| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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Deputy DHS Secretary nominee Troy Edgar and James Bishop, the nominee to be Deputy White House Budget Director, testify at a joint confirmation hearing. | |
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| Coming up on Washington Journal, your calls and comments live. | ||
| Then Elaine K. Mark of the Brookings Institution compares efforts by the Trump administration to reduce the size of the federal government to similar efforts she made during the Clinton administration. | ||
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| Also, the founder and president of the group, Run Gen Z, Joseph Mitchell, talks about recruiting and training young conservatives to get into political office. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Tuesday, February 25th, 2025. | ||
| The House and Senate both return at noon Eastern today, and we begin on the foreign policy front. | ||
| Yesterday, President Trump hosted French President Emmanuel Macron at the White House, and the war in Ukraine and the future of the European-American alliance were the top issues. | ||
| More of the same is expected later this week when British Prime Minister Kier Starmer makes his visit to the White House. | ||
| So this morning, we begin by asking your opinion of NATO. | ||
| How do you view the U.S. role in the alliance? | ||
| And do you think Ukraine should be allowed to join? | ||
| Phone lines split as usual by political party. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001 is the number to call. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Also, send us a text this morning. | ||
| It's 202-748-8003. | ||
| If you do, please include your name and where you're from. | ||
| Otherwise, catch up with us on social media. | ||
| On X, it's at C-SPANWJ on Facebook. | ||
| It's facebook.com slash C-SPAN. | ||
| Have a very good Tuesday morning to you. | ||
| You can go ahead and start calling in now. | ||
| This is the front page of the Washington Times this morning. | ||
| Emmanuel Macron airs fears on Putin deal in Ukraine. | ||
| Donald Trump scrambles diplomacy and says the end is in sight after three years of war. | ||
| During that appearance at the White House, Donald Trump was asked whether he still believed in the NATO alliance. | ||
| This was his response. | ||
| NATO is very much involved in this. | ||
| When I first got elected at the very beginning, first term, I got hundreds of billions of dollars put into NATO. | ||
| NATO had no money because they hadn't paid for years. | ||
| And I said, look, if you don't pay, we're not going to be a part of NATO. | ||
| We're not going to protect. | ||
| We're not going to do what we're supposed to do. | ||
| And we took in hundreds of billions of dollars into NATO. | ||
| Now, NATO is a good thing if it's done properly and if it's used properly. | ||
| That was the White House yesterday, Emmanuel McCrone and Donald Trump. | ||
| Meanwhile, as the New York Times lead story points out, President Trump was barely acknowledged in a meeting between President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and 13 Western leaders who visited Kyiv in person yesterday to mark the third anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. | ||
| On the invasion's somber anniversary, they write European leaders and other Western allies descended on Kyiv to demonstrate their resolute support and pledge more money and military assistance to Ukraine. | ||
| That's from the New York Times, and this is from today's Washington Post. | ||
| Meanwhile, in Germany yesterday, within hours of emerging as the near-certain next chancellor of Germany after Sunday's election, Friedrich Murs offered a grim prognosis for the transatlantic partnership. | ||
| Europe, he said, needs to achieve independence from the United States step by step. | ||
| Murs told the public broadcaster ARD, Europe should still hope for good relations with the United States and continue to support the NATO military alliance, Murs said at the news conference. | ||
| However, he added, if those who really make not just America first, but also America alone their motto, if they prevail, then it will be difficult. | ||
| That from Germany yesterday, amid this discussion about the U.S.-Europe alliance, we're asking you about your opinion of NATO this morning. | ||
| Phone lines for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, as usual. | ||
| And we will begin on the line for Democrats. | ||
| This is Tad in Rhode Island. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I think that NATO is awesome because the only time that Article 5 was invoked was when we were attacked on 9-11. | ||
| NATO came to our aid, no question, no problem. | ||
| And if I'm correct, I think even Ukraine helped out. | ||
| I'm not certain about that, but yeah, I'm a big fan of NATO. | ||
| I hope that we stay in it and hope they're not too mad at us for what happened yesterday. | ||
| Tad, what do you think the future will be? | ||
| What do you think the future of NATO should be? | ||
| Should Ukraine be allowed to join NATO? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that NATO will be strengthened. | |
| And I believe Ukraine should be allowed to enter. | ||
| I think it'd be good. | ||
| They'll be an asset, right? | ||
| Because I think they're a very dependable ally. | ||
| Tad, did you have any thoughts on Vladimir Zelensky saying this past weekend that he'd be willing to step down as president if it meant an end to the war and if it meant a guarantee of NATO membership for Ukraine? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's very valiant. | |
| I think he's an outstanding leader in Ukraine. | ||
| That's a valiant gesture. | ||
| I hope it doesn't happen. | ||
| Hope he remains as president because I think he's awesome. | ||
| We should have a president like him. | ||
| That's Tad in Rhode Island. | ||
| We'll go to Sam in Kentucky in Louisville. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| How are you doing this morning? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Well, my comment is going to be this. | ||
| I think that the great ball of destruction is beginning to happen. | ||
| They talked about the democracy being fallen. | ||
| That's yesterday. | ||
| I think we saw that when the United States, Mr. Trump and his people gave up on Ukraine. | ||
| What I think right now is that we're living in a time of peril. | ||
| As we read from the scriptures, 2 Timothy 3, we can see exactly those words that are coming true, which Paul talked about. | ||
| How we have the families fighting against each other, how we have the nations fighting against each other, how all of these things are being combined. | ||
| And I think we're about to get ready to come to this end time. | ||
| Now, it's all about money, John. | ||
| It's all about money. | ||
| Doge is reaching into the money treasury. | ||
| That's what they want. | ||
| They want to combine everything to money. | ||
| Money is the only reason that this man is in office right now because he's got the people oligarchy millionaires. | ||
| And what they're trying to do is they're trying to strip everything that the American people got so that they can take the treasury, they can look into it, and like a business, they can find out about who has more money than they got and how they can steal for the people. | ||
| It's Sam in Kentucky. | ||
| This is Scar Louie in Massachusetts, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, good morning. | |
| First of all, I just want to say that as a Republican, I do support NATO. | ||
| I think it's one of the most amazing organizations that could possibly exist. | ||
| However, I do not support including Ukraine in it for this very simple reason. | ||
| There's this video of the Ukrainian president, Zelensky, I believe his name is. | ||
| He's talking about kind of NATO and the United States. | ||
| And then out of nowhere. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| NATO was very good doing the alliance and fighting Hitler's regime and all that Europe come together with the president. | ||
| NATO was formed after World War II. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| Yes, sir. | ||
| During that time, I'm still waking up. | ||
| But coming to now, Zelensky should have known Trump was going to kick him in the teeth. | ||
| I also have a problem with the United States sending so much money abroad that when you have south side of Chicago, you've got Herndon Homes and places in Atlanta, Houston, | ||
| Overtown in Miami, Seventh Avenue in Los Angeles, all these places that are deprived of the black neighborhoods, Chicago, if we could get just an inkling of that money to go to boys and girls' clubs or help rebuild these private neighborhoods. | ||
| Why are you giving all of this money to NATO, all of this money to Zelensky? | ||
| I feel for them. | ||
| They're being crushed by Putin and kill Gaza and all these places. | ||
| That man over there killing 43,000 folks when only a thousand Israelites died. | ||
| So it's okay to help, but if Trump even do give money back to us, he's still not going to put it in our neighborhoods that need help. | ||
| That's Bill in Alabama. | ||
| Moore from the White House yesterday, Donald Trump sitting down with Emmanuel McCrone in the Oval Office. | ||
| He took questions there. | ||
| He also took questions at a bilateral, more formal press briefing. | ||
| But this was in the Oval Office, Emmanuel McCrone talking about the importance of the alliance countries in Europe with Ukraine. | ||
| This is what he had to say. | ||
| Our common objective clearly is to build peace and a solid and long-standing peace. | ||
| And this is what we will discuss, obviously, because I have great respect for the bravery and the resistance of Ukrainian people. | ||
| And we do share the objective of peace, but we are very aware of the necessity to have guarantees and solid peace in order to stabilize the situation. | ||
| I'm here as a friend because through centuries we've been friends and we are personal friends, as you mentioned it, because we worked very well together. | ||
| And I think the US and France always stands on the same side, the right side, I would say, of history. | ||
| And this is exactly what is at stake today. | ||
| And this is a very important moment for Europe as well. | ||
| And I'm here as well after discussions with all my colleagues to say that Europe is willing to step up to be a stronger partner, to do more in defense and security for its continent, and as well to be a reliable partner and to be engaged on trade, economy, investment in a lot of topics. | ||
| These conversations with Emmanuel Macron and Kier Starmer, European leaders, coming this week, as the Trump administration actively trying to negotiate a deal to end the war in Ukraine, this is the Washington Post op-ed today on that deal. | ||
| Instead of a deal, Ukraine is getting a shakedown saying the reports of exchanging security for mineral rights make sense, but not on these terms that Donald Trump is trying to put Ukraine to. | ||
| The editorial borrow also noting that while Vladimir Zelensky has asked for NATO membership, Donald Trump and Trump administration officials already nixing that going into this negotiation, amid all of this, we're talking about the future of the European-American alliance, the future of NATO. | ||
| I want to get your view on NATO. | ||
| This is Armando out of Hawaii this morning. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thank you for taking the call. | |
| You know, I was a part of NATO back in 19, a long time ago, back in 1973, 74, 75. | ||
| And, you know, back in those days, I remember the Germans, a lot of talking to a lot of the Germans where I was stationed. | ||
| They didn't want us to be there. | ||
| They wanted us to leave. | ||
| But at that time, it was the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union. | ||
| And I was only stationed like 30 kilometers from the Czech border. | ||
| And so back in those days, it was a lot different. | ||
| The LANO alliance was a lot different. | ||
| But I think now it's time for these European countries to step up and take over. | ||
| So Armando. | ||
| With Alex, who writes in this morning, since the United Nations exists and the Warsaw Pact is gone and the Soviet Union is dissolved, NATO should be eliminated, that they are increasing tensions and promoting more war. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I don't think it should be eliminated. | |
| I think it's a good thing. | ||
| But, you know, I don't think Ukraine should be part of NATO because they're right in the doorstep of Russia. | ||
| And it's a very sensitive thing to them. | ||
| And I think what Trump is doing, you know, is a very good thing in trying to bring peace. | ||
| But I think NATO is transforming, but I don't think it should be dissolved, but it should be changed. | ||
| And we should have less of a part in NATO, still backing, still being a member of NATO, but less of a part. | ||
| I think, you know, the United States after war, it was formed after World War II. | ||
| You know, and I was involved in the exercises of NATO. | ||
| I remember with the German forces, the Dutch forces, and everything. | ||
| I was very much a part of that. | ||
| And I remember that. | ||
| I experienced that. | ||
| But today it's different. | ||
| It's a lot different. | ||
| And there's a lot more members now today than it was back then. | ||
| There's fewer members. | ||
| Now you got Poland, you got other countries, a lot more countries. | ||
| I think Sweden also is a member. | ||
| 32 members today in NATO. | ||
| The expectation is spending at least 2% of GDT on military spending, on defense spending for NATO members. | ||
| Earlier this month, it was NATO defense ministers gathering in a meeting in Europe, and Secretary General of NATO Mark Ruda talked about defense spending efforts in member countries. | ||
| This is from France 24 TV. | ||
| Since the 2014 Defense Investment Pledge, European allies and Canada have added more than 700 billion additional US dollars for defense. | ||
| In 2024, NATO allies in Europe and Canada invested 485 billion US dollars in defense, a nearly 20% increase compared with 2023, with a full two-thirds of allies spending at least 2% of their GDP on defense. | ||
| I expect even more allies to meet and, in many cases, exceed the target in 2025. | ||
| So we are seeing substantial progress. | ||
| But we need to do a lot more so we have what needs to deter and defend. | ||
| And so there is a more equitable burden sharing in place. | ||
| We also need to produce more together. | ||
| And tomorrow, defense ministers will discuss how to strengthen our transatlantic defense industrial capacity, including through an updated defense protection action plan. | ||
| In the past few years, we have seen a substantial increase in defense production across the alliance. | ||
| But we need to go further and faster. | ||
| There's no time to waste. | ||
| That from earlier this month at the NATO Defense Ministers meeting, the Secretary there talking about arms buildups and the ability to produce arms. | ||
| Ukraine, again, not a member of NATO, but during this fight against Russia over the past three years, has received many arms shipments from NATO members and the United States particularly. | ||
| This is a story on what would happen if U.S. weapons stopped going to Ukraine. | ||
| It's from today's Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Without U.S. military aid, Ukraine has enough weapons to keep fighting at its current pace until the summer, said a former and current Western official the Wall Street Journal talked to. | ||
| After that, he could find itself short on ammunition and unable to use some of its most sophisticated weaponry. | ||
| Europe is preparing to try to make up that shortfall, but Ukraine has also built up its own formidable munitions industry during these war years. | ||
| It produces some $30 billion a year in weaponry. | ||
| If you want to read more on that, it's in today's Wall Street Journal. | ||
| This is Roseanne in Fairfield, New Jersey, Independent. | ||
| What's your view of NATO? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hi. | |
| I want to say that I'm definitely in favor of NATO. | ||
| I think we need it. | ||
| It's for our protection, for the free world. | ||
| And I have to also say that I'm so dismayed about what happened at the UN and for our position siding with Russia. | ||
| I have never, I'm 81 years old. | ||
| I have never, ever experienced anything like that. | ||
| Just thank you for taking my call. | ||
| That's Roseanne in Fairfield, New Jersey. | ||
| This is Peter in Texas. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How you doing, sir? | |
| Doing well, Peter. | ||
| What's your thoughts on the UN? | ||
| Or on NATO? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sorry. | |
| NATO, sir. | ||
| I did 26 years in the military, dating all the way back to Describe the Storm. | ||
| Also, Somalia and 93. | ||
| What I feel about NATO, right? | ||
| I think each country should be put on a trial because we have so much corruption in the world. | ||
| Even Ukraine, they have a back history of bad just bad stuff. | ||
| So I think before anybody becomes a part of NATO alliance, they should be on a trial, right? | ||
| That's all I have to say, Sarah. | ||
| You enjoy your day. | ||
| That's Peter from Texas on NATO, the previous caller referring to what happened yesterday at the UN. | ||
| This is the front page story from the Wall Street Journal about it. | ||
| The U.S. sided with Russia and China to win the United Nations Security Council's backing for a resolution crafted in Washington that did not blame Moscow for the Ukraine war and called for a swift end to that conflict. | ||
| As President Trump said, he was in talks with Russia about an economic development deal. | ||
| Trump's comments and the U.S. actions at the UN on Monday illustrating, they write, the extent to which the president has changed the U.S. posture towards the region coming on the same day the European leaders gathered in Ukraine's capital to mark the third anniversary of the invasion. | ||
| This is Richard in Minneapolis. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| You know, I think Trump is going about this all wrong. | ||
| I'm a Republican and I'm disavowing Trump now. | ||
| And I think Pete Hags should be fired. | ||
| You know, he gave everything away before they even started negotiating. | ||
| And, you know, they got Russia on the ropes. | ||
| Russia selling their gold. | ||
| They don't have any economy. | ||
| They're about to fold up. | ||
| And here goes Trump, gives them everything as a Christmas present for Putin. | ||
| And then they should take Elon Musk, put him out in Iowa so he could raise chickens or eggs. | ||
| That'd be a good thing for him. | ||
| You say you're a Republican who's now against Trump. | ||
| Did you vote for him in 2024? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I voted for him three times. | |
| And, you know, he lost me on the Capitol January 6th. | ||
| And this is the last straw, or else the next to the last straw, you know, he's messing everything up. | ||
| If he lost you in 2021 on January 6th, Richard, why did you vote for him in 2024? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, he had the best policies. | |
| Kamala didn't have any policies. | ||
| She said, give everybody $30,000 to buy a house and put the grocery stores out of the business because they were making 3%. | ||
| She thought 3% profit was gouging. | ||
| And so she didn't know what was going on. | ||
| She didn't know any better than Biden. | ||
| That's Richard in Minneapolis. | ||
| This is James in New Hampshire, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Prior to this, I stayed in both Ukraine and in Romania. | ||
| Now, during that period of time, all of these nations that are now members of NATO in Eastern Europe were Soviet. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They had Soviet allegiance. | |
| I believe that in the interests of the Americans to keep them out, they should support Ukraine in any way possible and stop the Russian invasion because they have aspirations to reestablish the old Soviet-type system with the allegiance of all those Eastern European nations. | ||
| There are 32 of them now. | ||
| So my feeling is that this is not good policy and it is threatening our integrity in the end, making a division with the rest of the Western world, which feels far more exposed than the United States right now. | ||
| We could be later exposing ourselves by exposing American lives if this intrusion is not put an end to. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ukraine's paying the price with the death of their people. | |
| That's James in New Hampshire Newsweek with a time-lapse map of NATO's growth over the years from 12 countries after World War II to 32 countries today expanding over the course of the years. | ||
