Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
Source
Participants
Main
don bacon
rep/r16:02
g
gwen moore
rep/d19:57
m
mimi geerges
cspan19:47
Appearances
donald j trump
admin02:02
elon musk
02:10
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melanie stansbury
rep/d01:36
Clips
barack obama
d00:05
bill clinton
d00:05
george h w bush
r00:07
george w bush
r00:04
j
jim marrs
00:17
jimmy carter
d00:07
joe biden
d00:03
j
john mcardle
cspan00:17
michael flynn
r00:10
roger stone
r00:02
ronald reagan
r00:05
susan cole
00:05
w
william lewis
00:19
Callers
ken in wisconsin
callers00:57
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Voice
Speaker
Time
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Additional Funding Ends00:15:40
unidentified
This morning, a hearing on the nominations of William Pulte to be director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Jonathan McKernan to be director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Stephen Myron to be chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, and Jeffrey Kessler for Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security in the Commerce Department.
Watch the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing live at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3, C-SPAN now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-SPAN.org.
C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
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Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal this morning, we'll take your calls and comments live.
And then Nebraska Republican Congressman Don Bacon on the House budget and GOP strategy to advance President Trump's legislative agenda.
And we'll continue the conversation on Congress with Wisconsin Democratic Congresswoman Gwen Moore, a look at the Trump administration's recent actions and the role of Democrats.
Yesterday, President Trump held the first cabinet meeting of his second term.
He was joined by Elon Musk, who spoke about the ongoing actions of Doge.
Polls show that a majority of Americans support efforts to cut government waste, but there are sharp disagreements on how best to do it and how to define wasteful spending.
So this first half hour, we're asking you, how do you think the government can become more efficient?
And how would you define government waste?
Here's how to reach us, Republicans 202748-8001, Democrats 202748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002.
We have a line set aside for federal workers, or if you've been recently laid off from the federal government, call us on 202-748-8003.
You can also use that same line to text us, include your first name in your city-state, and you can post your comments on social media, facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ.
Welcome to today's two-hour Washington Journal.
The House will gavel in at 9 a.m. Eastern Time.
We'll start with a poll.
Here's the Hill reporting on it with the headline, most voters support having agency focused on government efficiency.
And we'll just drill down a little bit on the results of that poll.
So it's the Harvard CAPS-Harris poll found 72% of registered voters support such an agency, including almost 9 in 10 Republicans, two-thirds of Independents, and 6 in 10 Democrats.
Pollsters found bipartisan support on a few general questions about government expenditures and waste, suggesting a path forward on the issue with support from both parties.
Two-thirds of respondents said the current level of debt for the federal government is unsustainable.
And 83% said the government should reduce its expenditures rather than raise taxes to lower budget deficits.
More than three-quarters of respondents said a full examination of all government expenditures should be undertaken rather than not interfering with current contracts and expenditures.
And this was the front page of the Washington Times this morning with this headline: Trump backs Musk amid cabinet gripes.
Here's the picture.
And the caption says, Elon Musk took command of Wednesday's cabinet meeting, the first of President Trump's second term.
Mr. Trump urged his secretaries to, quote, speak up if they had issues with the public face of the Department of Government efficiency.
Well, let's take a look at a portion of Elon Musk talking about the actions of Doge.
It says current and former USAID officials said that Musk was wrong.
USAID's Ebola prevention efforts have been largely halted since Musk and his Doge allies moved last month to gut the Global Assistance Agency and freeze its outgoing payments.
The teams and contractors that would be deployed to fight an Ebola outbreak have been dismantled.
And we're taking your calls this half hour.
We'll start with Kathleen in Bayfield, Wisconsin, Independent Line.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
I just wanted to thank everybody at C-SPAN for offering this.
I noticed that C-SPAN was able to get into the cabinet meeting yesterday, and I appreciate that.
I wanted to know if in your collection of articles this morning, if you have one from Forbes magazine basically outlining where Trump's government layoffs are taking place.
And the one that I find most horrifying, seeing as I'm 67, is that he would like to cut the Social Security Administration in half.
I suggest people take a look at this article.
It is very neutral.
Forbes is really a good publication.
And it might help kind of define where it is that Trump and his people are at this point in his attempt to downsize the government, which I think is reckless and scary and will affect just about everybody in my community.
And Kathleen, we will look for that article at Forbes, and if we can find it, we'll show it.
Here is a federal worker, Mike, in Pickerington, Ohio.
Good morning.
unidentified
Hi, good morning.
Just wanted to call in and say thanks again for all that you all are doing to cover.
From my side, I understand the intent of what cutting for government waste, fraud, and abuse, but I think what is usually missing from the narrative that most people, you know, they've been focused on the federal agencies and the federal workforce.
But it all starts and comes from laws that are created by Congress.
And I think from that end, it really is frustrating because we're executing the missions that are laid out before Congress.
And Congress keeps adding and changing unfunded mandates that are continuously created.
Explain unfunded mandates for people that might not know what that means.
unidentified
Certainly, yeah.
So unfunded mandates are when Congress enacts their little pet projects or laws such as a five-year pilot, and the federal agency has its authorized or appropriated budget for that program.
And then what ends up coming about is they say, well, you're going to do X, Y, and Z on top of what your current mission is, but we're not going to provide you any additional funding.
unidentified
What ends up happening is that, okay, well, it's not funded, but then there is the demand or the need that is expressed that, yes, we need to do this, and we're going to require X number of dollars to do this.
