| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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President Trump during the 2024 election and is also the founder of Rally Right, a political organization designed to assist conservative candidates in federal, state, and local elections. | |
| From the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, watch the hearing live at 3.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
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| Democracy. | ||
| It isn't just an idea. | ||
| It's a process. | ||
| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
| It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Our first guest of the morning, Lisa Gilbert. | ||
| She is the co-president of the group known as Public Citizen, here to talk about the agenda of the Trump administration. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How do you describe your group to other people? | ||
|
unidentified
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Public Citizen is a consumer watchdog. | |
| Our focus is taking on corporate power on behalf of regular Americans. | ||
| And we do that in many different areas, protecting the environment, fighting to improve democracy, working to improve health care, and so much more. | ||
| When it comes to funding, how are you funded? | ||
|
unidentified
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Very diversely, but primarily by regular people. | |
| So, you know, individual members across the country who give us $15, $20 to support also grant funding, occasional SciPray awards, that kind of thing. | ||
| But certainly we depend heavily on regular supporters across the country. | ||
| You said you fight against corporate power. | ||
| If you go to your website, a lot listed targeted right at the Trump administration. | ||
| What's the goal of Public Citizen in this new Trump administration overall? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, unfortunately, our mission has never been more important. | |
| You know, this is an administration that is coming in full of people who got rich at the heads of corporations. | ||
| And so corporate power is taking center stage in terms of what their goals are. | ||
| And unfortunately, that is often the opposite of what regular people need when we think about fewer regulatory protections on the books. | ||
| That means less clean air, less clean water, a less safe financial system. | ||
| Those are things that if you're the CEO of a company, it makes sense. | ||
| You don't want to be regulated and have to do things and have guardrails in place. | ||
| But if you're a regular American citizen, that's exactly what you need, and that's what government should do for you. | ||
| So we're in a much more adversarial posture than we've been in a while. | ||
| Specifically, how? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, looking at some of the folks who are coming in, for example, Elon Musk, coming in as literally the wealthiest person in the world, he is being tasked through Doge, this external entity, to give recommendations to government. | |
| So those recommendations are going to be things like slashing programs and policies and agencies that people depend on, which may benefit him, may benefit other corporate cronies. | ||
| But the one thing we're sure of is it won't help you and me. | ||
| Is it fundamentally wrong? | ||
| The idea of cutting or at least decreasing the amount of government, is that a fundamentally wrong approach in your mind, or is there some value to it? | ||
|
unidentified
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I think it depends how you talk about it. | |
| So certainly most regulations, the goal of them is to help people. | ||
| They're the endgame of legislation. | ||
| If you're passing a bill, it then goes to an agency and they implement it. | ||
| They put rules in place. | ||
| And those rules are how government goes out into the world and protects us. | ||
| So generally, we think that's a really good thing. | ||
| It's not to say there's no waste, there's no fraud, there's no inefficiencies in government. | ||
| There certainly are. | ||
| We think there are a lot of ways we could save money and streamline processes if we wanted to, but it's not the same sorts of policies that Musk and his folks are putting forward. | ||
| We think maybe we could cut the Pentagon budget. | ||
| There's a huge amount of waste in defense spending. | ||
| We could save millions of dollars really quickly that we could funnel back to help regular Americans. | ||
| That's not the type of suggestion we're expecting from Doge. | ||
| This administration has more billionaires within its cabinet if they all get appointed than others previous. | ||
| Fundamentally, what's wrong with that? | ||
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unidentified
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You're right. | |
| So 13 billionaires chosen to be part of the cabinet. | ||
| That's unprecedented. | ||
| Someone was telling up the wealth. | ||
| It's more than the GDP of 172 individual countries. | ||
| So it's a serious amount of money we're talking about. | ||
| It's not that there's something inherently wrong with being rich or wealth. | ||
| It's what it changes about your incentives. | ||
| So, you know, if you're thinking about government and thinking about the role of government from the posture of someone who hasn't had to, you know, buy eggs and see how much they cost right now, then you have different incentives and different ways of thinking about what the role as you hellman agency should actually be. | ||
| And so that's what we're concerned about. | ||
| Our guest with us, if you want to ask her questions about their group's efforts, 202748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| And you can always text us at 202-748-8003. | ||
| When it comes to that Doge effort, public citizens making an effort to have a seat at the table, so to speak. | ||
| What's the ambition there? | ||
|
unidentified
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That's right. | |
| So myself and my co-president, Robert Weissman, we sent a letter to the Trump transition, so before they were inaugurated, saying that we thought that we should have a seat at the table as a part of Doge. | ||
| We believe that Doge is a federal advisory committee. | ||