| You can watch that animation from the Newsweek map as we hear from Jeremy in Madison, Wisconsin, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning, sir. | ||
| It's always good to touch. | ||
| First of all, yesterday I thought your question posed, your question, and how you performed your show. | ||
| And your show was well, well thought. | ||
| I didn't pay attention like I should, but I was really, really impressed. | ||
| So what's your view of NATO, Jeremy? | ||
| Secondly, my smartphone did not tolerate calling in on the Independent Line. | ||
| I told you screeners. | ||
| Third of all, NATO. | ||
| I'm not exactly sure how NATO has done to me. | ||
| I'm not exactly sure how the North Atlantic Treaty Organization thinks about defending me, me myself, to defend. | ||
| I find this hard to comprehend. | ||
| And I was actually talking to two Chinese exchange students from 2016 who are in the park next to me in Madison last night. | ||
| I was talking to them about C-Sman, talking to him about political climate. | ||
| Language was hard to deal with. | ||
| And I began to ask some roots and radicals in how the Chinese has changed since World War II. | ||
| And that was a topic that really didn't go anywhere. | ||
| But I mean, if you think about original intentions of 35 and 50, 55, I mean, all kinds of things have changed. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That's Jeremy in Wisconsin. | ||
| This is John in Binghamton, New York, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you doing, John? | ||
| I'm doing well, John. | ||
| What are your thoughts on NATO? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, my thought is something that I hope people will really understand that it's very important to be a member of NATO and supporting our allies and friends across the world. | |
| And for the mere fact of whatever you think about the Ukraine war or not, but by being the leader of the free world, it's the only thing that really makes our dollar worth anything. | ||
| It's not backed by gold anymore. | ||
| We don't have industry here. | ||
| Why is our dollar so sought after around the world? | ||
| because we are the leader of the free world. | ||
| And if you want to pull out from being the leader of free world people, just please remember, your dollar is going to turn into the peso. | ||
| It's going to be like the ruble. | ||
| So just take that in mind. | ||
| John, when the previous caller says, I don't know what I get from the U.S. being a member of NATO, what would be your answer to him? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's my exact thing. | |
| When I heard him say that, I thought to myself, he has to realize the only thing we have left is being the leader of the free world, and it's what makes our dollar sought after. | ||
| That's John in Binghamton, New York. | ||
| Go ahead and keep calling in phone lines for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. | ||
| As usual, it's coming up on 7.30 on the East Coast. | ||
| The House and Senate both return at 10 a.m. Eastern this morning. | ||
| And you can watch them on C-SPAN and C-SPAN 2 will be headed to the House after our program ends today. | ||
| I wanted to update you on our program yesterday. | ||
| We started by talking about that email to federal employees that went out over the weekend asking them to list five things that they did last week from Elon Musk, his Doge committee, a lot of discussion about what that meant ahead of a deadline yesterday, a midnight deadline for federal workers to respond. | ||
| Here's the latest on the what did you do last week email. | ||
| By Monday, the New York Times writes, just 48 hours after the email came out and landed in the email boxes of millions of federal workers. | ||
| Personnel officials proclaimed that it was a request and it was voluntary. | ||
| Several agencies quickly sent out emails telling their employees that they did not need to provide the five bullet points about the activity that Mr. Musk had wanted. | ||
| At virtually the same time, though, Donald Trump weighed in during that visit at the White House with Emmanuel Macron, praising Mr. Monk's demands as genius and saying that employees who did not respond would be semi-fired or quote fired. | ||
| Many federal workers were left confused by the flip-flopping they write, but for the first time, the New York Times says since the beginning of Mr. Trump's return to power, government employees appear to have fended off, at least for now, an ambush in the war between the world's richest man and the federal workforce. | ||
| That's how the New York Times puts it this morning. | ||
| One other story to keep you updated on a sad note from the obituary pages this morning. | ||
| Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent who leaped onto President John F. Kennedy's limousine as it came under fire in Dallas and prevented a scrambling Jackie Kennedy from falling to the ground, died on Friday at his home in Belvedere, California. | ||
| Mr. Hill, hailed for his bravery, but long tormented by his inability to save the president's life, was 93 years old. | ||
| It is a signature image of the Kennedy assassination reproduced in an American and Associated Press photograph and the amateur motion picture footage known as the Zapruder film. | ||
| A figure in a business suit grasps the trunk of the presidential limousine as Mrs. Kennedy in her pink outfit and matching pillbox hat climbs onto the rear of the car. | ||
| Mr. Hill, the man in that suit who was assigned to protect Mrs. Kennedy, pushed her back into the seat alongside her mortally wounded husband. | ||
| Quote, I think Special Agent Clinton Hill saved her life, said David Powers, an aide to Mr. Kennedy, who was riding in the backup Secret Service car. | ||
| Mr. Powers said that Mrs. Kennedy probably would have fallen off the rear end of the car and would have been right in the path of the other cars proceeding in the motorcade 13 days after the assassination in a ceremony attended by Mrs. Kennedy. | ||
| Mr. Hill received the highest award bestowed by the Treasury Department, the agency that then oversaw the Secret Service, for his extraordinary courage and heroic efforts in the face of maximum danger. | ||
| Mr. Hill Clint Hill, 93 years old, the author and co-author of several books featured several times on C-SPAN's book TV. | ||
| You can go to booktv.org if you want to learn more about Mr. Hill, his writing, and his life. | ||
| Back to your phone calls this morning as we talk about NATO and the U.S. role in the alliance. | ||
| This is Rory waiting in California, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe that Zelensky was necessary. | |
| I'm not saying he isn't a dictator. | ||
| I'm not saying he is. | ||
| And the Ukraine war had to happen, and NATO, well, the Eastern Europe would have been fighting by now under Biden. | ||
| If Zelensky had gone with Biden and left the Ukraine, it would have failed. | ||
| Moldavia and all of Eastern Europe would have been invaded by Russia, and Biden would have done nothing. | ||
| And then Trump would have to take all those countries back for that. | ||
| So. | ||
| So, Rory, what's your view on three years in where we are today in a negotiation that has yet to include Ukraine to end this war? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What's going to happen is they're going to probably demand tactical weapons and peace. | |
| And if Russia invades, they'll A-bomb Russia and they'll be doing that. | ||
| I have heard rumors that Zelensky may pop open Chernobyl and let the whole place go radioactive if the Russians win. | ||
| I don't know the result of everything, but I know a lot of people work. | ||
| Before we speculate on something like that, do you think Ukraine should be allowed to join NATO? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Probably yes, because what's the point of not doing it? | |
| The Russians will keep going for it. | ||
| If it's under NATO, then all of Europe and the U.S. would attack Russia. | ||
| And they're sorry they gave up their atomic bombs about 30 years ago. | ||
| Nobody's ever going to give up another atomic bomb. | ||
| Also, Finland did become part of NATO because of the Ukraine war. | ||
| And the NATO membership now counting 32 countries, the latest edition, Finland and Sweden. | ||
| This is Glenn in Illinois, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| What do you think of the NATO alliance? | ||
| Glenn, you with us? | ||
| Then we go to John in Ohio, Republican. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I think something like this happened before. | |
| We almost went to nuclear World War III when Russia wanted to have people in Cuba. | ||
| If you remember the missile crisis, those small Baltic states that joined NATO, Russia was unhappy about that, but those are small states, not a threat. | ||
| Now they're wanting to put Ukraine, which is not a small Baltic state, and we're wanting to put a primarily military organization right on their border. | ||
| So I understand why I wouldn't, I like NATO, but I would never let Ukraine in there. | ||
| It's going to lead to nothing good. | ||
| So I'd stay in NATO, but I would not let Ukraine in. | ||
| Now, there's other things you can do to help protect them, but they don't need to be in NATO. | ||
| And I would press harder than ever to make these other countries contribute what they're supposed to. | ||
| Some of us are just so stupid. | ||
| They're just using the United States as a sugar daddy. | ||
| And it's not good. | ||
| I mean, Canada has almost no military now. | ||
| Why would they? | ||
| Because we're here. | ||
| We're going to protect them. | ||
| And that's all across Europe. | ||
| So getting NATO members to contribute their required share of gross domestic product, that 2% number, has been a major issue for Donald Trump and his top military officials. | ||
| Pete Hegseth has talked about it as well. | ||
| The Defense Secretary was speaking to NATO allies about the U.S.-NATO relationship earlier this month at that NATO summit. | ||
| This is what he had to say: President Trump gave me a clear mission: achieve peace through strength, as well as put America first. | ||
| Our people, our taxpayers, our borders, and our security. | ||
| We are doing this by reviving the warrior ethos, rebuilding our military, and reestablishing deterrence. | ||
| NATO should pursue these goals as well. | ||
| NATO is a great alliance, the most successful defense alliance in history. | ||
| But to endure for the future, our partners must do far more for Europe's defense. | ||
| We must make NATO great again. | ||
| It begins with defense spending, but must also include reviving the transatlantic defense industrial base, rapidly fielding emerging technologies, prioritizing readiness and lethality, and establishing real deterrence. | ||
| Finally, I want to close with this. | ||
| After World War II, first general and then President Eisenhower was one of NATO's strongest supporters. | ||
| He believed in a strong relationship with Europe. | ||
| However, by the end of Eisenhower's presidency, even he was concerned that Europe was not shouldering enough of its own defense, nearly making, in Eisenhower's words, quote, a sucker out of Uncle Sam. | ||
| Well, like President Eisenhower, this administration believes in alliances, deeply believes in alliances. | ||
| But make no mistake, President Trump will not allow anyone to turn Uncle Sam into Uncle Sucker. | ||
| Pete Hegseth talking to NATO members earlier this month. | ||
| We're talking to you this morning, getting your view of the NATO alliance. | ||
| This is Gordon in Hoboken, New Jersey. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Well, first of all, I had a programming question for C-SPAN. | ||
| I have a couple of friends who watch the Washington Journal from abroad, and they wanted me to ask: you guys wouldn't still help and have that international line going, would you? | ||
| International line. | ||
| Sometimes we do a special line for various segments, Gordon, but I don't have an international number right now for them to call in. | ||
| A great thing that they could do is text, though, or send a social media message, and we can look for it there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| I'll let them know. | ||
| I appreciate that. | ||
| But I did have a point on NATO. | ||
| I fully support NATO. | ||
| It's one of the greatest organizations we could have. | ||
| And of course, I agree that Ukraine should be a part of NATO because, in a perfect world, every nation in the world should be a part of NATO. | ||
| But unfortunately, we still have a couple people missing. | ||
| We're missing Mexico, we're missing Brazil, we're missing Chapel Rohn. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am one of those that I believe that NATO is obsolete. | |
| There is no more Soviet Union. | ||
| And NATO was 32 countries plus the, what is it, the European Union? | ||
| They are big enough when they have enough that they can supply their own security. | ||
| And I'm tired of the United States being used to protect everybody else. | ||
| We spend over $900 billion a year on defense. | ||
| And that defense is not just for us. | ||
| We need, if we spend all this money and we are worried about what goes over, what goes on in Europe, then we got a problem. | ||
| Then we don't need this defense then. | ||
| No, every country should be able to handle their own defense. | ||
| I'm tired of us defending everybody else. | ||
| I'm voting. | ||
| I didn't vote for a president for the president to be the president of the world. | ||
| I voted for him to be the president of the United States. | ||
| Take care of us first, and we can protect our own self. | ||
| The current U.S. federal spending this year is over $7 trillion. | ||
| If you go to usdeckclock.org, they break down the biggest spending line items. | ||
| Defense and war spending is certainly one of the top four, $882,739,000,000 and counting on defense and war spending in this financial year. | ||
| This is Michael in Florida. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I was one of the troops in Germany, as well as Korea and several other places. | ||
| But I can tell you the Germans at that time, the school teachers were teaching the school kids. | ||
| Basically, we were a joke and they were using us to drain us dry and they were paying practically nothing. | ||
| And the thing is, I believe in keeping up our end of the bargain as far as NATO and rebuild it as much as possible. | ||
| I think President Trump has scared the 11 daylights out of most of Europe. | ||
| That's why Sweden and Finland jumped in. | ||
| The others want to jump in because make sure you understand, like my predecessor, the woman before, who doesn't know that the Soviet Union may be gone, but Putin is still there. | ||
| All he did was take off the military uniform, and he's back to being the same old dictator we had under Stalin. | ||
| And matter of fact, Stalin is his idol, if you take a look at him. | ||
| And that's why we failed at Market Garden because they had enough spies be at the Cambridge Five. | ||
| Kim Philby was the one who informed the Germans to crush our people all the way up the way. | ||
| When if we were in Market Garden, we would have been in Berlin and shut down World War II right there. | ||
| Instead, we were betrayed. | ||
| That's Michael in Florida. | ||
| This is Joan in New York, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I would just want to say, I can't believe what I'm witnessing here in America. | ||
| Wake up, America. | ||
| I see the attack on the military. | ||
| That makes me feel less safe. | ||
| Trump is giving America to Russia. | ||
| That's the way I see it. | ||
| If you're going to go up into the military and take the most people who are qualified to be in these high positions, we need those people there. | ||
| And as I see it, Trump is selling America to Russia. | ||
| And I can't believe what's going on now. | ||
| And, Joan, are you referring to what happened on Friday evening, I believe, the relieving of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That as well as the federal workers that are in place and are experienced in the work that they do. | |
| And remember, united, we stand, divided, we fall. | ||
| That goes for not only the United States of America, but also for the world. | ||
| I do believe we need to stay in NATO. | ||
| I believe in NATO because we are united, and we definitely need to fight against Putin and Russia. | ||
| That's Joan in New York. | ||
| This is Joe in Philly. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
| I look at the situation with NATO. | ||
| The leader of Poland on France 24 was saying that even the Polish should have 5% of their budget put into a military backup like NATO because NATO is important. | ||
| It's necessary. | ||
| But the United States can't bear the full burden of NATO. | ||
| And Poland. | ||
| Poland, right now, one of the big tech. | ||
| Poland, right now, one of the top spenders. | ||
| If you look at the map from the BBC, the darker the shade of the country here, the more they spend as a percentage of GDP on military spending, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland being the most of the European members of the NATO alliance. | ||
| Go ahead, Joseph. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| But what I'm saying is that Trump has got to stay in a neutral if he is going to be the mediator. | ||
| And he has got to if it's true that Putin is going to allow thousands of up to 30,000 soldiers from Europe to be in Ukraine, that's a major concession by Russia. | ||
| Also, if we have a financial interest in the rare earth minerals, that would also be a guarantee against Russia because we would have a financial interest to protect were Russia to again come into Ukraine. | ||
| Also, you have to look at the history of eastern Ukraine, and it's mostly Russian-speaking people, even though they're now very upset with Russia as to what has happened. | ||
| And lastly, who is getting the contracts to rebuild? | ||
| Many of the issues come out later as to who is going to make money on the rebuild of Ukraine. | ||
| Joseph, what is Russia going to make money? | ||
| What about the debate over the money that the United States and European countries have already given to Ukraine and Donald Trump's complaint that European countries are getting money paid back and the United States is not getting that money paid back? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a valid complaint to say that we're going to get rare earth minerals, which we need, but it's going to take years. | |
| We can start immediately, but it would take years to bring that up to speed so that Ukraine benefits from it, so that we benefit from it, so that we disengage from China and anyone else who's currently supplying us with rare earth minerals, which are needed for cell phones and whatever else. | ||
| So I think it would be a good deal, and I am surprised that Zelensky did not was not receptive to that. | ||
| That's Joseph in Philadelphia on the question of money to Ukraine being grants or loans that need to be paid back. | ||
| Again, that came up yesterday between President Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron. | ||
| Here was that moment at the White House yesterday where Emmanuel Macron jumps in and corrects President Trump on what he had to say about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Will grants support the U.S. being compensated? | |
| I support the idea to have Ukraine first being compensated because they are the ones to have lose a lot of their fellow citizens and being destroyed by these attacks. | ||
| Second, all of those who paid for could be contensated, but not by Ukraine, by Russia, because they weren't one to aggress. | ||
| Again, just so you understand, Europe is loaning the money to Ukraine. | ||
| They get their money back. | ||
| No, in fact, to be frank, we paid 60% of the total efforts. | ||
| And it was through, like the U.S., loans, guarantee, grants, and we provided real money, to be clear. | ||
| We have 230 billion frozen assets in Europe, Russian assets, but this is not as a collateral of a loan because this is not our belonging. | ||
| So they are frozen. | ||
| If at the end of the day, in the negotiation we will have with Russia, they're ready to give it to us, super. | ||
| It will be loaned at the end of the day, and Russia will have paid for that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If you believe that, it's okay with me. | |
| But they get their money back, we don't, and now we do. | ||
| But, you know, that's only five plus two. | ||
| The scene from the Oval Office yesterday. | ||
| Taking your phone calls this morning. | ||
| This is Richard in San Francisco. | ||
| Democrat, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| You know, NATO, you know, we, World War I, we finally entered the end of the war and helped solve that. | ||
| Then we isolated, even though Woodrow Wilson had created the League of Nations, of which our nation voted not to join. | ||