And then eventually, over the cycle of a couple of years, additional funding ends up getting appropriated or authorized for that program.
And oftentimes, too, what we don't see is that this pilot is run and then it gets institutionalized as part of the program.
unidentified
And so from that, that ends up becoming a lot of additional costs and expenses.
And to address the needs of customers, but then oftentimes, too, that's where we start running into additional duplications.
And one of the particular demographics that we see throughout our field oftentimes is veterans, veteran services.
We want to all serve veterans.
Congress members always want to do something for veterans, but there's a lot of additional programs and services that are out there to help veterans.
And what ends up happening is then you have a duplication of services because, oh, well, it's not through the Department of Veterans Affairs that does it.
So, this is a government accountability office that reports to Congress, but then if Congress doesn't act, nothing happens with those GAO reports.
unidentified
Exactly.
And that becomes kind of the catch-22 of this all: you have the will and whim of what the administrations want to do when it comes to executing the mission, but then you also have what Congress is enacted through Congress and what occurs with Congress when it comes to the creation and passage of laws.
And from there, you get those negotiations with the budget cycle between the House, the Senate, and the administration.
And oftentimes, it just becomes an endless cycle.
And some things do get cut a little bit, and some things get additional funding added to it.
And so, what I see from Doge is that they're trying to essentially force a function on Congress.
And we all agree in the federal workforce that there are things that do need to be modernized.
There are things that do need to be streamlined.
But then the question always comes up of running afoul of current laws or regulations that are based upon the laws and how we are able to work around those existing structures.
But do I agree with how they are looking to force a function and seemingly crash through existing laws?
That I think is where we're going to run into an interesting dilemma.
And it's certainly going to have to force the hand and functions of Congress, especially if they start reorganizing and reshuffling agencies because the statute's pretty specific on which secretaries have what responsibilities.
I got to move on to Ronald in Woodhaven, New York, Republican line.
Good morning, Ronald.
unidentified
Good morning, and thank you for taking my call.
It's interesting that here is the President of the United States hasn't been in office but 37 days, and he's attempting to cut waste and find the fraud.
And every time I listen to either commentators or callers, everybody is Ronald.
And Paul, there is, since you mentioned veterans, USA Today has this article that 1,400 more VA employees laid off in Trump's latest purge of federal employees.
Oops.
And so it says the 1,400 workers laid off on Monday were all bargaining unit probationary employees in non-mission critical roles, including DEI-related positions, the VA said in a statement.
That's on USA Today.
And this is Shirley in Stratford, Connecticut, Democrat.
Good morning, Shirley.
unidentified
Good morning, Cecil.
Good morning.
I am so grateful for federal workers.
I'm not a federal worker, but I know that they do their job.
When they do their job, we do not have problems in this country.
The fact that this man came in, a so-called genius, geniuses are people who are genius in one area.
He never started with all the funds that he himself had taken from our government for things like his cars and things like his space program that have nothing to do with the American people or beneficial to the American people.
We already have car companies.
Now, he never started taking money, billions of dollars that he had accrued from our federal dollars to do and make himself a millionaire.
But he's going to start with the American people, the needs that we have, the CDC, and important matters that help American people stay alive and get medical care and medicine.
And the thing is, is that this man is reckless.
He's always been reckless.
None of his companies have panned out the way they should.
His space program has blown up in his face.
And the thing is, is that he's coming in and destroying our country, but people are thinking that he's doing waste.
Let me explain.
The federal worker does explain in Ohio how it works.
Congress is supposed to do that job, and they are not doing their job.
If anything needs to be downsized, it should be them, not the federal workers who are doing the job to make this country run smoothly.
Well, I'm not sure what their position is right now, but they oversee these programs.
They find waste or they find problems because they get a report, ask any federal worker, they have to give an account for what they are doing to these supervisors and heads of these programs.
And they find the problems and they fix the problem.
Now, if there was a, there's always waste in all big corporations because I work for a big company.
My brother works for GE, and they have to find what the problems are and they fix the problems, even with cars.
You have cars that have recalls on them or food products that have recalls on them.
Those are problems, and they fix those problems before it hurts anybody.
Now, this is what our federal government does, too.
When you have a large corporation or hundreds or thousands of people that work in an area, there's about to be a problem.
And I never ever doubted that there was a problem or there was something that happened that caused money to be wasted or whatever the case may be.
But this is not new.
He comes in with this idea, Elon Musk, to deceive the American people into thinking he's doing something to help us.
And he's not.
All he's doing is making sure that him and the 1% can get more money added to their bottom line.
This is Sarah in Edgewater, Maryland, Independent.
Good morning, Sarah.
unidentified
Good morning.
One of the biggest reports this last week was that about $70 or $83 billion in overpayment has been made to United Healthcare in excess, right, to United Healthcare in regards to Medicare Advantage plans.
So they have overbuilt the government by $83 billion, and nothing has been done to get that money back.
Look back 10 years more, and you can collect another couple of hundred billion dollars at least that have been done in overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans.
Congress has investigated these fraudulent charges by Advantage plans, but it doesn't seem that anything has been done.
Here's one question for the administration and its attempt to look at inefficiencies.