| The way it's constituted, the way it's been reported, that means there are certain rules that apply to it. | ||
| One of them is that there should be balanced representation. | ||
| People who are on both sides of the aisle, people who are thinking about rulemaking from different perspectives. | ||
| As we were just talking about, we have the perspective that rules are very important for the American people, so we should be a part of this effort. | ||
| We don't think that the sole perspective of tech titans and crypto bros is what we need as we're thinking about what regulations and budget line items we have. | ||
| What response did you get? | ||
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unidentified
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We've not gotten a response yet. | |
| We expect to be denied, but certainly we think we should be seated. | ||
| We have a lot to say on this topic. | ||
| What would be the fundamental guidance you would give to those on that board going forward, whatever recommendations they have to make and whatever Congress decides to approve? | ||
|
unidentified
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I mean, we would say that, as we were just discussing, there are ways to make government more efficient, but it's not cutting programs like SNAP, like Meals on Wheels, like the funding that goes to support our national parks and teachers. | |
| Instead, it's the things like fossil fuel subsidies, things that are helping massive corporations, but not really helping regular Americans or the environment. | ||
| It's things like cutting back on privatized Medicare so that more Americans get the care they need. | ||
| There are a lot of things we could do to improve our government, and it's not really what we've heard they're thinking about. | ||
| You spoke about rules. | ||
| One of the issues concerning rules that has come up in the last couple of days was this idea of the inspector generals that were recently let go by the Trump administration and the rules they had to follow. | ||
| They should have followed leading up to that. | ||
| Fundamentally, what did you think of the action itself? | ||
|
unidentified
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Just incredibly problematic. | |
| I mean, the idea that in the dark of night they would let go inspectors general across government, it actually flies right in the face of what they claim to be doing with Doge. | ||
| Inspectors General came into being after Watergate. | ||
| It's a bipartisan reform, still is bipartisanly supported, to think about fraud and waste of taxpayer dollars and efficiency. | ||
| And so the idea that we would let these people go, it proves that Doge is not what it's intended to be. | ||
| It kind of pulls back the curtain on what the goals of the administration actually are. | ||
| And it's scary because we need those folks in place as the watchdogs inside government. | ||
| The AIGs will stay placed at Homeland Security and Justice. | ||
| Does the president ultimately have the right to do the action to remove them, even if he broke the 30-day rule, so to speak? | ||
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unidentified
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It's an open question. | |
| I think one of the things that we are thinking about is what you just said, that there is new legislation that came into place in 2022 that says you had to notify Congress if you were going to remove Inspectors General. | ||
| You know, in some agencies, he can remove for cause, some without. | ||
| We are worried that rules were broken here, and we're figuring out what we can do legally and also just continuing to talk about the problem. | ||
| I want to play the response of Senator Lindsey Graham, who was on the Sunday shows, asked us directly a question about the Inspector Generals being let go and get your response to his response. | ||
| Here's what he had to say. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, I think, you know, yeah, he should have done that. | |
| But the question is, is it okay for him to put people in place that he thinks can carry out his agenda? | ||
| Yeah, he won the election. | ||
| What do you expect him to do? | ||
| Just leave everybody in place in Washington before he got elected? | ||
| This makes perfect sense to me. | ||
| Get new people. | ||
| He feels like the government hasn't worked very well for the American people. | ||
| These watchdog folks did a pretty lousy job. | ||
| He wants some new eyes on Washington. | ||
| That makes sense to me. | ||
| So there's the response. | ||
| What's your response to that? | ||
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unidentified
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I mean, it is not untrue that a new administration can bring in their own people. | |
| I think there's a real difference between a Friday night firing of 17 people without warning and illegally without informing Congress and changing pieces of government. | ||
| So if there was some indication that one Inspector General or two, you know, particularly needed to be replaced for a certain reason and there was a plan to put someone new into place quickly, which showed the importance of Inspectors General, I think we'd be in a different posture. | ||
| But this is a huge number of folks who were removed and they play such an essential role in government. | ||
| So I don't really buy what Lindsey Graham just said. | ||
| This is Lisa Gilbert joining us. | ||
| She's with Public Citizens. | ||
| She serves as their co-president. | ||
| Our first call for you comes from Penny. | ||
| Penny's in New York State on our Live for Democrats. | ||
| You're on with our guest. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, good morning, Ms. Gilbert. | |
| I'd like to know what is the agenda for shutting down the SDIC. | ||
| Well, certainly, you know, we've heard from folks within the Trump administration as they start to come in that, you know, there are many people they don't like across the financial sector. | ||
| That includes the FDIC, the SEC, Treasury. | ||
| We are seeing new people come in. | ||
| We don't know the timeline for many of these appointments and changes, but certainly we're nervous about that. | ||
| It's a good question. | ||
| I think one of the places we've watched in addition to the FDIC is the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Product Bureau, which absolutely matters to regular consumers. |