| Well, we saw what happened, right? | ||
| Hitler got into power and took over all of Europe and invaded Russia. | ||
| And unfortunately, we actually were allies during the war, but we supplied them with all kinds of equipment. | ||
| But Stalin had another agenda, and he actually beat the Russians, I mean, the Germans, all the way back to Germany. | ||
| But then he occupied all those areas and never left. | ||
| That's the Soviet Union. | ||
| So, Richard, bring me to 2025. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, 2025. | |
| We have to have a united NATO. | ||
| We're a world, this is a world situation. | ||
| We're supposed to be the leader of the world in democracy. | ||
| So, I mean, Trump is, you know, we're talking about trillions of dollars over here, and he's worried about a few billion to Ukraine. | ||
| By the way, NATO has, and the European Union and other countries have contributed more than the United States to the defense of Ukraine. | ||
| So, Ukraine is the whole buffer. | ||
| If Putin is not stopped in Ukraine, he's going to move on. | ||
| That's the whole point. | ||
| The guy is maniacal in his wanting to put the Soviet Union back together. | ||
| So, basically, in like a month, Trump is like just almost like shooking our allies and all the people in Europe and the rest of the people around the world wondering, can they count on the United States as being an ally? | ||
| Richard Zelensky a dictator, but he can't, he won't even admit that the aggression from Russia. | ||
| I mean, the whole world saw what Russia did. | ||
| So, this is not a game. | ||
| This is not a deal. | ||
| It's not a real estate deal. | ||
| This is the security of Europe and thus the world. | ||
| And that's why it's important. | ||
| Richard, on the question of who's a dictator and who's not a dictator, that came up yesterday at that meeting that Emmanuel Macron was with with Donald Trump. | ||
| Here's the question that got put to Donald Trump. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If President Kulzanski a dictator, would you use the same words regarding Kuzin? | |
| I don't use those words lightly. | ||
| I think that we're going to see how it all works out. | ||
| Let's see what happens. | ||
| I think we have a chance of a really good settlement between various countries. | ||
| And, you know, you're talking about Europe, and you're talking about Ukraine as part of that whole situation. | ||
| The other side has a lot of support also. | ||
| So let's see how it all works out. | ||
| It might work out. | ||
| Look, you can never make up lives. | ||
| The one thing you can, you can make up the money, but you can't make up the lives. | ||
| A lot of lives lost. | ||
| I think probably a lot more lives than people are talking about. | ||
| It's been a rough war, but I think we're close to getting it solved. | ||
| President Trump, yesterday from the White House, about 10 minutes left in this segment of the Washington Journal, taking your phone calls, asking for simply your view of NATO. | ||
| This is Nicole in Brooklyn, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Thank you for this platform. | ||
| So I want to go all the way back to Jeremy's question from Wisconsin. | ||
| Is it true the Golden Sea rule was a treaty with China about the ban of trading for a period of time in America? | ||
| What changed that now in China with limited regulations for fair wages is mass production for goods in America? | ||
| Another question. | ||
| So, Nicole, bring me to NATO, though. | ||
| That's what we're talking about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I know NATO is leading into that, which with the bell now were moved to foreign countries, which caused rises in our country. | |
| So, NATO, to me, on my level as a constituent, is important because in the history, it seems like Russia and America never had a war. | ||
| They always had some form of treaty. | ||
| Okay, that's Nicole. | ||
| This is Lou in Georgia. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I don't mean to give folks a history lesson because you have the smartest listeners in the world, but the original purpose of NATO was after World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, which Germany had to relinquish land to France as part of the treaty, and you work up to World War II. | ||
| And it was to keep the European nations together, not necessarily as a buffer against the Soviet Union, because the European nations are expansionists. | ||
| The French colon and the French, the Dutch colonized Africa countries. | ||
| France kicked us out of NATO, I think, in 1965 under de Gaulle. | ||
| So when people think that NATO was formed as a buffer against the Soviet Union, the original idea of Truman under the Marshall Plan was to build up the NATO country, the NATO countries, to keep them from fighting each other or getting into conflicts with each other. | ||
| France claiming land in Germany, Germany claiming land from France. | ||
| So that's all I want to say. | ||
| But it's morphed into the Soviet Union. | ||
| Lou, what do you think then the relevance of the Soviet Union is to NATO and how it expanded over time? | ||
| The Cold War, the Warsaw Pact? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's it. | |
| It's morphed into Americans' idea of keeping the European countries from conflict with each other into the threat from the Soviet Union. | ||
| But the original idea, and that's the only point I'm not smart enough to figure out how it works today internally, but it changed into something else than its original intent. | ||
| And I think history may support that because that was the purpose of Truman and the Marshall Plan. | ||
| That's Lou. | ||
| In Georgia, we'll stay in the Peach State. | ||
| This is Dee. | ||
| Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| But I would kind of like to piggyback off of the gentleman there from Georgia. | ||
| I believe it is in our best interest to stay in NATO from my understanding is that, you know, it's current coin insurance, okay? | ||
| Some kind of insurance. | ||
| You pay into it, you know, and it's there if you need it. | ||
| And so we kind of, you know, have each other's back, you know, it's needed. | ||
| And also as far as the Lent to pay it back, I say my opinion is, and I do watch a lot of the cable news and news and such, that it was in our interest to have refurbish the things that we were giving him to fight this war that Putin started. | ||
| And it wasn't like just add money that they sent over there to him. | ||
| And as far as him, them paying it back, I believe it should be non-inclusive. | ||
| I mean, I don't believe that that should happen. | ||
| You know, I just believe that we helped that country because he is so good, you know, and it was a beautiful country and tricked into that war, I do believe. | ||
| You know, so that is my opinion on the NATO. | ||
| That's D. In Georgia, more recent discussion on NATO. | ||
| This during the Munich Security Conference, it was North Carolina Republican Senator Tom Tillis speaking about the importance of NATO, but also this idea of cost sharing. | ||
| This is about two minutes of what he had to say. | ||
| I try to preface all of my discussions around my family, about the concept of family. | ||
| I'm one of six children. | ||
| And I view our NATO partners and allies like family members. | ||
| We're not friends. | ||
| We're family. | ||
| And that means that we have arguments, we have fights. | ||
| Sometimes we don't talk to each other for months at a time. | ||
| But at the end of the day, even my sister, who I'm convinced would never vote for me, she is so liberal, and would probably endorse my opponent. | ||
| There is no doubt that if I were in trouble, my sister would come to my aid. | ||
| And I think that that has to be foundational to the discussion of people in NATO. | ||
| Does anyone honestly believe if we were threatened, regardless of whether we're the high or the low, that we would not come together and defend the countries of NATO? | ||
| Of course we would. | ||
| Now, we also have to have an honest discussion. | ||
| Pay the 2%, period. | ||
| We have been well above 2% forever. | ||
| Don't give the American people a reason to say, why should we spend more? | ||
| Why should we do more? | ||
| When countries who were founders of the NATO observer group, just look at this. | ||
| Take this. | ||
| I see people with uniforms on. | ||
| They can appreciate this. | ||
| Over the last 24 years, if you total the shortfall below 2% of the nations who have failed to make the 2% threshold, it's more than $2 trillion with a T dollars for our mutual defense and modernization. | ||
| It's $2 trillion that would have been demand signals that would have increased our industrial base. | ||
| It's $2 trillion that may have been a capability that Vladimir Putin would not have thought he could stress test the NATO alliance and take advantage of Ukraine. | ||
| So let's be good family members and tell our brothers and sisters the truth. | ||
| Your failure to commit to the 2% threshold has made our world more dangerous. | ||
| North Carolina Republican Senator Tom Tillis, that was from earlier this month at the Munich Security Conference. | ||
| Time for just a couple more calls here. | ||
| We've been asking you in this first hour of the Washington Journal today simply your view of the NATO alliance, the United States' role in it. | ||
| Should Ukraine join NATO. | ||
| Dave in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Independent, what do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| The negotiation that the president is carrying on is doing nothing for us and NATO. | ||
| If Putin was sincere about any of the things, giving up any of the things we want, he wouldn't care if Ukraine was part of NATO because he wouldn't be planning to continue his war against the West. | ||
| So it makes no sense. | ||
| What we really need is something for us, for America. | ||
| Like, if you really want to save some money, why doesn't he ask Putin to take all the nuclear submarines out of the Atlantic? | ||
| President Trump praised the Atlantic Ocean, the great Atlantic Ocean, in one of his statements. | ||
| Well, he's living 100 years ago. | ||
| The Atlantic Ocean is no defense to what Russia has. | ||
| They have the missiles that could take out submarines, take out 50 million Americans before we could retaliate. | ||
| Why don't we get some concession from Putin as part of the giveaway of a free country of free brave people with whom Trump has no identification? | ||
| People like our founders, people like the 2,000 Marines that are lying in a grave in France. | ||
| Trump has no identification with them. | ||
| He only has identification with countries that he's established a policy like Putin, taking money, taking freedom away from people like Orban, like the Erdogan. | ||
| All the people that he praises and collects himself with are not Americans who have wanted to maintain freedom, free countries in the world for our own defense. | ||
| That's Dave in New Jersey, our last caller in this first segment of the Washington Journal. | ||
| Hope you stick with us this morning here on C-SPAN. | ||
| But if energy policy is more your thing on C-SPAN 2, in about 15 minutes, an event being hosted by Politico. | ||
| It's with Colorado Senator John Hickenlooper, Congressman Bob Lada of Ohio, Randy Weber of Texas, a discussion on U.S. energy policy. | ||
| That gets underway in about 15 minutes. | ||
| If you stay here on the Washington Journal up next, we will be joined by Elaine Kamark of the Brookings Institution. | ||
| We'll talk about the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency and efforts in previous administrations to reduce the size and spending of the federal government. | ||
| And later, Run Gen Z founder and President Joseph Mitchell joins us to discuss his organization's effort to recruit and train young conservatives in politics. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
On Tuesday, March 4th, watch C-SPAN's live coverage of President Trump's address to Congress, the first address of his second term, and less than two months since taking office. | |
| C-SPAN's live coverage begins at 8 p.m. Eastern with a preview of the evening from Capitol Hill, followed by the President's speech, which begins at 9 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| And then watch the Democratic response after the President's speech. | ||
| We'll also take your calls and get your reaction on social media. | ||
| Over on C-SPAN 2, you can also watch a simulcast of the evening's coverage, followed by reaction from lawmakers live from Capitol Hill. | ||
| Watch President Trump's address to Congress live Tuesday, March 4th, beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, our simulcast live on C-SPAN 2 or on C-SPAN Now, our pre-mobile video app. | ||
| Also online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| C-SPAN, bringing you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| 100 years ago this past August was the beginning of what's often been called the Great War. | ||
| World War I had military casualties of over 9 million and millions more of civilians. | ||
| Professor Sean McMeekin of Bard College, located in New York State, has written nine books since 2003 on subjects that include German history, Russian history, the Ottoman Empire, communism, World War II, and one titled July 1914. | ||
| This last book will be the focus of our conversation with Professor McMeekin. | ||
| World War I was triggered in late June of 1914 by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo, Bosnia. | ||
| They were gunned down by a Serbian 19-year-old by the name of Gavrulo Princip. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author Sean McMeekin talks about his book July 1914, Countdown to War, 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. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Elaine Kmark joins us now. | ||
| Currently, she serves as director of the Brookings Institution's Center for Effective Public Management. | ||
| Some 32 years ago, she served as director of the Reinventing Government Initiative at the start of the Clinton administration. | ||
| Elaine Kmark, what was your mission at the Reinventing Government Initiative? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we began in March of 1993. | |
| We issued our first of many reports in September of 1993. | ||
| We thought we were moving quickly, but nothing compared to Mr. Musk. | ||
| And our mission was to create a government that works better and costs less. | ||
| So we had in it works better, as well as costing less. | ||
| We wanted to save money, we wanted to cut some personnel, but we also wanted to fix ongoing problems in the federal government. | ||
| Is it fair to call it the Doge of its day? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was probably the Doge of its day, but with a lot of exceptions, okay? | |
| A lot of important differences. | ||
| The Doge people have all come from outside government and they have no government experience. | ||
| We recruited several hundred people from within the government who had reputation as innovators in the government. | ||
| And so they were familiar with the government's processes, whether it's personnel or procurement, etc. | ||
| We did not allow them to work on their agency. | ||
| We assigned them to teams looking at other agencies. | ||
| And they interacted with the agency personnel about what's going on in this place. | ||
| Where is the waste? | ||
| Where's the malfunction? | ||
| What's it due to? | ||
| Etc. | ||
| Is it an ancient statute that needs revision? | ||
| Is it a regulation from the federal regulations? | ||
| What's the problem here? | ||
| And we tried to fix those problems. | ||
| That initiative has obviously gotten a lot of attention in the wake of what's been happening in the first month. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's gotten more attention now than it did 32 years ago. | |
| So plenty of press reports on it about the results of the reinventing government initiative. | ||
| Here's from various news organizations. | ||
| It reduced the federal workforce by about 426,000 people over the course of seven years, 93 to 2000, yielded $136 billion in taxpayers' savings, authorized buyouts to the tune of $25,000 for some federal workers, and pushed at the time for the workforce to embrace the internet. | ||
| How did you go about doing that, especially when we're talking about workforce reductions, nearly half a million workers? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, one thing that we had going for us was Al Gore. | ||
| And as you know, Al Gore is a techie from way back. | ||
| And he saw instantly the advantages of the internet and the new technology. | ||
| So he pushed the government and pushed us to get the government using new technology. | ||
| You know, it's hard to imagine now, but in 1993, agencies didn't have websites. | ||
| If you wanted to know where the closest Social Security office was, you had to call somebody up on the phone, right? | ||
| Or go to the yellow pages maybe. | ||
| But there were no websites, okay? | ||
| So we knew that by using this new technology, we could cut out layers of management. | ||
| And that's what we did. | ||
| That's how we got our savings. | ||
| So we had a theory of the case, so to speak, when we engaged in cutting the government. | ||
| Were there any specific agencies, offices that were fully closed under the reinventing government initiative? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, there were about 126 of them that were fully closed. | |
| We did not close any cabinet departments or anything like that because we thought that was sort of a waste of time. | ||
| What were some examples of those offices? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, there's the Teetasters Board, okay, which had been around for a long time. | |
| There was the group that gave tax breaks to wool and mohair farmers, so with wool and mohair subsidies, that had dated from the Korean War. | ||
| So there were a lot of smaller things that we closed and just got rid of. | ||
| There was a Columbus Day-something celebration agency, and we got rid of that. | ||
| So they were all kind of small things that some member of Congress at some point had put in the government, but no longer really meant anything. | ||
| When you look at the federal government now, and you've continued to be an active part of researching and writing about the federal government in the time since you were with the Clinton administration, you look at a 2.2, 2.4 million federal government staff. | ||
| How many cuts do you think are there? | ||
| Do you agree that there is room to cut the federal government? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| I mean, there's room to cut the federal government, probably 5%, 10%, okay? | ||
| And if you want to actually stop doing things, okay, then there's room for a lot more cuts. | ||
| But that's hard, as they're discovering with USAID. | ||
| In other words, if you want to get rid of a whole department, you really do have to go to Congress and get the statute reversed. | ||
| USAID was created in 1961 by statute. | ||
| It was amended in 1998 when Clinton was president. | ||
| So it's on the law. | ||
| The law is on the books. | ||
| So, you know, they're going to be in lawsuits and lawsuits and lawsuits. | ||
| So help people understand this. | ||
| USAID is under the State Department, and the State Department is part of the executive branch. | ||
| Why can't the president, the head of the executive branch, say, this organization is no longer working. | ||
| I don't want it as part of the executive branch anymore. | ||
| I want it closed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because the law says that you cannot reorganize USAID without congressional approval first. | |
| In other words, there's a statute on the books. | ||
| The fight here, the real underlying philosophical fight is does the president truly control all of the bureaucracy or is it also controlled by Congress, which after all authorizes it and appropriates the money for it. | ||
| So that's where the tension is here. | ||
| How much pushback, take us back to 93 through 2000. | ||
| How much pushback were you getting at the time as you were going through this process from federal employees unions, from Congress, and from the media as well? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We got ignored by the media. | |
| Okay, we were basically ignored. | ||
| That's why I say we're getting more attention now than we did 32 years ago, because it was too boring. | ||
| It was really very boring the way we went about it. | ||
| It was boring, which you can argue was a good thing. | ||
| We got pushback from federal employees, not just from unions, actually less from unions, more from employee organizations that represented management. | ||
| Because we were basically bringing the federal government into the information age. | ||
