Republican of Texas, 17th District, and the co-chair of the Delivering Outstanding Government Efficiency Caucus.
What prompted you to start this caucus?
The need that became apparent, not just to me, but I think the country, came as a result of the performance of the last four years.
As the chairman of the subcommittee for government reform and oversight on government operations and federal workers, we saw very early on the impacts of the president, whether we say COVID or not, the president having almost every single government operations figure out a way where you can stay at home.
Figure out a way where you can not only operate from home, but see if you can use that as your mainstay.
And what happened is we immediately saw where the passport office became the first public casualty of this.
People, the American people, need for government to provide goods and services that they legally are responsible to do, but also to make Americans' lives better.
And as people stayed at home, we dug in on our subcommittee of what is the plan?
How are you going to make sure you serve the American people?
What do we do about these problems?
And the more we found out, the more we found out that thousands of operations, thousands of people in operations were inefficient, not meeting their mark, and became a problem.
And so then we tried to get under that.
And that's where it developed really this idea, we've got to deliver a better product.
Your caucus will help support this Department of Government Efficiency run by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
They were on Capitol Hill yesterday, met behind closed doors with Republicans.
As lawmakers came out, we heard from folks like Tim Burchett and Chip Roy saying, the problem is in that room.
It's Republicans who are going to be the problem with having Doge be successful.
I know both these men, and there could be truth behind what they're saying.
The bottom line is we are kicking off an idea that is bipartisan.
We now have four House Democrats who've said, I want to be a part of this also.
Government efficiency, whether you're a Republican or Democrat, needs to work for the American people.
Government has services that it provides to a lot of people that are inefficiently being provided.
So when they want to make these comments, they are right.
It's a tough lift.
We are going to include any member of Congress that wants to be available.
We're going to include an email address, doge at mail.house.gov.
We're going to take feedback and solicit feedback and specific problems or ideas that people have, and we're going to work on them.
The difference that I think that Tim and Chip are really not given credible a viewpoint to is, and the President of the United States has two titans of not just commerce and industry, they have two titans who have jumped into this with their own personal time to say, we have run large companies and we may be here, but we need to go there.
And I think it's going to be at least successful for us to say, and we need to be held accountable by the American people, to sell to the American people also why we're doing what we're doing.
Reporters say in the newspapers this morning, there is no statutory authority for Doge.
It's not a department.
Zoe Lochgren, Democrat of California, lawyer, says it's illegal.
You know, she's quoted it as telling CNN, they haven't asked me to meet with them, but the impoundment of funds that have been appropriated by the Congress is unconstitutional and illegal.
There is no such Department of Government Efficiency.
It's made up.
So good luck to them.
Well, I'll call Zoe this morning.
I know her.
She's a very thoughtful, articulate leader for the Democratic Party, but she is also one that would recognize that she will get an invitation.
We will allow her to provide her feedback, and I think she would help make Doge better.
Because if we would assume that it's okay to have the IRS to be years behind, or Office of Professional Management, OPM, to take months after a person were to retire from the government before they started receiving their benefits,
and to wait five months for these offices to do these, only to find out when you peel back the onion, they're operating from home with no real, I don't think, direct supervision over what is awaiting them.
We have conversations with government all the time, and we ask them, do you recognize the backlog?
Well, yes, but there's just more people.
We said no.
How are you managing your people and holding them accountable?
And so if there's a problem, and we'll point plenty of them out, we'll invite her to be a part of it.
Want to invite our viewers to join us in this conversation.
We talked about it earlier this morning on the Washington Journal.
Where is their government waste fraud and abuse?
How would you make government more efficient?
We have at our table this morning to take your comments and your questions.
Congressman Pete Sessions, he's the co-chair of the Delivering Outstanding Government Efficiency Caucus, a compliment to that Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Roger in Phoenix, Democratic Caller, you're up first.
Good morning.
Good morning, everyone.
Good morning, Mr. Chairman.
I'd like to say I know you're a Southwestern man, so go pirates, and also from Waco, so go Baylor Bears.
My question is specific to the federal workforce.