One of the most inefficient and dysfunctional parts of the government is actually Congress, because Congress is supposed to be part of a three-legged stool that provides a system of checks and balances.
And when you have one man, the president, with a handful of billionaires, single-handedly running the countries, basically stating that there is no laws that really apply to him, what message does that send to the country?
How relevant is Congress?
I think Congress has made itself into a more and more irrelevant institutions because they don't do what they're supposed to do.
And I think, you know, I wonder if Elon Musk sent them an email saying, hey, what productive tasks did you do last week to serve the American people?
And this is, if you're looking for more information on Doge, this is, you can look at doge.gov and you'll see a website that looks like this with the information that they are posting.
And at a Doge subcommittee hearing on foreign aid funding, Ranking Member Melanie Stansbury criticized cuts to USAID and its impact on foreign relations.
Over the last five years, USAID has funded international aid to 212 countries around the world to promote international peace and security, to help maintain stability and ensure that we are making good on America's promises.
These investments are a fraction of the cost of weapons and defense, and the U.S. in the process is able to help promote national security, stop global pandemics, prevent hunger and mass migrations, and make the world and the United States a safer place.
So when we hear conservative allies of Donald Trump repeat wild and unfounded claims about international aid, and we see a coordinated attack by conservative media think tanks like those who are here today, members of Congress, the administration, we have to ask ourselves, what is really going on here, folks?
Why the hell are they so hell-bent on dismantling an organization that has been so vital to American interests and Western democracy for so long?
Over the last several days, they have fired thousands of federal employees.
It really does make you wonder, doesn't it?
And by the way, while they've been doing that, China has actually moved in already to places in South Asia that had their funding cut and is beginning to replace American diplomacy and aid in those places.
And let's hear from Ed, who's in Maine, who's a retired federal worker.
Hi, Ed.
unidentified
Hi, good morning.
I'll try to get this out as quick as I can.
If you want an example of how to do this and do it right, go back to the Clinton administration during the last administration that ever balanced the budget.
The lady that John was interviewing a few days ago that worked for an organization that he set up to streamline the government, if you listen to that interview on C-SPAN from a few days ago, that's how you do it.
I was at a public shipyard.
I was a machinist during black.
That's another way you do it.
You set up a commission, you interview the joint chiefs, find out what they need for their mission.
They tell you, they go and they visit the sites and determine why do you have this or that?
How does that match your mission?
And every place that you can't come up with an answer, you lose it.
It's as simple as that.
And I went through it, five rounds of it.
I was laid off three times and hired back three times.
But that's what you got to go through as much as I hated it.
And that is at Forbes if you'd like to take a look at the rest of that article.
We'll have more time later in the program for your calls.
But up next, we've got Nebraska Republican Don Bacon, who serves on the Armed Services Committee.
He'll discuss the budget and House GOP strategy to advance President Trump's legislative agenda.
And later, Wisconsin Democrat Gwen Moore, a member of the Ways and Means Committee, discusses recent actions by the Trump administration and the role of Democrats in the 119th Congress.
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.
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I want to ask you about, since you're on the Armed Services Committee, you served in the U.S. Air Force for over 30 years, retired as a one-star general.
Let's start with Ukraine.
President Zelensky is set to come to D.C. tomorrow.
unidentified
President Trump has said, you know, he's called him a dictator.
But I think there should be forthcoming why would you fire seven generals and admirals?
I think we deserve an explanation.
And I know General Brown.
I served with him when he was a colonel, and when he's a one-star, we were colonel and one-stars together.
And when I got out, he progressed up and made four stars.
I'm not aware that he did anything wrong.
And I think it sends a bad message to our military that if you do what the previous president wanted, and it's lawful orders, and that's what our military does.
We follow lawful orders.
And then you get a new president.
He didn't like the orders from the previous president.
They were going to hold these generals responsible.
The military responds to the commander-in-chief.
If you get a new commander-in-chief, you pivot and you do what the new commander-in-chief wants.
And my impression is these generals and admirals are getting fired mainly for the behavior that was being demanded by the previous administration.
Well, I know a lot of the, I know like the chief of staff of the Air Force is one of the smartest guys I've ever met.
I went to school with him twice.
And so we have, I think we have great people in the military.
We have a resilient military.
I'm more worried about the level of decency.
And the voters deserve to know.
Our citizens deserve to know why this decision is being made.
I do think it's not normal to bring in a three-star that has had no major command experience, no combatant command experience, no service leader command experience.
So he didn't lead any of the services, was never a major command commander, and never commanded at a combatant command, a joint command.
Normally, to bring in a chairman of the Joint Chiefs, they have one of those three experiences.
And these are the highest portions of our tax money go to.
One of them is the healthcare marketplace, which is an invention of Mitch McConnell.
And it's based in Lexington, Kentucky.
I mean, you know, how much more barrel can you roll in there?
But it cost us $1.3 trillion in $4.5 trillion of taxes that we're taking in off of people's paychecks.
And it could almost all be pointed to the care marketplace.
And if you want to know, our robocalls, we funded it.
If you look at the way I am, it's a healthcare marketplace.
Well, that's $1.4 trillion.
And these are procedures which are just done for no good reason.
My ex-wife, who's 76 years old, I watched it go on with her for about eight years.
I said, I've had enough.
And now the other is, and bless the military, for those folks, they do their job, but they get punished for doing their job.