| And what had been happening in the 80s even in the private sector was that information technology was allowing companies to cut layers of middle management. | ||
| And that's what we were doing in the government. | ||
| So it really came from managers more so than unions because the other thing we did is we established customer service standards for the government. | ||
| We wanted citizens to be treated as if they were valued customers and not told to wait all day in a waiting room and then have the office close on them at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. | ||
| So we pushed to have offices open later and on weekends. | ||
| Can I tell you one story? | ||
| The best, the most poignant letter we got was from a gentleman in Los Angeles who told us that the previous year he had paid $4 million in taxes. | ||
| So this was obviously a very rich man. | ||
| And what really, really made him mad was he went to get passports for his newborn, for his children. | ||
| They were going and he waited and waited and waited. | ||
| And then at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the office closed and just said, come back tomorrow. | ||
| And that was a real, that said to us, something is really wrong here. | ||
| He wasn't getting his money's worth. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He was not getting his money's worth. | |
| He needed a passport. | ||
| Only the passport office could give him a passport. | ||
| And look how he was treated. | ||
| So that created a whole change process for passports. | ||
| And these days you can get expedited passports, etc. | ||
| It's different. | ||
| A lot of the things we did back then, whether it was filing your taxes online or doing other kinds of transactions, are now standard operating procedure in the federal government. | ||
| In terms of Donald Trump and Elon Musk saying there's precedent for this and pointing back to things like you were involved with in the Clinton administration, was there precedent that you were looking back to of a previous administration, the Reagan administration or the H.W. Bush administration? | ||
| Was there precedent at your time in the 90s? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not in the Reagan administration had something called the Grace Commission. | |
| And it was a lot of people from the business world coming in, spending a year looking at the government and saying, do this, do this, do this. | ||
| And we decided that, no, that nothing happened with the Grace Commission. | ||
| And we decided that, no, what we really had to do was we really had to get inside the belly of the beast, just like, by the way, any good consultant does when they come to a company, right? | ||
| They get in there to figure out how does this work and what's working and what is not working. | ||
| So we did that. | ||
| And that, by the way, is not what Elon Musk is doing, right? | ||
| They're not trying to understand what the mission is. | ||
| Otherwise, they wouldn't have fired people working on avian bird flu, just as avian bird flu seems to be peaking. | ||
| They have gotten a lot of pushback for wanting access to the agency systems of Doge staffers going in. | ||
| You read the news stories, the Doge staffers arrived at X agency this week. | ||
| Is that part of what they're trying to do, trying to go into these agencies and learn about them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, they're going into the agencies. | |
| They're not trying to learn about them. | ||
| That's the difference, okay? | ||
| And the other difference is we're looking for fat. | ||
| They're actually cutting muscle with this, and that's going to boomerang on them. | ||
| Already has come back in a backlash. | ||
| Elaine K. Mark is our guest. | ||
| She is currently with the Brookings Institution, the Governance Studies Center there, a senior fellow, and is taking your phone calls as we talk about Doge. | ||
| We talk about cuts to the federal government, her work back in 1993. | ||
| What is the Governance Studies Initiative at Brookings Institution? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What do you do now? | |
| We look at the federal government. | ||
| We look at elections, American politics. | ||
| We look at all the aspects of governance. | ||
| So we look at how the CMS is run, and we look at what election administration is like. | ||
| So we encompass everything. | ||
| We're a small team, but we're powerful. | ||
| All topics that you can call in and ask about this morning. | ||
| Phone lines, as usual, Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Especially would like to hear from federal workers in this segment. | ||
| A number for federal workers, 202-748-8003. | ||
| Steve's up first out of St. Louis. | ||
| Independent Line. | ||
| You're on with Elaine K. Mark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call. | |
| I had 37 years in with the federal government. | ||
| I was a veteran. | ||
| I went through probably three or four reductions in forces. | ||
| And each agency, each department was given, and I don't know how many people that Trump wants to get rid of. | ||
| I have no idea. | ||
| But some of our cuts were 10, 15%. | ||
| And we had to go through the reduction in force procedures. | ||
| My way of thinking is this is what's going to happen. | ||
| They'll see how many they can get with buyouts and people not coming back. | ||
| But the end result is they're going to have some massive reduction in forces. | ||
| So if you could just comment. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, the problem with just doing massive reduction in forces is that you cut muscle as well as fat. | ||
| So the question is, what is your objective, right? | ||
| Are you going to literally stop doing something and say the federal government is no longer going to build low-income housing or give money for low-income housing? | ||
| If you do that, you can get rid of a lot of people, okay? | ||
| But if you keep the mission on the books, and as a veteran, you understand the mission concept. | ||
| If the mission is still there and you are cutting vast numbers of people without regard to what you want to accomplish, what's going to happen, and it's already happened, is you're going to end up doing a reduction in force and then trying to get these people to come back to work. | ||
| And that is already happening with the Nuclear Safety Administration. | ||
| It's already happening with the people who look for bird flu. | ||
| It's happening with the Indian Health Service. | ||
| It's all over the government that they're letting people go and then they're saying, oops, we actually need those people. | ||
| And they're getting them back. | ||
| The buyouts can be a fairly blunt instrument. | ||
| The fork in the road email that went out to say, respond if you plan to retire and you'll get seven months. | ||
| You did buyouts back in the 90s. | ||
| Were buyouts a blunt instrument then, or how did you keep them from being a blunt instrument? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, two things. | |
| First of all, we passed a buyout bill through Congress in March of 1994 with bipartisan support. | ||
| So the federal workers taking the buyout could assume, oh yeah, the government's behind us, we are going to get paid. | ||
| There is no guarantee here, which is why so few people actually took this buyout and why many people were urging federal workers, hey, don't do this, don't go there. | ||
| The problem with buyouts is always that you risk losing the best people because you risk losing younger people and people with high skills who can go get a job someplace else. | ||
| And my guess is that some of the people who took the buyout this time, frankly, already had a job lined up and they were going to leave anyway, and this was a good deal for them. | ||
| So that's the problem with buyouts. | ||
| We tried to target our buyouts to, as I said, layers of management that we no longer needed, to offices we were about to close. | ||
| We closed a lot of regional offices, finding them redundant in the age of information technology. | ||
| And we didn't have Zooms back then, but we certainly had conference calls and things like that. | ||
| So we tried to target it, but frankly, buyouts are hard to target. | ||
| What was the toughest office to crack when something that you saw as a redundant office or program that you put up there as something that we should try to get rid of this and just couldn't make it happen? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think the toughest, it wasn't a particular office, but the toughest was civil service reform. | |
| Explain what that means. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, we knew that the processes for governing civil servants were somewhat obsolete. | |
| It was too hard to hire talent, and it was too hard to fire people who were not doing a good job. | ||
| And we knew that needed to change. | ||
| And we worked and worked and worked, but frankly, you know, we never found an advocate in the Congress. | ||
| The Congress already was beginning to be very polarized. | ||
| So on the left, you found people who only wanted to enhance the power of unions. | ||
| And on the right, you found only people who wanted to kill unions. | ||
| And we had no center to work with. | ||
| And so one by one, agencies did make adjustments to the civil service laws to allow for more flexibility in hiring, et cetera. | ||
| But civil service was the hardest issue. | ||
| We made lots of progress on procurement, lots of procurement reform, enhancing the government's ability to buy technology at a faster rate. | ||
| So we made a lot of progress in areas, but that was, I think, the biggest disappointment. | ||
| What's your view on unions, particularly federal employee unions, which make up a lot larger percentage of the federal workforce than union members in the private sector workforce? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think by and large, they're good. | |
| I think a lot of times they protect poor performers more than they should, okay, and that is a problem. | ||
| But basically, if you think about who is unionized, they are the frontline workers that Americans actually interact with. | ||
| And so you could argue that, you know, they represent the people that we need more of, not fewer of. | ||
| You need more people, frankly, it's tax season. | ||
| You need more people answering the phones at IRS than, okay, and instead they're cutting. | ||
| You need more people at the border, protecting the borders. | ||
| Now that one may increase. | ||
| You need more people finding foodborne illnesses, you know, doing that back traceback process that's so difficult. | ||
| So the frontline workers are the ones generally represented by unions. | ||
| And I think that that's they do a pretty good job. | ||
| In the age of Doge, would you rather be a federal employee that's part of a federal employees union than not right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I think so, because you have somebody looking out for you. | |
| You have somebody filing the lawsuits looking out for you. | ||
| There's a lot of chaos out there, a lot of confusion out there. | ||
| Let me take you to the Buckeye State. | ||
| This is Dorothy Republican. | ||
| You're on with Elaine Kmart. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hello. | |
| I am a disgruntled Democrat. | ||
| I'm one of the ones that switched over for this election. | ||
| And I've been sort of standing back and taking a look at all of the things that MAGA people have said for years. | ||
| And today, I think your show is an example of why people are, you know, really cautious and don't really trust the media. | ||
| I mean, you're doing a show about Doge. | ||
| And this, your distinguished guest is a part of some, she's head of something, NEG, some letter something that I've never heard of. | ||
| She's from 1993. | ||
| I'm sure she's getting retirement benefits. | ||
| And in America, that's what taxpayers are tired of. | ||
| So Dorothy, what we're trying to do is provide some historical perspective. | ||
| Elaine Kmark, not a member of the federal government right now. | ||
| Do you want to explain what Brookings is? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Brookings is an independent think tank. | |
| It is not funded by the federal government. | ||
| I left the government in 1997. | ||
| And at that point, I went to Harvard University where I taught government management for 17 years and came to Brookings. | ||
| So I don't have a federal pension. | ||
| I don't have anything. | ||
| I don't have any financial attachment to the federal government. | ||
| I'm not getting a pension. | ||
| I just study this, okay? | ||
| I study it and I write about it. | ||
| And I use my own experience in the government to try to look at what's going right and what's going wrong. | ||
| Let me say that one of the things that I think Elon Musk could do if he would stop the sort of silliness like, tell me five things you did last week, is he could really bring some sophistication to the federal government's information technology systems. | ||
| The federal government has always had trouble keeping up with the private sector because they simply can't pay enough money. | ||
| I mean, the software engineer, a top software engineer at Microsoft makes a lot more money than a top software engineer in the federal government. | ||
| So I was sort of hopeful that the Doge group would go in and really start fixing the IT systems so they were very much in part of the 21st century. | ||
| Instead, I think they're off to a sort of useless numbers game. | ||
| And frankly, what's already happening and what will happen is they will cut people and then they'll have to hire them back because there will be a job that is not getting done. | ||
| If history can be a good teacher and the reinventing government initiative was a precursor to Doge, did anybody from Doge reach out to you as the former director of that initiative to learn from how you went about doing this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| No, nobody reached out. | ||
| We reached out when we started reinventing government. | ||
| We reached out to people on the Grace Commission and we talked to people who'd done this before and we learned some valuable lessons. | ||
| I mean one of them was don't move the boxes around on the organization chart. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, all right, let's take the Department of Education. | |
| It has two big, big missions. | ||
| One is the student loan program. | ||
| Most Americans probably think that's a pretty good idea and that people should be able to get these loans to go to college. | ||
| The other is Title I, which gives money to schools that are at or below the poverty rate. | ||
| And that money goes all over the country wherever there's a poor school. | ||
| And it also funds disabled students. | ||
| And that's a big deal, right? | ||
| Because parents, believe me, I've been in these town hall meetings, and parents of disabled children are just, as they should be, just very, very intent on getting their child educated in the public school system, but that costs a lot of money. | ||
| So you've got two big programs there. | ||
| And then everything else is small. | ||
| If you got rid of the department, my guess is they would move the student loan program to the Treasury. | ||
| They moved Title I to HHS. | ||
| And you still have the same number of boxes? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, you'd have the same number of boxes. | |
| You might have, you know, a couple hundred people less, but you wouldn't have really done anything big. | ||
| And so we stayed away from moving the boxes around and concentrated on how are they working? | ||
| And if they're not working, what can we do to fix them? | ||
| And are there savings to be had in these agencies? | ||
| To Texas, this is Darren Waiting Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My name is Darren. | ||
| I've got more of a statement. | ||
| I think there's a difference between downsizing government and finding waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| I mean, now I'm all for finding waste, fraud, and abuse and all the other stuff. | ||
| But the bottom line is this wasn't what this is all about. | ||
| This wasn't what this was all about. | ||
| If it was about that, then they wouldn't have been so careless and slappy with it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And my point is: not only is it not about, and I'm going to cut it short real quick. | ||
| This is about implementing Project 2025. | ||
| It doesn't have anything to do with nothing else. | ||
| Nothing else. | ||
| It has more to do with implementing 2025. | ||
| Because I'm going to tell you something. | ||
| Getting rid of the inspector generals has nothing to do with false fraud, waste, and abuse. | ||
| Getting rid of the top generals in the military got nothing to do with false waste and abuse. | ||
| That's my point. | ||
| So I just want to get that across. | ||
| And last but not least, this is not normal. | ||
| This is not normal. | ||
| Donald Trump is a convicted felon. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| That's Darren in Texas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It is not normal. | ||
| And one of the ironies of this is if you really want to get to waste, fraud, and abuse, you actually have to increase government workers. | ||
| And here's why. | ||
| The IRS estimates that there's almost half a billion dollars, half, I'm sorry, half a trillion dollars in unpaid taxes every year. | ||
| Now that's a huge amount of money that could go to many other things. | ||
| So what have they done? | ||
| They have cut 7,000 tax collectors. | ||
| Now you need, in tax, you need more people looking for fraud and building those cases, bringing them to the Justice Department, prosecuting fraudsters. | ||
| You need more people, not less people. | ||
| Same thing with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. | ||
| We know there's a lot of fraud in there, but you actually need people finding it, okay? | ||
| If you're cutting personnel, you're cutting off your nose despite your face. | ||
| Same thing with the Social Security Administration. | ||
| All of these agencies are facing cuts. | ||
| And the more cuts you make, the less able the government is to find the fraud. | ||
| There is fraud there, but it is something that you have to go after with people. | ||
| If SSA, if CMS, IRS are agencies that are crucial, that you need the staff to do it. | ||
| In your mind right now, what is the most bloated agency? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Social Security is probably the least bloated, okay? | |
| They are about 60,000 people, which is about the same as they've been for a while. | ||
| And guess what? | ||
| They are retiring the baby boom right now. | ||
| Baby boomers, the biggest generation in American history, are retiring. | ||
| And guess what? | ||
| Social Security is not beefing up. | ||
| So that's a pretty good mark of efficiency. | ||
| I think that Medicare and Medicaid, the problem is different. | ||
| It is a massive outpouring of money to doctors and hospitals and healthcare providers. | ||
| And, you know, seniors love their Medicare and their Medicaid. | ||
| There's no doubt about it. | ||
| The problem is that there's a lot of easy, it's easy to have fraud in the system. | ||
| And I was hoping that Elon Musk and his team would basically concentrate on using new technologies like AI to ferret out the fraud, right? | ||
| As opposed to just doing this cutting. | ||
| Because it's one thing to identify suspicious patterns, but then you have to actually have somebody build a case, give it to the Justice Department, and go out and prosecute people. | ||
| And they're not doing that. | ||
| The caller also brought up Inspectors General. | ||
| Go back to the reinventing government initiative in early 1990s. | ||
| Did we have Inspector Generals back then or inspectors general? | ||
| And how did you work with them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We did have Inspectors General, of course. | |
| We worked pretty well with them, although sometimes what would happen is we would make a management change and they would see that as somehow improper. | ||
| So we sometimes butted heads with them. | ||
| I mean, we butted heads with them. | ||
| We butted heads with the unions. | ||
| You know, this is not an easy thing to do. | ||
| But we certainly didn't fire them en masse. | ||
| To Middletown, New Jersey, this is Andrew Independent. | ||
| Thanks for waiting. | ||
| You're on with Elaine Keemer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Elaine, in recent times, we had the bank failure in 2008, a financial mess. | ||
| Out of that came this agency. | ||
| I don't remember the name of it, but it was to protect consumers against fraud created by the financial industry. | ||
| Now, I have to agree with you that, you know, this is all about Project 2025. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've looked into that. | |