I know that you are going to be receiving feedback specifically from constituents and Americans, but are you all going to be doing any hearings on Doge specifically?
And I know just from working on the Hill and specifically working for federal contractors, subcontractors, would your committee be open, your subcommittee be open to fellowships?
I know there are a lot of fellowships at the agency level and fellowships coming into Congress, but more fellowships to help just alleviate the federal brain drain.
I look forward to having your answer and thank you all for taking my call.
All right, Roger.
What a thoughtful young man.
I think insight that he is providing, not only where I went to college, Southwestern University, Georgetown, Texas, but the live in Waco.
And then he referred to a brain drain.
And the brain drain is something that we do need to pay attention to.
There have been an incredible number of schools, universities, master's programs that have developed themselves here in Washington, D.C., because many of the government workers need to be brought up to date with not only the newest processes and procedures, but the code and the computing necessary behind all this.
I do believe that what we've got to do is look at making sure that every person that's hired is qualified.
And this has been an issue that Republicans have made over the kinds of people that were running these departments and making these decisions.
You may recall that nine days after President Trump, there was an attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania, we had the head of the Secret Service.
She essentially, in my opinion, and I think others, did not offer the American people nor Congress nor her agency the kind of leadership that is needed to lead.
And we really caught her flat-footed in front of the committee.
We find this across government.
We find that people were selected for a reason or two as opposed to learning, using their experience, and gaining that on behalf of the American people.
We will have feedback to people.
We do want to make sure that we're taking care of the worker that wants to come to work for the government, but it needs to be done at work.
Will there be hearings led by your caucus or other committees on Capitol Hill?
And will Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy testify?
I have no reason to assume that we would not include that.
That has not, we have not really broken out in the new Congress yet.
We will do that and we will plan the schedule.
We're in essentially the first three or four days of this.
It will be open and there's a reason why we need the American people to know what we're doing and why, because it's got to pass their smell test, and that's why we push what's in the best interest for the American people.
Let's start with telling the American people what's happening by telling them what happened behind closed doors yesterday with House Republicans.
What did you hear from those two, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy?
Well, it's very simple.
They came and had an opportunity to meet 30 people they'd never met, and then to meet about 200 members of Congress, probably that they had never met.
And it gave them an opportunity to say that we are in this battle.
We're in this fight because we've put our companies, we've invested ourselves, we are doing the things, and America is in trouble.
And if we allow us to go from $35 trillion to $40 trillion to $50 trillion naturally, simply because we are having to pay off the debt, then America is in trouble and we will look up.
They are responsible.
They looked at us, but they looked us right in the eye and said, kind of like Chip Roy and Tim said, we're looking at either the problem or the answer, and you were sitting in those seats.
So it was not necessarily a comfortable time for a member of Congress, especially not someone that's brand new.
But we empowered ourself to say, we will get there, and we will make sure it's bipartisan, or at least an opportunity to be bipartisan, and the answers that we've got, we've got to sell to the American people.
Let's go to Huntsville, Texas.
Tor, a Republican.
Well, thank you very much.
Congressman Sessions, it's a pleasure to speak with you today from wonderful Huntsville, Texas.
And my question is this.
We trust our elections in Walker County.
We know the people who run the elections, but in some of the larger cities in Texas, There are problems that we suspect there has been a lot of cheating going on.
It happens not only in Texas, it happens in certain counties in Georgia, in Maricopa County, in Arizona, and other states where election cheating happens.
In what way, Tor?
There are several ways it can happen.
It can happen with crooked election officials.
We had a gentleman in Territ County who used to work for SmartMatic.
He developed a code that enabled Chavez to cheat in the Venezuelan elections.
And that was not a bug.
It was a feature of that system.
So governments could bring in voting machines and people could vote.
And famously, Chavez, there was a recall election for Chavez.
All right.
I think we understand your concerns.
So let me see if I can address what this gentleman, Tor, has said from Huntsville, Texas.
In fact, we have had lots of reports of abnormalities, inconsistencies, and things that have happened with irregularities.
Many of these, while they were in our past, could still exist today.