And now that's a lot of money that we're putting from our payroll taxes into it, who the wealthiest folks who depend on that military to protect the infrastructure around the world so they can run their multinational companies, but they're not putting in their fair share.
You talk about people in NATO not paying their fair share.
Well, let's get the wealthiest people in this country to pay their fair share, not the 9.6% that they're paying right now.
Well, there's a lot to be said in all those comments.
First of all, I want to point out two-thirds of NATO is paying more than what we were asking them.
So there is a third that should be doing more, but two-thirds are ours.
I just want to put that on the table for clarity.
I do think he raises a good point.
We do not want to cut the quality of health care and Medicaid.
The president said that.
And I talked to the leadership in our team and the two chairmen, and I got those assurances.
I think what David's saying, there are ways we could look at all the spending and see how can we reduce the spending without touching the quality of care.
And I think there is money going around in places that we should study it.
And so there's some opportunities to reform Medicaid, but we've got to protect it.
In my district, 50% of all the Medicaid recipients are children.
Another 25% are disabled adults.
But the area that concerns us is the able-bodied adults.
And of course, if they're under the safety nut, we should protect them, right?
But we want to encourage them to get work, to get training, and try to get them back in the workplace and get them off Medicaid.
I just wanted to follow up on the discussion about how many four-star generals we have and how many we had in World War II.
And the numbers are kind of astonishing.
There were seven four-stars generals in World War II at the max.
And there were maybe four or five million men under arms.
Now we've got 44 four-star generals, and there's a million and a half in all the branches together.
It looks like it's lopsided.
And what I always keep thinking is that every time they try to refocus, which we're trying to focus this military now as a warfighting machine, really, which is what it was intended from the very beginning, they just keep adding on to it rather than, You know, you keep the old stuff in place.
Like the guys you're trying, they just got fired, I guess was the word.
So you need to refocus this thing.
And somebody else, another caller, mentioned something earlier about the efficiency of government employees.
Well, I'll just say I worked 35 years as a government employee in the Department of Corrections, and I could say that that is not the epitome of efficiency.
I did work two years for Uncle Sam in a military uniform way back in the 60s, and that was efficient.
I mean, that was it.
You did it.
They gave you time to get it ready and be ready to go, and it got done.
All right, so David, going back to your first question, you want to know why the military keeps increasing in size as far as the numbers go and the budget?
unidentified
Well, the number of administrative, I can only, there's 10,000 lawyers, they say, in the Department of the DOD.
There's a lot of truth to what David just said about World War II versus today.
But you've got to remember, World War II, I can't remember the exact number.
We actually had like seven five-stars.
We don't have any five-stars today.
So I think the number he was using was the four stars.
And we had a lot more four-stars in Europe and fighting the wars in the Pacific as well.
But the fact is, I think we should assess: do we have too many four-stars or too many generals in the military today?
And one of the reasons we have so many is we had the Goldwater-Nichols bill in the 1980s, and it put up theater commands for Africa, Europe, Asia.
So we have all these theater commands, and we put four-star generals in charge of, or admirals, and each of them.
And in some cases, they have very little forces, like, you know, the four-star for Africa, right?
But they, but they could get a lot of forces.
Some kind of says a fight between Egypt or somebody.
And also, this four-star gets a lot of forces.
And we may want to reevaluate because a lot of these generals don't have a lot of forces under their command, but it's written in law by Goldwater Nichols in the 80s.
Representative, I just wanted to go back to what you started with, which was, you know, the necessity to help Ukraine to need to push back on Putin.
Your president basically has aligned with Russia, made a deal with Russia behind Ukraine's back, Europe's back.
The new Chancellor of Germany wants to literally protect Europe and basically push itself out of NATO because it sees the United States as a danger.
Just yesterday, Trump posted this video, AI video, of Trump's Gaza.
He's extorting Selinsky for a deal for the minerals in Ukraine.
And you mean to tell me that you're saying that you You believe this, and yet none of you in Congress, none of you in the Senate are really pushing for there to be a real position for the United States to be the leader of the world.
This country is no longer the leader of the world.
Everywhere that the United States is pulling out of through USAID, China is coming in.
China, I'm Colombian.
China is all over South and Central America now, because the United States, under the leadership of the Republican Party, has turned the world against us.
And the way that Bush had two literal lying wars that you people were not accountable for that raised the debt trillions of dollars, I hope that people hold your party accountable for all of the disaster that's going to come because what your party is doing right now is destroying the federal government, weaponizing every agency, and made a mockery of the cabinet and the presidency.
Is there anything you can do, though, through the committee, through your position in Congress, getting the other like-minded Republican congressmen with you?
I mean, is there anything you can do besides, you know, we appreciate you coming on T-SPAN and talking about it?
I'm just wondering, as he was just speaking about checks and balances, how come the Republican congressmen and senators nowadays have no backbone to stand up against the things this president is doing and saying?
You all just fall in line to whatever he says, talking about not cutting Medicaid, Medicare.
Now you're talking, well, we're not going to cut the quality of care.
You're still going to cut the people.
He's talking about President Putin is not a dictator, and there's not a peep from the Republican side.
What happened to the backbone of the Republican Party?
You can't stand up to this president.
You think you have no say anymore?
He's not supreme leader.
And I think that the Republicans need to realize that and stand up and finally do something.