| This was developed by the Heritage Foundation. | ||
| But getting back to this agency, do you agree that we need an agency like this one that he closed and protect consumers against predatory lenders? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because this is going on today. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And now with no protection in place. | ||
| And we're talking the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Oh, absolutely. | ||
| I think we need it. | ||
| It wasn't a very big agency. | ||
| It wasn't known for being bloated or anything. | ||
| Already, they have reinstated one piece of it, which is there's a measurement that measures data about mortgage rates in the United States. | ||
| And that's centered in the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. | ||
| And guess what? | ||
| They've just, they realized that, oh dear, they would seriously mess up mortgage markets if they were not collecting the data and doing those calculations. | ||
| So they've already backtracked on one piece of that agency. | ||
| And remember, with the big agencies where they're really trying to take them apart, these will be in lawsuits because the fundamental question here is going to boil down to, does the president, does the executive branch, have the authority to dismantle an agency that Congress created without going back to Congress and saying, hey, | ||
| we think USAID shouldn't happen or we think the CFPB shouldn't happen. | ||
| So that's the fundamental question. | ||
| I do believe that will get to the Supreme Court. | ||
| I hope for the sake of federal workers out there who are in chaos because of this, that it gets there sooner rather than later. | ||
| I know you said you were methodical in your cuts in the 1990s when you were doing this process. | ||
| But did it happen at all in which federal workers were let go and you realized, oh, we needed that and you had to go back and rehire them. | ||
| And when that happens, are you rehiring the same people or somebody else to fill that job? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't recall that anybody had to come be rehired. | |
| I don't know if that was the case. | ||
| And again, remember, our cuts were taking place. | ||
| This went on for seven years. | ||
| This was the longest government reform effort in American history. | ||
| And we kept doing it. | ||
| We worked on airline safety. | ||
| We worked on cutting regulations. | ||
| We did a lot of different sorts of things. | ||
| But I don't recall if we did. | ||
| Now, I know as a provision in the buyout bill, you couldn't be rehired. | ||
| So you couldn't take your $25,000 and then come back in. | ||
| So that was obvious. | ||
| How involved, I know you talked about Vice President Gore, how involved was President Clinton in this effort? | ||
| How often were you meeting with him and going over, hey, we want to get rid of this office or this is the place where we think we can find some cuts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pretty regularly, okay? | |
| Gore, and now, remember, Gore had a lot of access to Clinton. | ||
| So what would happen is we would have these big massive meetings, usually over a weekend, where we would go over and, you know, and Clinton would say no to some things and say yes to some things, et cetera. | ||
| But also, Gore met with Clinton every week at the famous lunch between the president and vice president. | ||
| And we would go in, we called it the lunch memo. | ||
| And we would go in and I would put my two things. | ||
| Okay, is it okay if we go ahead with X or Y? | ||
| And he'd come out of that with yes, hold on this, you know, little notes. | ||
| So Clinton was regularly kept abreast of what we were doing. | ||
| Was there ever a cut that you recommended that he said no to that you still think should have been cut? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, there's a funny one, okay, which is that the federal government spends a fair amount of money each year drug testing civil servants, okay? | |
| And frankly, it's kind of a waste because over 90% of those tests come back negative. | ||
| In other words, this is an older population. | ||
| They really weren't a lot of people using drugs. | ||
| And so we said, you know, we could really get, we can get rid of this, right? | ||
| And Bill Clinton, remember who'd been accused of not inhaling, right? | ||
| Bill Clinton looked at us and said, you know, I think that's a good idea, but we'll let some other president do that one. | ||
| So, yeah, sometimes he did say no. | ||
| To the volunteer state, this is Peter on the Republican line. | ||
| Peter, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right, good morning. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| So as a medical oncologist, I understand the importance of I see a lot of Medicare patients with lung cancer treat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Obviously, it's important, Medicare and CMS. | |
| As a conservative, I'm kind of amazed that there's been so much waste found at USAID in terms of promotion of all these radical left philosophies around the world, which has nothing to do with foreign aid. | ||
| The Department of Education had, I think they found $350 billion or maybe it was a million, $350 million. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They had to cancel. | |
| It was all for either critical race theory, diversity, inclusion, equity, which I call DAI, D-I-E, and trans-LGBTQism in schools. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That has nothing to do with education. | |
| And if I'm not mistaken, President Carter created the Education Department by executive order. | ||
| And that President Kennedy created USAID by executive order. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And Joni Ernst, Senator Statute. | |
| What date was the statute? | ||
| 1961. | ||
| Okay, so that's in the record. | ||
| Yeah, it's in the law. | ||
| It's in law. | ||
| Well, then why is it that Senator Joni Ernst tried for years to get to the bottom of all the spending at USAID, and she was rebuffed repeatedly and told we're not accountable to Congress? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I don't know why. | |
| I don't know what she did or what she was told. | ||
| I think that, look, you've got to look at the missions of these agencies in two ways. | ||
| There are missions that Congress specifically says you should do. | ||
| And then there are things that a given administration says, hey, we ought to have an office of DEI, okay? | ||
| The president is within his rights to go ahead and say we should shut down these offices, and they are doing that. | ||
| But I want to put this in perspective. | ||
| I looked at the list that Doge put out of USAID, all these grants, and I must agree with you. | ||
| I think a lot of them are ridiculous, okay? | ||
| But they totaled $129 million million dollars. | ||
| The amount of the U.S. government spends on rice, wheat, and soybeans that they ship overseas to starving nations was $2.1 billion. | ||
| So that's what I mean by this is a process that's throwing out the baby with the bathwater. | ||
| It's one thing to say, yeah, we shouldn't have LGBTQ grants, et cetera, okay. | ||
| But you have grain rotting on the docks all around the world that's supposed to go to starving people, and you have American farmers who had these contracts with USAID to feed people in famine situations, and they're not getting paid. | ||
| So that's why I'm always saying you need to cut government with the scalpel, not an axe. | ||
| And they're cutting it with an axe. | ||
| Do you go on X, formerly known as Twitter, much? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I do. | |
| I do. | ||
| More these days, obviously. | ||
| What was your reaction? | ||
| This was last week, I believe, Elon Musk's ex post. | ||
| What Doge is doing is similar to Clinton Gore Dem policies of the 1990s. | ||
| The current Dem party has just gone so crazy far left that it isn't recognizable anymore. | ||
| And then retweeting a speech by Bill Clinton from the 90s. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We were very serious about cutting government. | |
| Bill Clinton is the Democratic president who said the era of big government is over. | ||
| And by the time he ran in 1996, he said two things on the campaign trail. | ||
| He said 21 million new jobs created and the smallest government since John Kennedy was president. | ||
| And that was very, very popular. | ||
| And I think the Democrats ought to get back to that and understand that being conservative with people's money is actually good politics. | ||
| And the Democrats don't always, you know, they don't always send that message out very clearly. | ||
| And there's a lot of talk among Democrats about Bill Clinton and what he did right and where is Bill Clinton when we need him. | ||
| Time for just a couple more calls with Elaine Kmark this morning at the Brookings Institution. | ||
| By the way, it's Brookings.gov, if you want to see it.edu.edu. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's not a government agency. | |
| It's Brookings.edu. | ||
| Very good point. | ||
| And this is Anthony in Brooklyn, New York, Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Anthony, you with us? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, can you hear me? | |
| Yes, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, sorry about that. | |
| I was going to talk about the bureaucracy and cutting it in the 90s, like your guest was saying, but now that you brought up these LGBT DEI funding issues and things like that, or the last caller did, I feel like being a gay man, I have to totally address what you're talking about because I think that the LGBT funding in the DEI, like parts of schools in school settings, is it's not as important as USAID, if not more. | ||
| It makes kids socially tolerant. | ||
| So there's not like people getting shot up everywhere and stuff, you know? | ||
| And like, you talk about like, what did you say? | ||
| Like brain rotting, like in like a silo because of like them cutting back on these like initiatives, but it's like brain, like I think that stuff from children's like curriculum is like brain rotting, you know? | ||
| It's like, I don't know. | ||
| That's all I'm about to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Anything you want to add to that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| No, that's a good point. | ||
| Linda in Ogden, Utah, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and thank you for taking my call. | |
| I just want to say I really respect Elaine because when she went through and did the massive layoff, she did it with dignity, respect, and understood that firing people is very stressful. | ||
| And to fire people sitting at a job, my daughter worked at the IRS. | ||
| The day they laid everyone off, which were mainly three, fours, and fives, people that made at the most, maybe $45,000, that they would be working. | ||
| And one person would stand up and say, I just got the email, I'm fired. | ||
| They would all go to and say, I'm really, really sorry. | ||
| Go back to work. | ||
| And then another person would stand up and say, I got the email, I'm fired. | ||
| There was no dignity, respect for the individual. | ||
| And I believe the way she did it was the correct way. | ||
| People have dignity and they should be done with respect. | ||
| She did a wonderful job. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Well, thank you for saying that. | ||
| And we did try to respect people's dignity and give them time to adjust. | ||
| And, you know, one thing about downsizing the federal government is the federal government is the most educated workforce in the world. | ||
| More four-year college degrees and then advanced degrees because of the nature of what it does. | ||
| And when we downsized, we found that guess what? | ||
| It didn't touch the unemployment numbers. | ||
| And the reason was that people went out and they got jobs very quickly in the new economy. | ||
| And so I think that that's one of the ways that you can do it. | ||
| But this is with enormous disrespect. | ||
| I mean, Elon Musk is calling people criminals who work for the federal government. | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| So thank you. | ||
| Last call, Madeline in Texas, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Yes, I have a question. | ||
| Am I on the air? | ||
| Yes, ma'am. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I have a question. | |
| I'm wondering why are they cutting Social Security by $600 on me a month? | ||
| Well, so far they have not cut Social Securities. | ||
| You should, in fact, still get your checks. | ||
| However, the Doge team went in there and asked for access to the master file of everybody in America who gets Social Security. | ||
| And everyone is very nervous that they may have screwed this up in some way and that we may see begin to see mistakes in Social Security, intended or non-intended, but probably unintended. | ||
| And when there are mistakes and you've cut people, you have no one to fix the mistakes. | ||
| When you call, if you don't get your check and you call them up, there will be no one to answer the phones. | ||
| So this is very, very serious. | ||
| The way the carelessness with which they're doing this is extremely serious. | ||
| And at Social Security and IRS and Medicare, they're the three biggies, right? | ||
| If there's a problem, you need somebody who's going to answer the phone and help you with your problem. | ||
| And they're getting rid of people. | ||
| And I think that's going to backfire on them. | ||
| And we'll end it there for now. | ||
| Elaine Kaymark is with the Brookings Institution, their governance studies program. | ||
| Brookings.edu is where you can go if you want to check out her work. | ||
| And we appreciate the time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much. | |
| A little later in our program today, Run Gen Z founder and President Joseph Mitchell will join us to discuss his organization's efforts to recruit and train young conservatives into political office. | ||
| But first, it's more of your phone calls, open forum, any public policy, any political issue that you want to talk about. | ||
| Now's your time to call in. | ||
| Go ahead and start calling in. | ||
| The numbers are on your screen, and we'll get to your calls right after the break. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Saturdays, watch American History TV's 10-week series, First 100 Days. | |
| We explore the early months of presidential administrations with historians and authors and through the C-SPAN archives. | ||
| We learn about accomplishments and setbacks and how events impacted presidential terms and the nation up to present day. | ||
| Saturday, the first 100 days of Lyndon Johnson's presidency. | ||
| He became president on November 22nd, 1963, after the assassination of President John Kennedy. | ||
| President Lyndon Johnson kept Kennedy's cabinet in place and proceeded to push for legislation on taxes and on civil rights. | ||
| Early in his term, he also declared a war on poverty in America. | ||
| Watch our American History TV series, First 100 Days, Saturday at 7 p.m. Eastern on American History TV on C-SPAN 2. | ||
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| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
| Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are still at our core, a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Washington Journal continues. | |
| Here's where we are on Capitol Hill today. | ||
| The House and Senate both come in at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| You can watch them respectively here on C-SPAN and C-SPAN 2. | ||
| Here's some of the other hearings we're covering on Capitol Hill today on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| In about 45 minutes, it's a Senate confirmation hearing for the nominations of Troy Edgar to be Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security and Dan Bishop to be Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget. | ||
| That's live from the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. | ||
| Again, C-SPAN 3 is where you can go for that, C-SPAN.org as well and the free C-SPANNOW app. | ||
| And this afternoon, testimony on the high-risk list, as it's called, of federal agencies most susceptible to waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| That's according to the Government Accountability Office. | ||
| It's Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, who's testifying. | ||
| That's before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, 1 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3, C-SPAN.org, and the free C-SPANNOW app. | ||
| And now it's time for your phone calls, open forum, any public policy, any political issue that you want to talk about. | ||
| Now's your time to call in. | ||
| This is Cynthia Upfirst out of Kingman, Arizona, Republican. | ||
| Cynthia, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| What's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I was calling because the lady that was on said there's no one to answer your phone at Social Security or answer the phone. | |
| And I'm like, there's no one answering the phone there anyway. | ||
| It's all automated. | ||
| It's really hard to get through to a person. | ||
| So that was not a good excuse. | ||
| I think reducing government is great. | ||
| And that's it. | ||
| Cynthia, how many times have you tried to call? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, just once. | |
| Would you rather talk to a person who picked up the phone? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sometimes, yes. | |
| Just a quick question, you know, let's get an answer without listening to, you know, automated phone calls, recordings. | ||
| That's Cynthia in Arizona. | ||
| This is Betty in Arlington, Kentucky. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I want to know why nobody has ever said anything about Musk telling this that he would keep these foreigners that came in here illegal if they were smart enough and he would fire the ones in the United States and take them because they would work a lot cheaper. | ||
| I heard this call, but it cut off in the middle. | ||
| I heard him telling this. | ||
| And I saw it happen in another country when I was living overseas. | ||
| It is very dangerous, very dangerous. | ||
| And that's what he do because they'll work here for nothing. | ||
| And that's what he said. | ||
| They would work very cheap. | ||
| But nobody's ever said a word about it since. | ||
| It's Betty in Kentucky to Gary in the Pine Tree State. | ||
| Good morning, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| First thing I want to talk about is the transparency that you want to have and who we should talk to to get the cameras back in the Senate and Congress in your control so we can see that no one's there. | ||
| What Congress needs to do is do their job. | ||
| Every time I see them talking, they're talking about stuff other than what they should be doing. | ||
| And there's no one in the Senate to vote on anything. | ||
| No one wants to be there to take a vote because they don't want to stand behind what they're voting for. | ||
| What should they be talking about today, Gary? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, they should be in there voting on a bill to pass. | |
| If we want to cut something, we can vote and cut it. | ||
| When Trump was in office the first time, I saw him bring up H.R. 676, and he had it on the floor of the Senate voting on it by the end of the day. | ||
| So I know damn well we can bring up any bill they want to and have it voting on it by the end of the day. | ||
| They're just not there to do their job. | ||
| And I thought Trump said everyone should be back in office five days a week doing their work. | ||
| Gary in Maine, this is Shelby in Wisconsin, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am not a Republican. | |
| I am a Democrat. | ||
| So Shelby. | ||
| Shelby, do me a favor and call in on the proper line just because it's not fair to the folks who do, if we get out of order here. | ||
| This is Steve in Michigan. | ||
| Line for Democrats. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I just have three points. | ||
| One is I'm mystified by the American people that failed to see unelected officials making cuts to payments authorized by Congress. | ||
| I think that's unusual and weird and not solid. | ||
| Two, I'm certain that the de-emphasizing of education in America will be the final straw based on the majority of calls you've received this morning and every other morning of the week. | ||
| The final straw to what, Steve? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pardon me? | |
| The final straw to what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