But I think many states looked at those things, abnormalities, inconsistencies, irregularities, and they came back and they updated their laws.
For instance, in Georgia, Texas, and other states, governors, as a result of COVID, made decisions that were contrary to the law, but they put them to a commission and the commission made a recommendation.
We now have lots of states that have said a governor nor any official can waive the rules that are laws of the election.
I think that it's a continuing progress, a process in progress.
I was here with Gore v. Bush, where they were hanging Chads, and we've continued to do things that bring the American people to have confidence in what we do.
In Texas, in particular, we have paper ballots.
And so the paper ballots at least provide a context for a paper trail that would be necessary.
So I'd like to say to Tor, we're going to take a look at this.
We're open to hearing back from people.
It's also an important state matter, and I hope that your state officials will look at it also.
We'll go to Potomac, Maryland.
Mary is watching there, independent caller.
Hi, Mary.
Oh, hello.
I am calling to say that Donald Trump added the most to the national debt.
He, when he in his first term, today he is strangling the life out of the Republican Party.
Well, Mary, let's take the first part of what you had to say there.
We were talking to Gwen Moore earlier, and she was talking about the 2017 tax cuts adding to the nation's debt and deficits.
And then on top of that, Republicans' spending during the first term of the Trump administration.
How do you reverse course here in the second Trump administration?
Well, I think it's important to note that what happened is that we had an economy that was losing jobs, that faced high taxation rates.
As you know, they were corporate.
Tax rate was about 36%, almost 37%.
American business found themselves at the back end of becoming not just efficient, but adding jobs because they were making those payments to government.
So Republicans are not for higher taxes.
Republicans are for more people having jobs.
Once we immediately cut those taxes, which could be a claim, well, don't have as high of rate, more money came into the Treasury.
Almost overnight, there was $500 billion that came from overseas investment into America, investing in jobs and opportunity.
But I will take it for what it is.
That is right.
The debt of the country rose.
But it was not because of the tax code.
It is because we have people who are like me who are turning 65 and 70 and who are moving to Social Security and who are moving out of the workforce and into retirement where the government would have to pay that.
That is not something necessarily that the president had to do with.
That's demographics.
The question became, are we going to replace those people who retired, who moved to Social Security, with younger workers?
And that answer was overwhelmingly.
So America, I believe, is better off.
We not only made investments here, but we added new workers.
So many workers that we had jobs that were going begging.
At one point, about 6 million jobs, more jobs were available than people were signing up for.
So this was what those darn Republicans did.
They created a successful viewpoint that people could move on, that we would replace workers behind them, and that American companies would not only make a profit, but stay at home.
We have only a few minutes left here before the House gavels in for their morning session.
They are going to do so early today at 9 a.m. Eastern Time.
I'll just share this headline with our viewers, and you can read it if you're interested.
This is the New York Times.
Trump tax cuts won't help the economy grow.
This is from the Congressional, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
That's what they found in their latest reports.
Patricia's in Chandler, Arizona, Democratic Caller.
Welcome to the conversation.
Good morning, everyone.
I want to see what the Congress was going to do about this, because I've written Andy Biggs about this bad issue.
Biden reauthorizes the Patriotic Act, FISA 702.
It's affecting me and a whole lot of people across the country.
I want to see what Congress intended to do about the Patriotic Act.
Well, the Patriot Act originally came about after 9-11 when we recognized a huge number of things that were happening that America, were we asleep?
No, had we been balancing ourselves off processes that we thought were important, including the Bill of Rights.
And what's happened since then is Congress has not only authorized but paid for a huge data center that is in Utah.
This huge data center collects incredible amounts of data.
The question now becomes something that the FISA court is dealing with.
The intelligence agencies, NSA, FBI, and others are tinkering with.
I do not see at this time that there is going to be any law change with FISA until we see how the new process works.
You and I both know that what happened is that under testimony, the FBI director was confronted with some five or six million, I don't recall exactly, instances where people were looked at, where their records were looked at, and he, in my opinion, did not adequately answer the question, okay, they're looked at, what did you then do with it?