Regarding Elon Musk and Doge, you told Axios this: quote, before making cuts rashly, the administration should be studying and staffing to see what the consequences are.
Measure twice before cutting.
They have had to backtrack multiple times.
Does Congress have a role in stopping what you're calling rash cuts?
One, if we've earmarked it and it's been signed into law, the president has to spend it, right?
So if we write into law, you know, spend so much money for Project X, and it's been signed into law by the president, you know, constitutionally has to do it.
There's been other money that we put into a pot and say we give it to USAID, and then they get to determine where that money goes.
Well, the president does have the right to move that money around.
So I just want to put that on the table.
Excuse me.
Does it do two things?
The first thing it's doing is highlighting where all this money is going.
How's it being spent?
I welcome that.
We should have a full audit, very accurate audit, and let the voters see what's going on.
And I would say many voters would be concerned about what USAID was spending money on.
The second part is, okay, now they're going to make cuts.
And what I've found is that they're making them too quickly, and they're not measuring the consequences of some of these cuts, and it's hurting.
And so they've had to go back and rehire people they fired or realize, okay, this money was going to fight AIDS in Africa.
That's a good program, PEPFAR.
So they put that back on.
The problem is they fired the administrators that were doing it.
If you'll look, General Milley went behind President Trump's back, consulted his equal in the Chinese Army, told him that he would let him know if Trump was going to do an attack on China.
unidentified
Now, do you think that a man like that should be the joint chief of staff?
And also for General Charlie Brown.
Charlie Brown is a poster boy for DEI.
And something else.
You say you're a Christian.
Do you believe that God knows all, sees all, and hears all?
Yes, I do believe I believe in an Almighty God of our Bible, that he knows everything.
And I try to read four chapters a day in the Bible and pray.
But when it comes to General Milley, I've got to just point out Gerald Trump, or President Trump, didn't fire Gerald Milley.
He was already out.
So we're talking about seven generals and admirals.
And people, I mean, I know I've heard this said about General C.Q. Brown.
He's the poster boy for DEI.
People say that, but back it up.
Why do you say that?
Right?
Now, he was doing some programs that President Biden wanted, and that's because President Biden was the president, and he had asked the military to do these things.
President Trump comes in, and he gets the chance to tell the military, okay, I want to do it differently.
Let's do a 30-degree change, whatever it may be.
The military will respond.
So to fire General Brown for doing what President Biden asked him to do, I don't think that's right, unless it was an unlawful order.
It was aid, one to Ukraine and also aid to Israel.
And they were not premised initially as loans.
And again, I'll just come back to it.
It's in our national security interest for Ukraine to win this war.
If Russia prevails, we're going to be spending a lot more money, whether it be NATO or in other ways.
And so you stand up to a bully.
If you do not stand up to a bully, they act out even more.
And I'm reminded of what happened in 1938 when Nivelle Chamberlain met with Hitler privately and they carved up Czechoslovakia without the without Czechoslovakian leaders even there.
And then a year later, Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia and invaded Poland.
And we call that appeasement.
Appeasement does not work with these dictators, and I believe in being firm with them.
And so I have a different view about how to go about this than our president.
I want to point out, I don't think President Biden did a great job here either.
He was always late with the best weapons, F-16s, ATACOMs, anti-shipping missiles.
He gave it to them a year, probably later than what they should, at a level that was too little, and then gave them rules of engagement that made it hard for him to fight Russia.
So I was very critical of Joe Biden, too, on this.
Later, in about a half an hour, we'll hear from Wisconsin Democrat Gwen Moore about the recently passed House budget plan and the role of Democrats in the 119th Congress.
But first, it's open forum.
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unidentified
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And as you know, we're in for probably $350 billion.
Europe is in for $100 billion.
And that's a big difference.
So we're in for probably three times as much.
And yet it's very important to everybody, but Europe's very close.
We have a big ocean separating us.
So it's very important for Europe, and they hopefully will step up and do maybe more than they're doing, and maybe a lot more.
The previous administration put us in a very bad position, but we've been able to make a deal where we're going to get our money back and we're going to get a lot of money in the future.
And I think that's appropriate because we have taxpayers that shouldn't be putting the bill.
And they shouldn't be putting the bill at more than the Europeans are paying.
So it's all been worked out.
We're happy about it.
And I think that very importantly, we're going to be able to make a deal.
Most importantly by far, we're going to make a deal with Russia and Ukraine to stop killing people.
They'll stop killing young Russian soldiers and young Ukrainian soldiers and other people in addition in the towns and cities.
And we will consider that a very important thing and a big accomplishment because it was going nowhere until this administration came in.
They hadn't spoken to President Putin in two years.
And David in Riverside, California, Republican Line, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning, Mimi, and good morning, America.
I want to talk about JD Vance, who is our new vice president.
He went to the German security conference in Munich and warned them of the threats to free speech and Christian persecution going on in Europe and in the USA, and how we must have free speech if we are to preserve democracy.
It was a very gutsy speech that he knew would not be well received.
In Germany, people are being put in jail for insulting another person over the internet or in person, as the 60 Minutes TV show and podcast featured recently.
I think free speech is a wonderful thing, but everything has its limits.
Obscenity like pornography or filthy talk and F-words should be pushed out from mainstream society.
And you should not be able to slander somebody by saying something scandalous unless it's true.
Also, you should not be able to threaten violence.