For a solid democracy, because people are unaware of what's going on and they're totally fooled and disguised by conspiracies and fear that the right seems to promote constantly, that DEI, LGBTQ, and transgender athletes are running amok. | |
| It's just an exaggeration and fear-mongering and chilly, ridiculous. | ||
| It's a waste of time when the majority of teachers get killed by gun violence and there's 10 million people that are 10 million children that live at the poverty level right now. | ||
| They can people it with other tricks and disguise it with LGBTQ and these issues that are a small, small minority, and people get excited about those and forget about the big picture. | ||
| Starving children, kids being killed by guns. | ||
| It's simple. | ||
| That's in Michigan to the show me state. | ||
| This is Mike in Oak Grove, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| On the Jay Edgar Hoover building, it says, law dies, tyrannies rise. | ||
| And that's what's happening in this country right now. | ||
| We have a man that would be in prison if it weren't for his crooked judges that he put in there. | ||
| The judge in Florida drugged the case out, got spanked by the three judge panels, and I wish I could move to another country. | ||
| This one's going down the tubes. | ||
| That's Mike in Missouri. | ||
| You mentioned the FBI. | ||
| This is the story on the front page of the Washington Post this morning. | ||
| Podcaster who bashed the FBI will be its deputy leader on Sunday, FBI Director Kash Patel, tapped as his deputy director, Dan Bongino, as the Washington Post describes him, bombastic podcast host who has never worked at the FBI and has spent years pushing conspiracy theories about the Bureau and the deep state. | ||
| The story from the Washington Post goes on to note Mr. Bongino's former work, a former New York police officer and Secret Service agent who said he resigned from the Secret Service more than a decade ago because he thought it was dysfunctional. | ||
| He was a Fox News commentator who unsuccessfully ran for a U.S. Senate seat in Maryland in 2012 and for a congressional seat in Maryland in 2014 and in Florida in 2016. | ||
| He launched his pro-Trump podcast in 2015, attracting millions of listeners, they write, and using the platform to call the FBI irredeemably corrupt, a profile of the new deputy director of the FBI. | ||
| This is Magdalena in Boca Raton, Florida, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My question is: I would like to know what are they going to do for Haiti, the land that Dominique and Rudik share with us. | ||
| That's Magdalena. | ||
| This is Ann in Burnham Wood, Wisconsin, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just want to let everybody know: Friday is an economic blackout protest to do no spending for the whole day because the only thing these people care about is money. | ||
| Elon Musk and all the multi-billionaires joined in. | ||
| Who's organizing the protest, Anne? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe that 50, 51, and they're indivisible. | |
| They're kind of joining together and loosely organizing things to try and get our voices heard because obviously the government is not listening to us. | ||
| People are upset about all these firings of good workers, and maybe some bad, but they're eroding the trust of, and that's what our country runs on is trust. | ||
| We trust that the government is going to stand up for what we believe in, and they're not doing that. | ||
| And also in March, they're going to have boycotting Amazon for a week, and they're going to have a large march on Friday the 14th, a national strike, no work for 24 hours. | ||
| And you mentioned trust. | ||
| When do you think the last time was that the majority of Americans trusted the government? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Probably. | |
| I'm not sure. | ||
| I mean, I would say I think that it started to really Be more distrusted when they started the war with Iraq because that was there was there was no reason to do that, and it's just created all these problems since. | ||
| And there was no accountability, and that just starts snowballing. | ||
| You know, I mean, I think people have there's been leaders who've tried to, you know, write things, and but it just seems like then you get somebody in like Trump who's just blatantly lying and blatantly doing what he wants without any who's the most trusted politician leader in America right now. | ||
| Who do we trust in this country right now? | ||
| Is there somebody that you think is universally trusted? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Boy, that's a hard question. | |
| I really like Pete Footage, Footage Edge. | ||
| He's very knowledgeable and, you know, was trying, you know, it just seemed like he's very smart and trying to do the right thing for people. | ||
| It's hard for me to know. | ||
| There's not a whole lot, unfortunately. | ||
| You know, I understand that they have to, you know, they have to make deals. | ||
| They have to give up a little to get some. | ||
| But the Republicans have stonewalled. | ||
| You know, they won't give anything. | ||
| You know, they completely want to destroy the opposing party. | ||
| But, you know, other people have other ideas. | ||
| That's Ann in Wisconsin. | ||
| This is Catherine in Texas, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I tried to get in yesterday when some people were calling in, and I have two topics. | ||
| People were complaining or very scared about Doge Musk being a quote tech when they forget that four years ago we had a tech person in also Bill Gates, Microsoft. | ||
| And then my other main comment is: I'm not on either side. | ||
| I just am watching what's happening. | ||
| And, you know, we have federal employees that are very fearful. | ||
| And of course, that is totally understandable. | ||
| But for just responding to an email, and then they might lose their job or their position. | ||
| When four years ago in 2021, there were teachers, police officers, firemen, small business owners, nurses, doctors, that it was more than just responding to an email. | ||
| It was having to decide to accept doing something to their physical body. | ||
| And if they didn't do that, then they would lose their job and they did lose their jobs. | ||
| So I think people were kind of in a cycle and people forget what happens each round of these cycles. | ||
| And that's what I wanted to share today. | ||
| That's Catherine from Texas on federal workers and reductions. | ||
| This is the op-ed page of the USA Today. | ||
| The headline: Why must we lay off federal workers? | ||
| Let me give you 36 trillion reasons. | ||
| Tim Swarins is the deputy opinion editor of USA Today. | ||
| He writes the average federal employee makes almost $40,000 a year more than the typical American worker, about $106,000 versus $66,000. | ||
| And the value of federal employee benefits far outpaces the private sector, including a generous pension system that most employers had to abandon decades ago. | ||
| The number of federal employees has also increased steadily for years. | ||
| Even as the government continues to pile up debt, he writes the federal workforce of 2.4 million, excluding the Postal Service and the military, has grown almost 30% since 2000. | ||
| Does anyone believe that the quality of government services has improved 30% over that same time? | ||
| That the return on investment for taxpayers should be the point in hiring and firing, especially for a government that can't pay its bills and faces a financial disaster if dramatic change isn't made. | ||
| Tim Swarins in USA Today, this morning. | ||
| This is Renee out of San Diego. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just wanted to call in, and actually, I think a lot of people are also fearful because of some of the appointments that were made that seem to be putting people in power that have no experience and that's scaring people. | ||
| And I know that Trump is trying to change the status quo, but to have people not know anything about systems, especially Mr. Musk, make changes to them willy-nilly, it seems like, is pretty detrimental, as it seems to be that they keep backtracking on different things. | ||
| And then another thing that I wanted to mention is the corporations and the wealthy don't need the breaks. | ||
| I really wish that if Doge makes all this money back, which it doesn't appear he is, he actually does not give it back to the people. | ||
| He pays down the debt, but that they don't give these huge tax breaks to the wealthy. | ||
| The people that work hard every day that they're cutting jobs from really need to get the tax breaks because they're paying more than the wealthy. | ||
| And thank you very much for your time this morning. | ||
| That's Renee in San Diego. | ||
| Go ahead and keep calling in. | ||
| A reminder that the House is in at 10 a.m. Eastern, about 55 minutes from now, the budget, House budget version, the House version of the federal budget and the Senate version of the federal budget, certainly part of the discussion today on the House Floor to Watch For. | ||
| It was yesterday that Speaker Mike Johnson spoke to the press. | ||
| He was talking about passing a budget reconciliation bill this week. | ||
| This is some of what the speaker had to say. | ||
| The thing about having a small majority is it brings great clarity. | ||
| It's clarifying. | ||
| I don't think anybody wants to be in front of this train. | ||
| I think they want to be on it. | ||
| And people come with genuine conviction about the debt and the deficit and about these issues and that issue. | ||
| But I'm often reminded, and I remind my colleagues all the time, of what Ronald Reagan reminded us: I'd rather get 80% of what I want than go over the cliff with the flag waving. | ||
| And for those of us who believe in limited government and liberty and opportunity and security and prosperity, we have to recognize that an aircraft carrier is not turned on a dime. | ||
| It takes three miles to turn an aircraft carrier, right? | ||
| It took us decades to get into the situation we're in. | ||
| It is not likely that we're going to fix everything in one bill, in one foul swoop. | ||
| But if we can make great strides in these areas and we begin to change the trajectory of the carrier, we can turn it around. | ||
| And if we do that well and we demonstrate to all these new demographics who came into the party now that it truly is our principles, our core conservative principles that lead to human flourishing, it is our principles that are better for them as individuals, families, a community, their state, the nation as a whole. | ||
| Then we will be able to hold this as a governing majority for years to come. | ||
| That was Speaker Mike Johnson yesterday talking about the budget battles ahead for more on that. | ||
| We turn now to Aiden Quigley of Roll Call, has been tracking what's going on with the budget vote. | ||
| Aiden Quigley, just bring us up to date on what you're expecting today and where this stands right now in the House and in the Senate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me. | |
| So House leadership is still hoping to have a vote this evening on their version of the budget resolution. | ||
| We just got the notice that it's still on as of now at 6 o'clock this evening. | ||
| So we'll have to wait and see how that goes. | ||
| There's currently a very small margin in the House Republican conference, as we've talked about repeatedly, and they can only manage to lose a handful of votes. | ||
| That said, with Democratic absences likely, or at least possible this evening, we'll have to wait and see what the attendance looks like before you can say for sure what that margin will be. | ||
| There are a handful of conservatives, not members of the House Freedom Caucus, but they're kind of allies who are really worried that this does not go far enough, who right now are saying that they're going to vote no. | ||
| There's a similar on the in the moderate camp. | ||
| It appears that most of those folks will get to yes on this, but Mike Johnson is kind of being squeezed on both sides of his conference at this point. | ||
| When conservative Republicans are saying this doesn't go far enough and moderates are concerned about it, what more does the conservative side want to see in this budget bill? | ||
| And what do moderates want to see? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the conservatives want deeper spending cuts right now. | |
| That number is at $2 trillion. | ||
| They want more than that. | ||
| Speaker Johnson has been pretty clear he's not going to make any last-minute changes to this. | ||
| I mean, at least at this point, before we have a vote, so we'll have to see if he changes his mind, but no indication that he would do that. | ||
| On the moderate side, they want to make sure it doesn't affect Medicaid that much. | ||
| You know, they're talking about getting rid of waste within Medicaid, but these members are very worried that this will actually cut surfaces that people depend on. | ||
| And we're talking about a budget bill. | ||
| Explain why this is important, especially for individuals who think Congress doesn't stick to its budget. | ||
| Why are we having such a fight within the Republican Party even about budget numbers and budget line items? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the budget resolution is what kind of paves the way for the reconciliation process, which means that in the Senate, you only need 50 votes. | |
| So that's kind of how both parties in recent years have been able to pass their priorities when they have had United government. | ||
| This is separate from the federal spending March 14th deadline, which I've been very focused on in recent weeks. | ||
| That's coming up right around the corner. | ||
| And that is the appropriations process, which is separate from budget. | ||
| Budget is tied to, again, the reconciliation bill, which Republicans are hoping to pass. | ||
| And over in the Senate, they did pass their budget last week, but that is different from the House budget. | ||
| It's aiming to set up a vote on a package that includes defense and border enforcement primarily. | ||
| It does not include tax cuts, which the House version would do. | ||
| It sounds like viewers can watch that budget debate on the floor of the House today. | ||
| Take us, though. | ||
| You bring up the appropriations process and government funding. | ||
| How likely is it that we're walking into another government shutdown? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're definitely not in a good place right now on appropriations. | |
| The leaders of the appropriations committee are continuing to work. | ||
| They're very close on a number, which is a top-line number, which is a first step in the process. | ||
| But Democrats are insisting that they need some sort of assurance or language in the bills that will basically affirm that Congress has the power of the parcel, which is, you know, the Congress's main way that they influence power when the White House is trying to impound funds. | ||
| And they believe that the president can choose kind of what he wants to spend. | ||
| So that's kind of the main issue right now. | ||
| And House Republicans are saying that there's no way that they would vote for anything that would limit President Trump's power, and Trump wouldn't sign it. | ||
| So we're kind of really at a standstill on that specific issue. | ||
| Is that a standstill that is going to have to wait until after this budget vote? | ||
| What ultimately moves us into going one direction or the other? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So Speaker Johnson is meeting with House Appropriators, Republican appropriators this afternoon, actually right before this vote is scheduled, which should give us some clarity on what direction we're heading. | |
| He's been more leaning toward a full year CR versus negotiated bills with Democrats. | ||
| But I think we should have a lot more clarity this afternoon on which direction Republicans are going to go. | ||
| But Democrats are saying they're not going to vote for a full year CR and their votes will definitely be needed, at least in the Senate. | ||
| So it's really a tense moment right now. | ||
| We only have three weeks until the deadline. | ||
| Always a good place to go for clarity is roll call. | ||
| Aiden Quigley is a reporter at roll call. | ||
| cqrollcall.com is where you can go to see his work, his colleagues, and we always appreciate your time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for having me. | |
| I appreciate it. | ||
| Back to your phone calls. | ||
| A few minutes left in our open forum. | ||
| What do you want to talk about? | ||
| Now is the time for you to call in on phone lines for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, as usual. | ||
| This is Amelia in West Bridgewater, Mass, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I just want to say, you know, here in America, we don't, it doesn't matter if you're independent, Republican, or Democrat. | ||
| We don't take kindly to kings. | ||
| And as we have seen, Trump has anointed himself king. | ||
| You know, you're supposed to pledge loyalty to the Constitution, including our Congress members. | ||
| And, you know, Trump's going to do Trump. | ||
| I think we should name this administration bread and circus. | ||
| You know, Trump plays his role, and Musk is doing all the dirty work. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| But the only hope for this country, I mean, especially after yesterday, siding with Russia and China, I mean, my heart breaks, literally. | ||
| But the only hope we have, literally, is Congress. | ||
| And the Republicans need to stand up. | ||
| I mean, they're so scared of being threatened by primaries, which is so spineless. | ||
| But I think the only thing that they can do is threaten Trump back with impeachment because he has abdicated his duties. | ||
| He has not pledged loyalty to the Constitution. | ||
| It's pledged loyalty to Trump. | ||
| And it's not one man. | ||
| You know, you're supposed to pledge loyalty to the office of presidency, not the one person that is president. | ||
| And I just. | ||
| Amelia got your point. | ||
| Running short on time. | ||
| Let me get a couple more calls in. | ||
| This is Patrick in Ohio. | ||
| Republican. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, real quick. | |
| I accidentally called on the wrong line, but my point is everybody's complaining about politicians being crooked. | ||
| In Ohio, JD Vance, he's been in the Senate one term. | ||
| He took almost a half a million dollars from the NRA alone, okay, and the dirty fight against Sherrod Brown and Tim Ryan. | ||
| I mean, the Democrats are constantly being accused of being people that take money for their own finance. | ||
| But again, JD Vance, he loves our kids, but a half a million. | ||
| He's ranked 17th overall in Congress on money given to him by the NRA alone, and he's only been in there in one term. | ||
| And Patrick, it sounds like you're a Democrat yourself. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, yeah, I accidentally called on the wrong line. | |
| Well, do me a favor, try to call in on the right lines just because it helps us keep track here. | ||
| This is Patrick out in Hawaii, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes. | ||
| Two points. | ||
| One request I'd like to have of C-SPAN is if you could at some point in time have a guest that could really explain what the budget breakdown is through pie diagrams, through graphics, through maybe just some video. | ||
| I mean, we hear these figures. | ||
| Even the editorial that they just showed talks about certain percentages of budget, but we don't really see the amounts. | ||
| I've heard that 25% of the budget goes to pay the national debt, and 25 to 30, 40% is paid the military. | ||
| I have no idea if that's true or just somebody's putting on a sound bite. | ||
| I think the budget that you're talking about, that's still coming together. | ||
| There's going to be a vote today, but the version that's coming together now may not be the final version. | ||
| If you're talking about federal spending of where the money goes, it's a website that we come back to a lot, but it's helpful because it does a lot of breaking down what you're looking for. | ||
| U.S. debt clock. | ||
| It not only shows spending, but it talks about federal tax revenues. | ||
| It tells you the deficit, the difference between those numbers. | ||
| It tells you the top spending line items, including Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security, defense and war spending, interest on the debt. | ||
| There's even a line for Doge cuts. | ||
| They've added that line to the U.S. debt clock. | ||
| It's actually a pretty helpful tool with a lot more information than just those top-line numbers that we talked about. | ||
| But that might be what you're looking for in terms of trying to understand where all this money's going. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thank you so much. | |
