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House Speaker Mike Johnson talked about the incoming Department of Government Efficiency before meeting with its nominated leaders, Elon Musk and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Will you take a question, Mr. Musk?
Welcome, everybody.
What?
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 we're 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.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
We need to make government more efficient And that is what this whole objective is.
It's what the Doge effort will be about.
And you're going to see a bicameral cooperation.
And it will be, by the way, bipartisan.
Over the last 24 or 48 hours, you've seen a number of our Democrat colleagues, both in the Senate and the House, who have said, you know what?
Sign me up.
I want to be a part of this as well.
So we welcome that.
It should be a bipartisan effort.
And I think we're going to do great things for the country.
So I guess I'll take one or two questions.
The Press: Do you think you'll find $2 trillion in cuts without cutting programs like Medicaid, Social Security?
Do you have confidence that you can find cuts to that level?
Or will this meeting be an opportunity to level set to a more realistic number?
And second question: Do you support clawing back federal funds that the Biden administration is pushing out in the final days, including to companies like Rivian, a competitor of Tesla?
Let me answer these questions in reverse order.
We're very frustrated by what the Biden administration appears to be doing right now, and that is, as you said, shoveling money, as someone said on a hidden camera on a clip that I saw.
Someone in the administration who's charged with distributing the funds said it's like we're dumping gold bars off the Titanic here at the end.
We take over in January, and until then, the big government Democrats are still in charge, and they're spending money, in our view, recklessly.
And so, yes, we've had a lot of discussions over the last couple of days about what our authority would be to claw some of that back and to stop it.
It's a serious challenge, and we need to stop it and expose what's happening.
There is an enormous amount.
Of waste, fraud, and abuse in the government.
And I think everyone knows that intuitively.
And so the efforts here, both with our subcommittees that are being created here and with the DOGE effort itself, will be to explore that, to investigate it, and lay it bare for the American people to see.
I think that's how we'll begin to bring about the change that we all need.
So this is an ongoing effort.
Yes?
Some labor unions are already fighting back.
They've already signed contracts to try and get this, that they could be able to...
Well, there was a report that came out today.
I don't know if you all have seen it, but someone did a little survey of how many federal employees are actually working in the office.
By one estimate, it may be about 1 % if you don't count the security personnel that are covering these buildings.
That is absurd, and it's not something the American people would stand for.
And so one of the first things that I think you'll see is a demand from the new administration and from all of us in Congress that federal workers return to their desks.