non-nuclear warhead, appeared to have a greater range and speed than previous weapons Russia has used in war, according to weapons experts.
Mr. Putin, President Putin speaking on Russian television, said that the country had the right to use its weapons on other nations to allow their weapons to be used against Russia.
Moscow had a warned of a response of Ukrainian strikes against its territory using long-range Western arms this week, including U.S.-made ones and British-supplied storm shadow missiles.
This topic of discussion came up during the press briefing at the Defense Department.
And here's some of what was said yesterday about it.
I can confirm that Russia did launch an experimental intermediate-range ballistic missile.
This IRBM was based on Russia's RS-26 Rubej intercontinental ballistic missile model.
In terms of notifications to the United States, the United States was pre-notified briefly before the launch through nuclear risk reduction channels.
For more, I'd refer you to state on that.
And I think your third question was on our reaction to Putin's comments.
I mean, we've seen this type of dangerous, reckless rhetoric before from President Putin.
What we're focused on is continuing to support Ukraine with what it needs.
Ukraine, as you know, has been successful in continuing to push back against Russia and aggression.
We just rolled out another $275 million package yesterday.
You're going to see more packages continue in the weeks and months ahead left of this administration.
So that's what we're really focused on.
Of course, we're going to take seriously the rhetoric coming out of Russia, but our focus remains on arming Ukraine and supporting Ukraine what it needs the most on the battlefield.
And as a reminder, as this reckless rhetoric continues, Putin can choose to end this war today.
He can choose to withdraw Russian forces and end this and end his war of aggression and his war of choice.
So we're going to continue to focus on what Ukraine needs on the battlefield.
There's more available at the website if you want to check out more from the defense briefing yesterday.
Texas is next.
Star is in Houston, Independent Line.
Hi.
Yes, I would like to talk about Medicaid, and this goes out to everybody on Medicaid and the politicians that are listening and the powers that be that are listening.
Yes, I want to say since Trump is a Republican and Republicans are running the presidency, health, and senate in this term, I think that Trump could definitely use his power without being overturned to help Medicaid be accepted.
I think there's a lot of good doctors in Texas, but none of them accept Medicaid.
So it makes it hard for people like me who are on Medicaid.
And the veterans can choose any doctor they want.
I was hoping that I would be able to do the same.
This is Felicia in Georgia, Democrats line.
Yes, I would like to ask the Republicans who call this line that why is it that every time there is a Republican president, there's chaos, such as 9-11 and then the COVID.
Anything they inherited from a Democratic president, they've always destroyed the country with whatever they have in place.
Trump is going to really destroy this country.
His cabinets, all white, no blacks.
He said he's for the black people.
He's not.
He's Putin's friend.
So I would like to ask the Republican, why is it that they drive up the deficit when they get into office?
Why is it chaos with them every time?
But then they call for the Democrats to help them clean it up when it is a mess.
That's all.
Thank you.
In California in Sun City, Roy on our independent line.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
Thank you for having me.
I want to speak about the federal government employee system that your other guest was on.
There's a big misconception out in the public that the government is a for-profit entity.
It's not.
They're just there to meet the needs of the American people.
And I'll give you an example of an agency that I work for, which was the National Cemetery Administration, which is a wing of the Veterans Administration.
We bury veterans if they had an honorable discharge, whether they were in war or not.
The fact that they serve, we bury them and their spouses at no cost.
What I find with some of my years of dealing with the federal government, I've seen them outsource things.
And the hammer, as the lady called earlier, that said that was costing $5, when it goes to outsourcing and you bring the civilian contractors in, they are doing a for-profit business.
Okay.
And then that price triples.
So the American people really need to be aware of that.
I know there are a lot of people out there that work with their hands at factories and things that feel that federal employees have a gravy train.
We don't.
We usually work for less money.
Okay.
Roy there in California.
This is Randy in Texas, Republican Line.
Yes.
I don't want to talk about the government efficiency program.
I really personally think it is going to be a big hit.
And I hope that their podcast is put on national TV on a daily basis so that people can understand and see what they're finding.
And I really, I come by this decision because we live in a town that has an airbase.
It's a NATO airbase.
And after 911, they had to redo the front gates and modify them.
And they made it look great.
Well, at the front of this base, there's a S-16 fighter jet that is just a hull.
It's not a jet.
It's mounted up on a pedestal.
Got a contract to have this jet painted to all the paint and body shops.
And my brother sent in an insulting kid.
He didn't want to do this job.
And he actually won it.
So they went up for him and his four employees and painted that jet and came back and everything got inspected.
It was perfect.
Came back and he gave his four employees an $8,000 Christmas bonus each because of that contract.
And they need to cut stuff like that out.
We don't need that kind of spending.
One more call.
This will be on Leon in Arlington, Virginia, Independent Line.
Good morning.
I'm thankful for this opportunity to speak.
I am a GS-15 analyst at the Department of Interior.
I've been there 32 years.
And if I, a few generalities.
Political appointees that come in, I found them good on the Republican side, and I find them good on the Democrat side because they're motivated, they're willing to work hard, and they have policy positions that they really pursue.
Unfortunately, I've been management and I've been below management.
I've never, in 32 years, I've never heard of anyone being fired in my department.
I make $175,000 a year.
I probably couldn't make half that on the outside.
So government has been really good to me.
Our secretaries, I probably am surrounded by 12 that I work with.
I would say, so they're mostly high school educated.
Many of them make $75,000 a year.
They pretty much have high school education, and they are extremely difficult to work with.
These are the kind of people that would never make it in the private sector because they're not professional.