| It's really appreciated you would tell us how that is. | ||
| That's wonderful. | ||
| And the other point I like to just bring up is part of the issue that's happening here is a phrase that's becoming quite popular now is that people live in their media tribes. | ||
| I see the right wing, the left wing, the whatever wings get stuck on their media channels and don't break out of it. | ||
| And they believe the people on their radio, on their TV, on their Twitter, on their TikToks. | ||
| And really, I think it's better if people start to branch out into other types of media. | ||
| Because of course, in America, 95%, at least 90% apparently, of America's media is owned by five corporations, five corporations. | ||
| And that shows that we're just simply being somewhat controlled, shall we say, by these large media corporations. | ||
| I think we need to break out of these bubbles and see what other people are saying. | ||
| That's Patrick way out in Hawaii this morning. | ||
| This is Daniel, a bit closer to D.C., Great Falls, Virginia. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| Hey, a couple points I want to bring up. | ||
| I know you mentioned earlier that USA Today article about the federal government and how it's grown, you know, 30%, I think it was, you said. | ||
| And that's a great thing. | ||
| I appreciate that you brought that up. | ||
| And we have to ask ourselves, who pays for these positions? | ||
| Every one of these government positions is paid for by garnishing the wages of working Americans, plumbers, electricians, welders. | ||
| They have to have their wages taken to pay for these positions. | ||
| And what do we get for them? | ||
| What does the American people get for these positions? | ||
| These are good, well-paying positions. | ||
| Like you mentioned, they have benefits that the private sector had to get rid of long ago because it was not affordable. | ||
| We do not have the money. | ||
| We have $36 trillion in debt. | ||
| You cannot continue to do this. | ||
| Second point. | ||
| Some caller earlier mentioned about the number one killer being like guns. | ||
| I think he said the number one killer is abortion. | ||
| Abortion kills worldwide more people than anything else. | ||
| And the third point I want to make is that he also mentioned about the trans thing being a very small percentage of what's going on and things like that. | ||
| It's not. | ||
| Within the public school systems, within the counties around the country, these issues are huge. | ||
| In my county, we have the school board president is an activist for LGBTQIA, whatever it is. | ||
| Write. | ||
| He is a man, a homosexual man, who does not have kids in the school system. | ||
| His job is to be an activist. | ||
| He was sworn in on a stack of those books, which are pornographic books, instead of a Bible. | ||
| You can't take these books to the school board and read them at a school board meeting. | ||
| They will kick you out because they're that graphic. | ||
| And these six books, the entire catalog of books written throughout history, there's millions of books. | ||
| They insist that these six books be included in every public school library. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| It's wrong. | ||
| We as parents, we're not going to stand for it. | ||
| We will not let this happen to our kids. | ||
| That's Daniel in Virginia, our last caller in this open forum. | ||
| Stick around, about 40 minutes left this morning. | ||
| In that time, we'll be joined by Run Gen Z founder and president Joseph Mitchell. | ||
| We'll discuss his organization's effort to recruit and train young conservatives into running for office. | ||
| Stick around for that discussion. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Democracy. | |
| It isn't just an idea. | ||
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| 100 years ago this past August was the beginning of what's often been called the Great War. | ||
| World War I had military casualties of over 9 million and millions more of civilians. | ||
| Professor Sean McMeekin of Bard College, located in New York State, has written nine books since 2003 on subjects that include German history, Russian history, the Ottoman Empire, communism, World War II, and one titled July 1914. | ||
| This last book will be the focus of our conversation with Professor McMeekin. | ||
| World War I was triggered in late June of 1914 by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, in Sarajevo, Bosnia. | ||
| They were gunned down by a Serbian 19-year-old by the name of Gavrulo Prince. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author Sean McMeekin talks about his book, July 1914, Countdown to War, on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | |
| Book Notes Plus is available on the C-SPAN Now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Our next guest is working to shape the future of conservative politics. | ||
| Joe Mitchell is the founder and president of Run Gen Z. Mr. Mitchell, what's the mission of Run Gen Z? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, John, it's good to be here today and thank you for having me in. | |
| The mission of Run Gen Z is to empower, train, and recruit the next generation of conservative leaders across this country. | ||
| How do you do that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we do that by going out to conferences to young professional, young conservative groups across the country like Turning Point USA chapters, younger Republican, College Republican chapters, and recruiting the next generation of leaders, speaking to them and taking elected officials, people like myself that are formally elected as young people and showing them how to have the map and have the training and the skill set to be able to run for a school board office or city council or state legislative office and win. | |
| When and why did you start this group? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I started this back in 2020. | |
| So almost five years ago is when I started the organization, incorporated it. | ||
| And I got elected to the state legislature when I was 21. | ||
| And so I ran as a junior in college at the time. | ||
| I was attending Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and ran from my home seat back home in Southeast Iowa, Mount Pleasant, Henry County. | ||
| And my predecessor of 24 years decided to retire. | ||
| And so Dave Heat was my predecessor, and Dave had been there longer than I had been alive. | ||
| And when he decided to retire, I kicked the idea around of running for office and something I had contemplated doing since working up as a page and an intern during my high school and college years. | ||
| And ultimately decided to pull the trigger and throw my hat in the ring, went out and got the necessary signatures needed to get on the ballot, and then went out to knock on thousands of doors across my district, won the primary in June of 2018, went on to win the general election in November of 2018, graduated college the next month in December of 2018, and got sworn into the Iowa House as the youngest member ever in January of 2019. | ||
| And ultimately, what I learned from that experience was I'm not special. | ||
| I'm not an outlier. | ||
| I had the guts to put my name on the ballot, go out there and do the hard work. | ||
| And I knew that we could get more young people to do the same thing I did and start really a revolution for young conservatives to start winning office and building this bench for the next several decades to come. | ||
| Why does the 21-year-old want to run for the state legislature? | ||
| And what was the reaction when you were knocking on those doors and they opened up and they're looking at a 21-year-old? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Well, the reason why I had to run, you know, my parents are small business owners. | ||
| And so I grew up in a household, you know, where my entire life was revolved around, you know, what kind of things the government can do to impact your life. | ||
| And it can be negative and it can be positive. | ||
| And so I wanted to go and fight for small business owners and employers and job creators across our state, help lower taxes, balance the budget, protect our rural public schools. | ||
| And that's exactly what I did. | ||
| And that's the message I took to the voters. | ||
| And so ultimately, what I did, that my opponents didn't, and the primary was show up to their house and knock on their door and talk to them and deliver my message one-on-one. | ||
| And if you show up, you normally win. | ||
| And that's a lesson I've learned in life is that no matter if it's in business or politics, if you show up, you're normally several steps ahead of your competitor. | ||
| How is Run Gen Z funded? | ||
| Do you help fund campaigns as we know congressional campaigns especially have become very expensive these days? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So that's the interesting thing is, you know, and part of my pitch to young people to run for office is that this isn't a congressional campaign. | ||
| And so you're not spending millions of dollars and raising millions of dollars to run, you know, typically for these school board and city council and state legislative offices. | ||
| Now you get to places like California and New York and Florida and Texas and they look a lot more like a congressional race. | ||
| But ultimately, you know, like the race I ran for, you know, we spent less than $10,000 in my primary. | ||
| And that's typical in a lot of states across this country to be able to win strictly from grassroots and raising those $50 to $100 checks from your friends and neighbors. | ||
| And so that's what we did. | ||
| And a lot of times the school board and city council can even be less resources you need. | ||
| You just need yourself and a message and go out there and convince the voters that you're the right person for the job. | ||
| Where do you get your resources for Run Gen Z? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So we're a C4. | |
| We're a 51 C4. | ||
| So it's all personal donations. | ||
| We can't tap into foundation money at all. | ||
| And so we're actually a subsidiary of ALEC Action. | ||
| And so ALEC, which is the American Legislative Exchange Council, which is a C3, they have a C4 arm called ALEC Action, and they acquired us last year. | ||
| And so, you know, we work in combination with ALEC Action to help raise dollars, but it's mainly from personal dollars from donors, which is an interesting way of raising money because it's not a tax write-off they can take. | ||
| And so they have to be truly bought into the mission to give, whether it's a $50 check or a $50,000 check, they're bought into the mission of getting young conservatives to run for office and get them elected and build this bench for years to come. | ||
| So how many people were you talking about in the years that you've been around? | ||
| What are some of your success stories right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So we have over 130 elected officials in our coalition. | ||
| So these are typically young people under 30, and they're all in local and state offices. | ||
| You know, some of her success stories from this past year, one of them is state senator Amber Hulse. | ||
| Amber's from South Dakota. | ||
| She's now the youngest state senator in South Dakota, ran in a contested primary actually against an incumbent, won that race by a few hundred votes and went on to the general, won it pretty handily. | ||
| But she's already making huge strides in the legislature. | ||
| It started just about a month ago when she got sworn in. | ||
| We have Joe Bokozi in Pennsylvania. | ||
| He actually won a very contested race in Philadelphia. | ||
| You know, as a conservative, that's a hard thing to do. | ||
| And he's 29 years old and he's the youngest state senator in Pennsylvania. | ||
| And we have Caroline Fairleigh from Amarillo, Texas. | ||
| And she's the youngest woman in the Texas state house. | ||
| And one of the stories I like to tell specifically about Caroline is there's another Caroline in Texas, Caroline Harris. | ||
| And Caroline Harris got elected at 29 to the state legislature back in 2022. | ||
| And she was the youngest woman legislator in the legislature at the time. | ||
| It went on to then mentor Caroline Fairley, who's now the youngest in Texas. | ||
| So that's the sort of culture that we've been trying to put together is getting the youngest people in the country that are elected to these state houses and local races to then mentor the next people and make sure that they stay the youngest for as little time as possible until we get the next person in there. | ||
| You say you've been doing this about four or five years, the group? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They started in 2020. | |
| Are Republicans, are conservatives doing this better than progressives right now? | ||
| Or did you start this because progressives were doing it better with young people than conservatives? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, at first this was non-existent, right? | |
| No one had a group. | ||
| No one had an organization to help train and equip and really empower young conservatives at all. | ||
| And obviously Run for Something who was on the show last week. | ||
| They'd been around for several years before us. | ||
| And, you know, that was one of the things I looked at is I said, why do we not have an organization? | ||
| Why do we not have a movement that is helping these young people? | ||
| But really just having role models for these people. | ||
| Because I said there's got to be so many young people across the country that didn't have anybody to look up to, so they didn't run for that race. | ||
| And so that was the reality that we put together was we're going to form this coalition of diverse individuals in the conservative movement to show everybody, regardless of their background, regardless of their demographic, that they can run for office and they can win. | ||
| And that could be on a very localized level or a state level. | ||
| But that was the ultimate reason for starting this is because we needed to compete. | ||
| And I think we're doing a phenomenal job competing with the left. | ||
| I think we're clearly winning from a national scale, but I think we're winning on a more localized scale as well. | ||
| And we focus on quality over quantity. | ||
| And so we have over 70% win rate at Run Gen Z, which is I think pretty good. | ||
| And so we're doing a lot of winning and we're getting the right people in and it's quality people and folks that will be around for a long time. | ||
| And another thing I just want to point out, we had several co-founders, former governors that were co-founders of this organization, one of whom being Terry Brandstadt. | ||
| Governor Brandstadt was the longest serving governor, is the longest serving governor in American history, and was the youngest governor ever elected at 36, but he got elected to the state legislature at 25. | ||
| And so his story was one that we utilized to be able to show people that, hey, you get elected at a young age, you can go on to do great things and really be an impactful figure in American history. | ||
| And so Governor Brandstadt recruited a few other of his former governor colleagues, retired, to help us as well. | ||
| And so it's been amazing to see the support from across the conservative movement come and help these young people and inspire them and empower them to want to run for office. | ||
| You mentioned Run for Something, that segment on recruiting young progressives into politics. | ||
| That was Sunday on this program. | ||
| Amanda Lippman, there you can see her on your screen, was on this program talking about it. | ||
| If you want to watch that or maybe watch that after you watch this segment, you can do so at c-span.org. | ||
| But if you want to call in in this segment, about 25 minutes left with Joseph Mitchell. | ||
| It's Run Gen Z is the name of his group. | ||
| It's 202-748-8001 for Republicans to call in. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| And a special line for Gen Z. If you're under 30, 202-748-8003, setting aside that number. | ||
| A reminder, the House is in at 10 a.m. Eastern this morning. | ||
| That's where we're going to go here on C-SPAN after this segment ends. | ||
| And you can watch all the action in the House today here on C-SPAN in the Senate. | ||
| It's on C-SPAN too. | ||
| As folks are calling in, Donald Trump at age 78 is the oldest president to take the oath of office. | ||
| You mentioned you're from Iowa. | ||
| Chuck Grassley is 91, I believe, and is the Senate president pro tem. | ||
| Is there such thing as being too old to hold public office? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I don't think so. | |
| I mean, you know, President Trump, he doesn't look 78. | ||
| He doesn't act 78. | ||
| You know, he acts like he's 30 years younger than he is. | ||
| looks like it too. | ||
| And so, you know, you had President Trump who had a swing of like 20 plus percentage points of the youth vote that he was able to garner back in this last race. | ||
| So clearly, a young people at Gen Z loves President Trump and millennials like him as well. | ||
| And he got a majority of young men to vote for him. | ||
| And so he has the kind of his pop culture appeal that people like and appreciate. | ||
| I certainly enjoy it. | ||
| And Senator Grassley runs several miles a week and that's more than me. | ||
| And so I don't think it's about your age. | ||
| I think it's about your competency. | ||
| Obviously, we have a mission to empower more young people to run for office. | ||
| But we're not trying to kick out older people from being in there. | ||
| If there's not an age limit in your mind, should there be term limits? | ||
| These folks who we hear viewers complain about that they've been in Congress forever, that it's time for a new generation. | ||
| Do you think there should be term limits for members of Congress? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, it's a debate worth having, I think. | |
| On the House level, most certainly. | ||
| I think the Senate and the House procedurally work different. | ||
| And so I'd be more open to that decision or that discussion on the House level. | ||
| But also, we have elections for a reason, right? | ||
| If you don't like your congressman, if you don't like your senator, if you like the president, then you can vote him out before and get somebody new in there. | ||
| So ultimately, I don't think it's a door that we should shut on that discussion. | ||
| But it's interesting, though, too, because when you look at the races that we're involved in with Run Gen Z, on the local and state level, I mean, it's incredibly hard sometimes to recruit good people to run for office. | ||
| So I don't, you know, not necessarily a big believer in term limits on the state and local level, but most certainly on the federal level, I think, you know, having a discussion for the House of Representatives would be an interesting discussion to have. | ||
| Do you find that on the state and local level? | ||
| We get so focused on Congress and 14-term member of Congress, 18-term member of Congress. | ||
| Are there people that stay that long in state and local government that you've got? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, there is at times. | |
| Yeah, like I said, my predecessor, Dave Heat, was there 24 years. | ||
| And did a fantastic job. | ||
| And I would have never ran against Dave in a primary by any means because he was a great representative. | ||
| He was a great leader for our district. | ||
| And I don't know if there was anybody in those 24 years if he would have stepped down that would have done as well of a job as he would. | ||
| But school boards and that sort of thing. | ||
| The local elections that you're talking about. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that's where, you know, ultimately, when you look at the school boards and the city council elections, I mean, you're talking about towns sometimes like where I grew up, Wayland, Iowa, where there's a thousand people in the town. | |
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So if they're willing to put their name out there and serve in a very volunteer capacity, true public service, putting term limits on those sort of things, I think would be a mistake. | ||
| Let me get you some calls. | ||
| This is Matthew Upfirst in North Carolina, line for Republicans. | ||
| Matthew, you are on with Joe Mitchell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So my question is, I'm a bit older than this generation, about 10 years. | |
| So what does someone like me do who would like to, you know, if not necessarily run for something, but get involved? | ||
| I mean, just two examples. | ||
| I was in D.C. recently, and, you know, I searched out a director of a government entity, a former director, and I asked him, you know, what do I do? | ||
| Can I work for free? | ||