Having said the limits on free speech, I would say I'd like to say to point out what I can say on open forum or in person.
I can't say I'm a Christian and I love Jesus.
Don't agree with me?
Fine, you can say so.
I can say I think abortion is murder or at least manslaughter, depending on your knowledge before you do it.
The way I figure, we have free speech, but we have to exercise it.
As some people say, use it or lose it.
I've actually gone to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, and worn a I Love Jesus hat in front of 100,000 people.
Nobody ever picked on me about it.
In fact, people would say to me, man, I want a hat like that.
Where do I get that from?
I did get negative comments rarely, but not at the Rose Bowl, but mostly positive overall.
We take free speech for granted, but the way things are going, it's not a done deal.
You know, he wants to have his opinion columnists write things that he agrees with without having anything that might, you know, throw a different angle in there.
So kind of, you know, then you have people calling, you know, that say, you know, this TV news program, MSNBC, CNN.
But then we have Fox News that paid $780 billion to not go to court over their lies about Dominion.
And then another thing going on from there, just bantering here.
A couple weekends ago, you had Ralph Norman, I think you talked to him from South Carolina, and he was talking about how he's so concerned, you know, in the Ways and Means Committee or whatever he belongs to about the American taxpayer dollars.
But that's a man that's worth $40 some million dollars that did not have a problem taking $330,000 worth of PPP.
So why doesn't Doge look into the Congress, the senators, and post who took PPP money, and then we'll know who really is concerned about the American taxpayer dollars.
And Donovan mentioned the changes at the Washington Post.
Here is CNN.
Jeff Bezos announces significant shift coming to the Washington Post.
A key editor is leaving because of it.
It says that the opinion page that was led by David Shipley, the paper's editorial page editor, is going to be leaving the changes upended precedent and rattled a media company that has already been shaken by years of turmoil and leadership turnover.
It says, so Bezos put out in an ex-post on Wednesday morning after announcing the change in a company-wide email.
He said that Bezos wrote, Viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
So he said that he's got two editorial pillars, and that is anchored in freedom and free markets.
I want to make sure I show you those two pillars, and I will find those for you.
But we'll hear from Gina in Mount Vernon, New York, Independent Line.
unidentified
Hello.
Hi.
Hi.
I just wanted to mention this.
Power Split Crisis00:15:20
unidentified
It says here that Donald Trump orders military to stop recruiting black people.
So it says the Army and other service branches are abandoning recruiting efforts at a prestigious black engineering event this week, turning down access to a key pool of highly qualified potential applicants amid President Donald Trump's purge of diversity initiatives in the military.
Until this week, Army Recruiting Command had a long-standing public partnership with the Black Engineer of the Year Awards, an annual conference that draws students, academics, and professionals in science, technology, engineering, and math, known as STEM.
It takes place in Baltimore, has been a key venue for the Pentagon to recruit talent, including awarding reserve officers training corps scholarships and pitching military service to rising engineers.
Now, as a veteran and many family members who are veterans and some who served in wartime, now this morning, just recently, maybe about an hour and a half ago, on ABC News, there was a report that there may be cuts in veterans affairs and may not cover cancer treatments.
Quote, now for veterans, now, what other cuts could be in health care for veterans?
unidentified
You know, many veterans who served in Vietnam many years ago were exposed to chemicals.
And Nimi, I just, I'm almost finished, but I remember about five years ago in 2018, I did an original video supporting President Trump and how the economy was going.
And I do want to share the article that you talked about from ABC News.
Headline: VA passes billions in cuts lauded by Musk as lawmakers and veterans decry loss of critical care.
It says the Department of Veterans Affairs temporarily suspended billions of dollars in contract cuts after an uproar that critical veterans' health services were harmed.
This says, so those cuts have been temporarily suspended as a result of that uproar.
The cancellation would save $2 billion as the Trump administration works to slash cuts across the government.
It says that Secretary Collins, Secretary of the VA, posted on X, quote, no more paying consultants to do things like make PowerPoint slides and write meeting notes.
And here is Earl in Reading, California, Republican.
Hi, Earl.
unidentified
Good morning, Mimi.
Good morning, America.
I'm a volunteer Agent Orange veteran, and I just want to say about the VA, they've kept me alive the last 30 years.
I'm 100%.
They didn't give the money to me lickety split, but as I added operations and procedures, my file kept getting bigger, and pretty soon they couldn't deny me, and I'm 100%.
I just want to say it's one of the proudest things I've ever done in my life, and I don't have any regrets.
There's two points I'd like to make quickly.
One of them was the bringing back of retired Raisin Cain.
Trump, in his own words, I heard him say when he went to Iraq, Afghanistan, he made a trip.
He met Raisin Kane.
He asked how long it's going to take to take care of ISIS.
There were many people there said it's going to take years.
Raisin Kane said not very long.
And he went in and cleaned the house.
They're coming back, ISIS, evidently.
I heard him mention ISIS in the Congo, where they beheaded over 100 people.
They herded them into a church and beheaded them for being Christians.
Now, my second point is: bear with me.
I've had some oxygen problems.
It affects my memory a little.
What was my second point?
Damn, it's important.
Oh, on Ukraine, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, people that are bitching about all this money disappearing and fraud and what have you, they need to take a look at Ukraine.