And the questions that we have are the retaining of that data and information.
And so we've been unable to, between not just Republicans, but Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, and the President, to come up with the best or more thoughtful way, how do we deal with people's information that has been gathered and collected?
Are they American citizens?
Was it because they got a call overseas and FISA kicked in?
And this is where the FISA court probably four years ago came back to the Department of Justice and said, you need to clarify exactly when you come to us and ask for a FISA warrant.
Tell us not just what you're after, but also how you followed through to use that data and then disseminate that data or get rid of it so that it's not available, again, to harm the American people.
I'm delighted in Chandler, Arizona, that we have people that are interested in this issue.
And that is essentially something that the FISA court, this administration, Department of Justice, and I have real belief that Pam Bondi, the new Attorney General nominee, will be prepared to tackle.
We'll go to Palmer, who's a Republican in Hazelhurst, Georgia.
Hi, Palmer.
Hi.
Representative Sessions, I thank you for taking the call, and I appreciate your efforts in trying to reduce excess spending, but I think you're fighting a losing battle overall.
I'm an old man, and I've heard this song sung many a time over the years.
And nobody, it's Congress's responsibility to set the spending, but they're irresponsible.
There's 535 representatives, and nobody is responsible for the deficit.
Until we change, I think we need a constitutional amendment that would allow the Federal Reserve to dictate the amount of deficit spending allowable.
Let's take that idea.
Congressman.
Well, I think this gentleman, once again, feedback from the American people, he represents a lot of viewpoints that not only I hear, but that I subscribe to.
The first thing I would say to him is please remember there's something called mandatory, whether you like that term or not, and discretionary spending.
And the federal government does have to deal with the larger, the 70, 65 to 70 percent of spending that is on pilot.
People retire.
They're entitled to Social Security.
We really don't budget how much will be spent, and that spending has accelerated.
Do we need to deal with the issue?
Yes, we do.
But off the size of government, which is where we primarily are going to spend our time pending this president deciding that they want to wander into some other issues, the government is wholly inefficient.
They are inefficient because it's not our song.
It's the truth.
The American people know that government is staying at home.
President Biden and his administration just two days ago announced that they had concluded a deal with the union that is binding contractually with the union, that some 42,000 people could work from home.
So we openly asked the administration, the Biden administration, how do you make it work?
What is your backlog?
How do you take new people and have them come and work to learn?
We have lots of new people.
And how do you manage your business and why are you behind?
These are questions that will be vetted by not just the American people, but the DOS caucus.
And I think we will make things better.
And we will make sure that the reorganization that is going to happen comes from the very top.
If we don't think that Elon Musk can make better a circumstance and put his good name on it, then I think we're all missing the point.
We're going to get there.
It's in the initial days, but what happens first with Doge?
What do you know?
Well, we're gathering ourselves together and we're finding out who wants to be on the caucus.
We have between the three co-chairs of us, a division of labor, who's going to answer the emails, who's going to put together the first meeting, who's going to decide our division of labor about what areas, how do we divide some 63 people up.
We can't all work on the same thing, but we have to find ourselves to where we then can go and ask questions, come up with ideas, and vet them before they come back to an example that we would say is, here's our recommendation.
So it's a lot of deep water, and I do appreciate that, and respect that people think that's nothing new.
Well, getting Elon Musk and Mr. Omasami with us is not normal either.
This is a deep effort, and I'm serious about it.
In 1997, I formed something that was called the Results Caucus.
And we said at that time, our goal was not to have duplicative issues in government.
And I said, every dollar the government needs, but not a penny more.
All right, Congressman Pete Sessions, Republican of Texas, we hope you come back again and talk to our viewers.
Give us an update.
Hope I did well enough today to get invited.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Thank you very much.
Again, this morning, we want to hear from you and federal employees as well.
What are your ideas to make government more efficient?
Before the lawmakers met on the House side behind closed doors with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, Speaker Mike Johnson spoke to reporters about what he expects from the Department of Government Efficiency called Doge.
We're all excited.
I know you're all excited that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have joined us today.