| Do I offer to work for free? | ||
| And he said, no, no, no, don't do that. | ||
| Just put your lure in the water, you know, apply for something. | ||
| And I did. | ||
| And Matthew said, Are you talking 30s, 40s? | ||
| What age are we talking about here? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm 40 years old, so I was born in 84. | |
| So, you know, and then recently, very recently, I called a representative of a state, their office in D.C., and I said, Look, like, I'm too old for an internship. | ||
| Can I work for you for free? | ||
| I'll get coffee or do your mail or whatever just to prove my value. | ||
| But, like, their response was like, instead of taking my name, go to the website. | ||
| Everyone says go to the website. | ||
| And it's just this convoluted system where I'm fully healthy, willing to work for free for about a year. | ||
| You know, I'm living off investments. | ||
| What does someone like me do? | ||
| I'm so frustrated that I can't even do anything. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So, I guess my first question: did you go to the website? | ||
| I think we lost a caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Go ahead. | ||
| So, I mean, if they're asking you to go to the website, typically a lot of these congressional offices, you know, they have volunteer capacity where they want volunteers to help out with events and door knocking and contacting voters, especially during the election. | ||
| So, if they're asking to go to the website, I would go to the website and go to their volunteer page. | ||
| The other thing I would do is I would just get involved in your local party. | ||
| You know, every county, you know, across the country has a local or should have a local Democrat or Republican party. | ||
| I would get involved in that, you know, figure out how you can serve in some kind of officer role with that county party. | ||
| And, you know, a lot of times they have day of actions and different things that you can do to help out your local candidates. | ||
| So, I would contact your local party, show up to the next committee meeting that they have, which is probably in the next few weeks. | ||
| You know, look at when that's going to be on the internet or Facebook or their website. | ||
| But if they're asking you to go to their website to help out with the congressional campaigns, that's what I would do. | ||
| To Patty in Pennsylvania, Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was watching this morning. | |
| There's a young gentleman on. | ||
| He's Gen Z. | ||
| And he was, you know, talking about the gentleman asked him about age. | ||
| And, you know, should like President Trump's 78, Grassley's 91, should there be an age limit? | ||
| And I agree with what he said. | ||
| There shouldn't be. | ||
| But he was mentioning President Trump in a very positive way. | ||
| This man is a felon and a fraud. | ||
| He lies constantly. | ||
| When he was with Macrone yesterday, Macrone looked very presidential. | ||
| Trump was just lying through his teeth, and every other word was blaming Biden, Biden, Biden. | ||
| When is he going to take responsibility? | ||
| Joe Mitchell, give me a chance to respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Betty, he's your president, and I'm proud that he's my president. | |
| That's for sure. | ||
| I think he's done more in the last month than any other president in American history. | ||
| And we're going to have world peace soon. | ||
| Our economy is going to start thriving again very soon. | ||
| We're unleashing American energy. | ||
| And I think the world leaders understand that an adult is back on the world stage. | ||
| And I'm certainly proud that he's our president again. | ||
| Again, from federal elections to the local elections that you want to focus on here with young conservatives, how much, how important is DR behind a candidate's name on the local level? | ||
| How much do you tell your young people to emphasize that and political party? | ||
| Or is it more about conservative policies? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, you know, again, we run conservative candidates. | |
| You know, we're not a 527 pact or anything. | ||
| So we run conservative candidates. | ||
| You know, obviously it differs. | ||
| If you're in a local race, a lot of times, you know, school board elections aren't partisan and you don't say your party registration, but state legislative campaigns are. | ||
| And so it just differs, you know, whether you're running for the state legislature or maybe for a more local race. | ||
| This is Catherine in North Conway, New Hampshire, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You are next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning and hi. | |
| I think to bring young conservatives into politics, you need issues that may affect their future lives. | ||
| One topic would be the asteroid 2024 YR4 that has been in the news. | ||
| And it's supposedly going to maybe, maybe hit us in the year 2032. | ||
| And NASA and other agencies are watching it. | ||
| And my questions, which are very short, and I have three of them, concern what will happen before the asteroid makes it to the Earth and maybe hits us. | ||
| Number one, will it change our tides? | ||
| What if, number two, what if it hits our moon instead of the Earth? | ||
| Well, Catherine, a pretty big what if on the asteroid situation. | ||
| Are you having candidates run on the asteroid? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I will. | |
| I will leave the asteroid to Elon Musk in SpaceX for now to figure that out. | ||
| I'm sure he will. | ||
| And, you know, our young people, what they're concerned about is the cost of inflation of housing, the price of eggs, and being able to survive right now. | ||
| You know, we have so many young people that are in so much debt, so much college debt, and they're drowning in it. | ||
| And so that's what we're focused on. | ||
| We're focused on economical issues and making sure that young people at some point can buy a house and have a family and provide for that family. | ||
| And those are the bread and butter issues that we're focused on. | ||
| If college debt is a bread and butter issue for young people and young conservatives, how did you feel about Joe Biden's multiple efforts to forgive college loans? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally against it because there's so many young people that don't go to college. | |
| Over 50% of young people don't go to a four-year anniversary. | ||
| And so it's absolutely not fair for the young people that decided to go to the trade route or get an associate's degree or just go, you know, start a business or have a normal job out of high school. | ||
| So what do you want for those young people who are drowning in debt, as you describe it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We want to make sure that inflation comes down. | |
| We want to make sure that the price of eggs come down so they can continue to pay their debt off that they took out. | ||
| And they're not able to do that right now. | ||
| And because of the disastrous Biden economy over the past four years, it's harder to pay that debt off. | ||
| And so we've got to make sure that the economy gets back and is steamrolling and that people can get good jobs, good paying jobs to be able to live their life. | ||
| And again, people that did decide to take that debt out, they can get that paid off. | ||
| But certainly right now, it's harder than ever to be able to do that, manage that. | ||
| Less than 15 minutes before the House comes in, go ahead and keep your calls coming in. | ||
| And a reminder, we do have that line open for those under 30. | ||
| 202-748-8003 is that number. | ||
| Certainly want to hear from Gen Z. | ||
| This is Josh, though, out of Philly, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Yeah, I just wanted to ask Mr. Mitchell about what his comment is about all of the loudest mouthpieces for the conservative movement from Candace Owens to her friend Kanye West to their mutual friend Joe Rogan continually embracing fascist ideology and of course the infamous hail Hitler salutes from both Musk and Bannon lately. | ||
| I'd like to hear his response to that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, I would like to see what your responses were to the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas demonstrations that were happening all across the country last year. | ||
| We had a record amount of Jewish support in this last election. | ||
| I had several Jewish friends tell me personally that if President Trump did not win, they did not know if the existence of Israel would still be there after a Kamal Harris term. | ||
| So I think we're clearly the pro-non-discriminatory party, but also pro-Israel party. | ||
| So I would, I guess, take that up with the actors that you talked about. | ||
| But I most certainly think that conservatives are, you know, they are on the right side of the history on this issue. | ||
| What issues do get young people engaged, or at least in 2024, you talked about the turnout for Donald Trump among young voters. | ||
| What did he key in on that drove that vote? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, I think it was the economy. | |
| If you look at the Harvard youth poll from May of last year that they conducted and they did another one in September, it was all about the economy and social issues, climate change, gun violence, approach, abortion policy, for instance. | ||
| Those were all much lower on the list than housing prices, inflation, cost of groceries. | ||
| People worried about being able to have a good job and keep it. | ||
| So I mean, the economy was the driver in this last election, whether you were somebody in the Boomer generation or you're somebody in the Gen Z generation. | ||
| That's what people were worried about and cared about. | ||
| And it showed on November 5th. | ||
| Do you think Democrats focus too much on the abortion issue when trying to talk to young voters, trying to drive them out to the polls? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, clearly the cultural issues that the Democrats were trying to run on did not work out. | |
| And, you know, people wanted to hear more about the economy, more about their solutions to the economy, which I don't think they have any. | ||
| I think they're trying to figure that out right now. | ||
| You know, I'm very happy to be a Republican at the moment. | ||
| I think this is the most united we've ever been in the party's history, in the country's history. | ||
| And so, you know, ultimately, you know, we're the party of common sense right now. | ||
| That's the way that President Trump has branded us. | ||
| And I think it's a phenomenal message is that we're the party of common sense. | ||
| We're the party of 80-20 issues. | ||
| We're going to fight for the American people and for the American worker. | ||
| When do you think the party was the least united in your lifetime? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I had to say it wasn't good when we had two straight terms of Barack Obama. | |
| I don't think there was a clear leader at that point. | ||
| President Trump has clearly been the leader for at least the last eight years since being in office and will be for at least the next four and maybe past that. | ||
| And so, you know, I'm, you know, I'm excited for the future of the party and where the president has led us and the messaging that he's brought forth, but really the coalition building. | ||
| You know, we have one of the most multicultural, diverse coalitions ever seen before for Republicans, particularly with working class Americans across, you know, racial divides and religious divides. | ||
| So, you know, I think that's going to, you know, we're going to do well for many, many years to come because of that revolutionary change with the coalition building that he's done over the last four years. | ||
| When you say maybe pass that for Donald Trump, are you talking about potentially repealing the 22nd Amendment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, I'm talking about President Trump's going to have significant influence because he's been the most successful president of our lifetime. | |
| So even after he's out of office and we have a president, JD Vance or whoever that may be, I think President Trump is going to continue to stay involved because he loves his country and he wants to see this country succeed and do well. | ||
| And people respect him greatly. | ||
| And for good reason, we'll follow his advice and the endorsements that he makes. | ||
| Do you think JD Vance should follow Donald Trump? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think he should. | |
| Yeah, I think he'd be smart too. | ||
| I think he's done a great job. | ||
| Into the White House, into the Oval Office? | ||
|
unidentified
|
In 2028, I believe he'll run. | |
| And yeah, I think he should continue to project and stand for the policies that they've started to enact the last year and ran on for the last six months. | ||
| Charlene, next, out of Hyattsville, Maryland, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're on with Joe Mitchell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I'm not trying to call names or anything, but the thing is, you're saying that Donald Trump has made this country great and brought people together. | ||
| And we're supposed to be all happy when our jobs are getting taken away. | ||
| And I don't understand if he's trying to get rid of all the waste and everything. | ||
| Why is it so where he can take the F-41 anywhere he wants, have our tax dollar pay for him to go on his private golf court or go to the Super Bowl games and have everybody he wants on the plane? | ||
| How is that saving us money? | ||
| Our tax dollar is paying for it. | ||
| And also, too, every time we turn around, he's saying he's making a decision. | ||
| But Elon Musk is making all these decisions, and he's following him like a little puppy. | ||
| And, you know, it's just unbelievable. | ||
| You're talking about go out and get another job. | ||
| How are we going to get another job where all these jobs are getting people getting fired? | ||
| What kind of experience did people going into our taxes and everything? | ||
| What kind of experience they having? | ||
| Charlie, let me give Joe Mitchell a chance to respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so the first thing I would say is that President Trump won the popular vote overwhelmingly, you know, by millions and millions of votes. | |
| So I think that he is bringing the country together. | ||
| It showed on November 5th. | ||
| The second thing I would say is that Elon Musk is an advisor to the president, just like Karl Rove was to George W. Bush, just like David Axelrod was to President Obama. | ||
| And who better to have than somebody that started some of the most important and incredible businesses that we've ever seen, including SpaceX and Neuralink and Tesla. | ||
| And so there's no better person to have leading the effort to rid the federal government of fraud and abuse, which there's a lot of it. | ||
| And President Obama said that as well. | ||
| And we're actually using the United States digital service and turn that into Doge to be able to do these audits and figure out where the fraud and abuse is. | ||
| But ultimately, we have record amounts of investment coming in. | ||
| Apple just announced $500 billion they're going to invest in the United States starting over the next four years. | ||
| And so there's going to be plenty of jobs that are coming here domestically. | ||
| And President Trump is the leader. | ||
| And he's the best salesman. | ||
| So he's going to bring many jobs here over the next few years, I believe. | ||
| And we're going to have record low unemployment and record high wages. | ||
| Run Gen Z is a group dedicated to try to get young conservatives to run for office. | ||
| Would you encourage right now young conservatives to join the federal government to become a federal employee right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I would. | |
| I mean, I have a lot of friends actually who are being hired as political appointees to come in. | ||
| And they're ultimately also going to help rid out waste, fraud, and abuse from the system because I'm a small business owner. | ||
| So outside of Run Gen Z, I'm a real estate developer. | ||
| I have waste and abuse in my business that I have to go through every year and look at and do zero-based budgeting. | ||
| So I mean, there's, you know, can be abuse and inefficiencies in every single business, no matter how big or small. | ||
| To tell me that the largest organization on the face of this earth doesn't have waste, fraud, and abuse is ridiculous. | ||
| And again, that's why President Obama and Vice President Biden at the time started the United States Digital Service. | ||
| But President Clinton and Al Gore at the time, they had an initiative as well to get out the waste, fraud, and abuse and do these audits. | ||
| And this is the first time that we've actually had a president that has utilized the full power and executive branch authority to be able to get to a place where we're making massive cuts to be able to balance the budget as well. | ||
| We're $35 trillion in debt. | ||
| You just talked about that in the last segment. | ||
| And there's no way we're going to be able to get to a balanced budget again unless we make some cuts. | ||
| And we want to make cuts to the places that people are committing fraud from. | ||
| It seems pretty common sense to me to be able to do. | ||
| And then some of the discretionary spending. | ||
| But ultimately, you have to do this to be able to balance the budget again. | ||
| The debt is highly important to the future of this country. | ||
| And President Trump is committed to tackling that issue. | ||
| I think it's at 36.5 trillion at this point. | ||
| Could you see yourself as one of those political appointees in the second Trump administration? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, possibly. | |
| If the president asked me to serve, I would serve. | ||
| I don't think there's any greater honor than serving the president, especially this president, who I'm a huge fan of, obviously, and I think he's done a wonderful job. | ||
| But it takes a lot of sacrifice as well. | ||
| And when you have a business and you have other stuff going on like Run Gen Z, you have to step back from that. | ||
| But I would most certainly do that for the president. | ||
| Would you run for office again? | ||
|
unidentified
|
If the opportunity is right, not right now. | |
| I'm enjoying my time not being in office. | ||
| It is truly a sacrifice that you make. | ||
| And it's a hard job at times. | ||
| So at the moment, I'm not looking to run for any other office. | ||
| I'm just looking to help more young people run for office and get involved. | ||
| And we'll see what my future lies. | ||
| But at the moment, I'm enjoying what I'm doing. | ||
| Out to L.A., this is Kevin, Republican Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Joe. | |
| I think what you're doing is real good. | ||
| I got a question for you. | ||
| You know, I think most people trust their local used car salesmen in this country more so than they do their local politicians. | ||
| I wanted to know what things you might be doing, train other young politicians who want to become politicians, maybe make a change for that in the future. | ||
| On the trust issue, Kevin, is that what you're saying? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, on generally on politicians, young politicians, young politicians. | |
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, typically people don't trust politicians. | ||
| There's good reason to not trust politicians a lot of times. | ||
| And that's why I think why President Trump is one in 2016 and 2024 is because ultimately people didn't want politicians in office. | ||
| They wanted somebody that was going to shoot it to them straight and somebody that was a businessman and that was, you know, not all talk and no action like most politicians are. | ||
| And so ultimately that's what we're trying to instill genuism and people to be authentic. | ||
| when they're on the campaign trail and talking to voters. | ||
| And I think that's highly important. | ||
| And it's a lost art to a certain extent. | ||
| And obviously public trust in our institutions and in Congress is an all-time low. | ||
| And that's something that should be and we're working to get changed. | ||
| Evelyn in Marshall, Minnesota asks via text message, do you recruit women as well? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, yeah. | |
| I spoke about actually probably more women that we have in our coalition than men earlier. | ||
| And we have a large contingent of women that are in our coalition that ran for office. | ||
| And that's something that we highly support and have encouraged and have several individual initiatives to get young women to run for office. |