I noticed every time billions of dollars was given to Ukraine, there was a bagman from the Democratic Party go over and present the check and probably came back with a suitcase.
According to Trump, they got $350 billion, but they only got half of it.
So, Earl, I do want to mention, since you brought this up, this is from Genocide Watch from Open Doors International.
It's an organization saying that 70 Christians were murdered by ISIS, an ISIS affiliate in Eastern DRC, that's the Democratic Republic of Congo.
It said that the militants rounded them up, took them to a church, and killed all 70 of them.
So, yes, thank you for bringing that up to our attention.
And this is Linda in Howell, Michigan, Independent Line.
Good morning.
unidentified
Hi, Mimi.
I had wanted to talk to the representative, Mr. Bacon, and I just wanted to tell him how I appreciated as a Republican.
He actually stood up for Ukraine and for all the values I hold dear as a veteran.
And it was refreshing to hear him talk against his own party, which you don't hear anymore.
That's really all I wanted to say, except for the fact that it makes me so sad to hear all the people denigrating veterans that work for the federal government, making it sound like that there's people out there that aren't even there and they're collecting a check.
I mean, that is just sad.
Veterans are hard workers, just like they were in the military.
Yeah, I had a quick comment about the Ukraine subject that Mr. Bacon was talking about.
And that is that people need to do a little more reading of history and understand what's going on in that area for years.
For example, the reason the Russians are so attached to the Crimea and Sevastopol is the warmwater part of Sevastopol.
They've held that territory and been in that area.
The Russian people have been in that area since 1783.
Now, I'm not a big supporter of Putin or Russia, but I'm just talking about the historical facts in the area.
The reason the Ukraini hate the Russians so much is because the Russians slaughtered millions of them in the 20s and 30s in the establishment of the CCC.
So you've got two sides that there will never be peace between.
George, do you think the United States should make security guarantees to Ukraine?
unidentified
Absolutely not.
Absolutely not.
Except to the extent that the western portions of Ukraine that may be salvaged, there should be an understanding with Russia that that's part of the deal, that the sovereignty of the western or central part of whatever they can maintain of a sovereign Ukraine shall remain sovereign, just as they would agree to the people over Crimea.
Trust Russia to abide by those agreements without before you ask that question, let me ask you a question.
They have held that territory since 1783.
That's before Texas.
This is no different than if Russia had come over here, messed around in Texas politics to try to get Texas to secede.
How quickly do you think the United States would let go of Texas if Russia had done that?
I guarantee you there'd be planetary warfare.
Sorry.
It's the same situation.
Got it.
And the problem is the public doesn't understand the historical background.
Tony, I know with West Virginia, kept getting kind of caught up in his thing, but I want to continue his point.
We, the people, do need to band together.
And I just don't know how we can fight this off when Elon and Trump are not listening to the courts.
They're not listening to Congress.
They're not listening to anybody.
I was listening to Independent Senator King earlier, and he gave this big speech at the Senate last week about how, you know, power was split up for a reason so that no one person, no one president could take, you know, power away.
But the thing is, they have thrown away the rule book.
And Elon Musk hasn't been elected.
He won't come to any Senate discussion, Congress, anything.
He admitted that he made a mistake about the Ebola thing and that he took care of it.
And as we know, that hasn't been taken care of.
But nobody's looking at he, which is Elon Musk.
And I'm afraid we have let the lion in, and he is gobbling up everything.
And for your schedule, later today, at about 2 p.m., President Trump is welcoming British Prime Minister Kier Starmer to the White House to discuss the war in Ukraine and other shared interests between the U.S. and the U.K. There will also be a joint news conference that's 2 p.m. Eastern.
We'll have that live on C-SPAN here on C-SPAN Now, our app and online at c-SPAN.org.
Well, up next, we've got Wisconsin Democrat Gwen Moore about the recently passed House budget plan and the role of Democrats in the 119th Congress.
We'll be right back.
unidentified
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Well, Mimi, you know, it's really clear from their reconciliation, their resolution instructions to the committees that a great deal is going to come out of agriculture.
$230 billion, that also seems to be where, you know, SNAP, formerly, SNAP, formerly called Food Stamps, comes from, and $880 billion out of the Energy and Commerce Committees, which presides over Medicaid and also the Inflation Reduction Act energy improvements that were made under the Biden administration.
That's where a great deal of the money is going to come from.
And people who are concerned are rightfully concerned.
I would cut the wasteful giveaways and tax breaks to people who don't need them.
To wealthy corporations, there's a huge loophole in what we call a small business initiative, the 199A provisions that provide a pass-through income to businesses.
We have businesses that have gross receipts of $10 million that are, as far as I'm concerned, are unworthy of this particular tax break.
Bonus depreciation.
would cut some of the fat from the tax breaks that we're providing the $4.5 trillion that's being proposed for tax cuts that primarily not totally but primarily benefit corporations and the wealthiest individuals in the United States.
Imposing work requirements has never created more work.
People who are able to work are happy to work.
When people are not working, there is often some really important reason, their own health, they have responsibilities for children, for elderly people.
The only purpose for imposing work requirements is to discourage people who would otherwise be eligible from applying.
Their whole strategy around work requirements is not to increase work, but to deny people who are eligible of those benefits.
If you'd like to join our conversation with Representative Gwen Moore, a Democrat of Wisconsin, she will be with us until the end of the program at 9 Eastern when the House is scheduled to gavel in.