This is an important day.
It's the beginning of a journey.
You've heard what Doge is all about, the Department of Government Efficiency.
It's a new thing, and this is a new day in Washington and a new day in America.
We have long lamented the size and scope of the government, that it has grown too large.
And let me be frank about this.
Government is too big.
It does too many things, and it does almost nothing well.
And the taxpayers deserve better.
They deserve a more responsive government, a more efficient government, one that is leaner and more focused on its primary objectives.
And that's the opportunity that we have here now.
We believe it's an historic moment for the country.
And these two gentlemen are going to help navigate through this exciting new day.
Elon and Vivek don't need much of an introduction here in Congress for certain.
And most of the American people know what they're capable of and what they've achieved.
Both of these gentlemen have run very successful organizations.
They're innovators and they're forward thinkers.
And so that's what we need right now.
Speaker Mike Johnson making a plug for the Department of Government Efficiency, so-called Doge Commission.
It's not an official department.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy plan to run it and they have many ideas of how they would make government more efficient.
How would you make it more efficient?
That's our conversation this morning here on the Washington Journal for the first hour.
Gallup recently did a poll at the end of November asking people if they support this idea.
55% of those polled said they do support making government more efficient.
Recently here on the Washington Journal, Everett Kelly of the American Federation Federal of Government Employees, the union that represents federal employees, had this to say about the Doge Commission.
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, 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 that 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, who represents federal workers on the Washington Journal, recently, how can the federal government become more efficient?
Washington Times, front page today.
Doge leaders visit Capitol Hill, sparking energy for new day in America.
Rob in New York, Democratic caller.
Let's hear from you first, Rob.
What do you say?
Hey, good morning.
You're doing a great job as usual.
Thank you for that.
Thank you for C-SPAN.
You know, there's so many simple fixes.
I remember hearing a few years ago that they could streamline the paperwork for health insurance companies for Medicare and save a fortune.
But, you know, I think that ultimately, before you really start cutting, you have to put proper taxes on those earning more than $400,000 a year, which, you know, the Republicans refuse to do.
And by the way, oddly, that Elon Musk and Vivek and even our incoming new president make fortunes off these tax breaks that have been extended and will likely continue to be extended.
So, you know, I believe you have to remove the cap on Social Security on those earning over whatever, $126,000.
That cap should be removed, and you can shore up Social Security.
So we're not doing the basic things that we need to do, raising taxes on those earning more than $400,000.
And I think it's just a big game that the Republicans are playing.
And, you know, we don't believe in trickle-down economics any longer.
So again, thank you for that.
Thank you for the time.
All right, Rob.
Michael, Republican in New Kensington, Pennsylvania.
Michael, can the government be more efficient?
Absolutely, it can be, Greta.
Thank you for taking my call.
Thanks for C-SPAN.
I do believe that there's so many things that the government can do.
Even Warren Bezos admitted that he likes the idea of making the government more efficient.
This latest report that came out said that 1% of the federal workers in Washington, D.C. show up for work five days a week.
And it's really that's an abuse of our taxpayers' money.
And you hear these stories of orgies and all kinds of things going on in D.C.
And there's a certain amount of, you hear this federal, the fellow that you had on earlier talking about the federal employees union.
I think it's really a shame that the federal union, there were so many, I believe it was FDR and Macon said there's no reason that federal workers, that government workers should be in unions.
It's just a shame that that has to happen.
Okay.
And because they have a dog in the fight.
And the last thing I want to say is that you have the Department of Defense, they've had seven audits in a row, and they could not meet these audits.
They could not, they failed every single one of them the last seven years.
And 14 years before that, they started the audits, and that was the first one they were able to even come close to doing.
So, Michael, you say Elon Musk, Vivek, Ramaswamy, look at the Pentagon and look at how they spend money.
Yes, they do.
They're very, very wasteful years.
All right.
So, Michael, you may be interested in this.
Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont, tweets out on December 1st.
Elon Musk is right.
The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its seventh audit in a row.
It's lost track of billions.
Last year, only 13 senators voted against the military-industrial complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud.
This must change.
For all of you watching this morning, would you say that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the co-chairs of this unofficial informal commission, Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, that they should look at the Pentagon and should it be first on their list?
The caller also mentioned federal workers.
Want to share this headline in the politics section of the Washington Times, like being on vacation, federal employees are abusing remote work according to an audit done by Senator, by a senator.
And Republicans are saying that they will make the federal workforce return to their jobs in office, no more work from home when they are in charge of the 119th Congress.
We also heard from callers already this morning Medicare and Social Security pointing to those programs.
Want to share this headline and story in the Wall Street Journal, Doge Road Show receives GOP embrace on Capitol Hill.
President-elect Trump has promised not to cut Social Security or Medicare benefits.
Vivek Ramaswamy in an interview Wednesday said that Doge would look for waste and fraud in those programs, but wouldn't push for broad cuts to entitlements.
Let's listen to the former presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, in a conversation with the Aspen Security Forum on Wednesday.
You've tweeted about efficiency.
Ivan has tweeted about efficiency.
What are some of the efficiency approaches, metrics that you're looking at beyond cutting humans?
Well, look, one of the ways if you run a business, you look at whether or not the dollars of the company, which belong to the shareholders of the company, are being used in the highest ROI manner or not.
I think the way that the federal government ought to think about the dollars it's spending on behalf of its taxpayers is look at the taxpayer as the shareholder.
Are we actually getting the highest ROI possible out of those taxpayer dollars or not?
And I think the answer to that question today is undeniably.
I think people on both sides of the political eye would say this.
Where do you start with that?
Yeah, so I think that there's a little bit of a counterintuitive approach here where some of the biggest items are mandated mandatory spending on entitlements that require Congress to change.
But often when you're running a business, you have many people who have come in for turnaround artists who have successfully turned around businesses would tell you it's some of the smaller items that you can move more quickly but add up to be pretty big when you actually add them all up together.
For example, about over half a trillion dollars a year is now not even authorized by Congress in terms of spending that's going out the door.
The magnitude of waste, fraud, abuse, error, or program integrity issues with even the kinds of entitlement payments that we talk about, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, that alone adds up to, we believe, probably hundreds of billions of dollars in savings as well.
And so one of the things I've noticed coming at this, not as a politician, but as an outsider, is that sometimes you use these traditional political debates, philosophical debates about to cut entitlement spending or not, as a way to sidestep In some ways, the harder question, but also the more practical question: what if you could just look at what savings we could get to by making sure that nobody who isn't even supposed to receive that payment is actually getting it?
And I think it's irresponsible to begin a discussion around cutting entitlements before we've actually wrung all of that waste and all of that excess error out of the system.
Same thing, you'll get into grandiose discussions about whether or not the president has the power to impound funds.
Well, if you read the statute, it actually says the president doesn't have to spend the money if it's known to go towards waste, fraud, or abuse.
And so I've seen this pattern in Washington, D.C., where often it's a bit of a deflection, a bit of a conflation to say that there's this grand political philosophical question that we would rather be debating or banging our heads on the wall about, when in fact there's lower-hanging fruit that we can all deliver in ways that require real work, require actually barreling through.
Vivek Ramaswamy on Wednesday, he and Elon Musk heading up this government Department of Government Efficiency.
That was Wednesday.
On Thursday, the two of them were on Capitol Hill.
First, they met with senators behind closed doors, then they walked over to the House side and they met with House lawmakers behind closed doors.
We're asking you to join the conversation here in Washington.
How can the federal government become more efficient?
Warren in Florida, Republican.
Hi, Warren.
Hi.
Yeah.
One of the ways the government needs to get out of the way.
Social Security, before they took $2.97 trillion away from it, put it part of the general fund.
They said they put bonds in there.
They're paying $1.5 interest rate in there.
Now it's part of the general fund.
They need to eliminate the Education Department, give it back down to the state.
They need to pass a budget saying that they won't go over, they're borrowing $1.6 trillion a year.
They need to have a balanced budget amendment so they only can go over 3% or around there of their budget.