The numbers are 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats, and 202748-8002 for Independents.
Congresswoman, I'd like to get your reaction to the Doge, the activities of Elon Musk, what you have seen so far, and where you are on this.
Well, I mean, you know, President Trump was elected as our 47th President of the United States, and he has completely ceded his power and control, calling the shots to Elon Musk.
And not only that, the Congress has ceded its role to the president and to the executive branch.
I mean, it is not legal for the president to be doing what he's doing to impound funds.
We're Article I of the Constitution, the members of Congress.
It is our job to discern whether or not we make cuts or withhold money based on waste, fraud, and abuse.
This is not Elon Musk's call.
It is not the president's call.
And the Impoundment Act of 1974, which is a reaction to, of course, Richard Nixon impounding duly appropriated funds.
And it has been affirmed by the United States Supreme Court time and again that the Article I functions, the power of the purse, resides with the Congress.
And so everything that they're doing is unconstitutional.
Well, Dorothy, you're just not by yourself in criticizing the Democrats for messaging, for not doing more.
And you're right.
Elections have consequences.
And so the Democrats, if you say that it's our messaging, you know, people did not want to hear us talk about democracy being at stake.
They did not want to hear us warn them about Project 2025.
And about a third of that has been put in place with this whole Doge effort.
They didn't want to hear it.
They said we weren't getting through to them.
And of course, elections now have consequences.
The robber barons are at the door.
They're looking for $4.5 trillion to give to the wealthiest corporations and individuals.
You saw Elon Musk with a chainsaw, a really, I think, apt symbol of what they're doing.
And not only that, you saw Dorothy, I mean, they cut employees that were responsible for ensuring that our nuclear plants were safe.
The FAA, where, of course, Elon Musk has a lot of projects, his Starlink projects associated with the FAA.
We've seen them sort of firing hordes of people.
They're firing, I'm sure there are people who voted for Donald Trump that didn't believe that maybe they thought we weren't messaging well.
Veterans and the VA is being dismantled as we speak.
In my own district, just yesterday, we had three veterans dismissed, just unilaterally fired, and I guess their names were waste, fraud, and abuse, according to Elon Musk.
So our message now is that the real thing that's going to save this country is you, Dorothy, you standing up against this insurrection.
Because as Abraham Lincoln said, and Speaker America is fond of quoting, Abraham Lincoln, is that public sentiment is everything.
And then without it, everything fails and nothing succeeds.
So Dorothy, I would suggest instead of just saying what Democrats ought to be doing, you need to be calling up those Republicans who perhaps, you know, Republicans and maybe there aren't any Republican senators in Maryland, thank God.
But there are Republicans all over this country, and you see people with their handmaids.
And that is what is working.
That is the only thing that will get the Congress more afraid of their behavior and holding up that chainsaw than they are of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Well, the Social Security, I have a proposal in particular that would address some of what Dorothy has talked about.
And Social Security, you know, taxes are things that have to be done.
I think, I think taking the cap, she mentioned one thing, taking the cap off Social Security, and my proposal does that.
There's absolutely no reason that my daughter, who's a school teacher, has to pay taxes on her Social Security wages throughout the entire year.
And by August, I no longer pay Social Security taxes.
So that's one thing that I would agree with Dorothy on for sure.
But that is not where we are right this minute.
We're in the middle of trying to prevent the government from being shut down and trying to prevent these robber barons from stealing all of the money, putting youth, elderly, seniors, veterans at risk by taking medical care monies, by undermining Medicare, by withdrawing monies from hospitals in rural areas and low-income areas.
That's where we are right this minute.
We're in the middle of a crisis, and that debate is not what's on the table at this moment.
With regard to the HUD scandal in Milwaukee, you know, HUD has been underfunded for decades and decades with regard to the repairs and maintenance.
And we really do need to lean more into providing decent facilities for those people who often have worked their entire lives and find themselves disabled or in retirement without the fancy benefits that some of us get.
Public housing is extremely important toward our housing solution.
And I think that HUD and hopefully this administration, as was true with the Biden administration, they have been working with the local housing authority to try to get things in shape and really authorizing sort of outside agencies to do some oversight.
These are the people you need to be complaining to.
You know, the people who are voting to do, to support him, like Byron Donalds, comes to mind as a Republican down there.
These are people who are more concerned about the sentiments of President Trump than they are you in Florida.
If they knew how pissed off and mad you were, maybe they wouldn't vote to gut Medicaid.
Maybe they wouldn't vote to gut SNAP.
Maybe they wouldn't vote to destroy the federal employees.
You know, most of the federal employees don't even live in Washington, D.C. or Maryland or Virginia.
They're all over the country.
I have 18,000 of them in Wisconsin and certainly in Florida with Nassau and everything else there.
You have a lot more federal employees than I do.
You need to complain to Republicans.
Republicans now are scared of Donald Trump and they're not scared of you.
They need to be scared of you, scared that you're going to mobilize.
You're going to get all your neighbors, your nieces, and nephews to vote against them in two years.
That's the thing that will move them.
As a single member of Congress in the minority, I don't have the power to move him.
He'd be gone if it were up to me.
He's unelected.
He is unconfirmed by the Senate.
This is unconstitutional.
Here's a person who, as a member of Congress, I can't earn a penny more than $30,000 of outside income because that would be unethical and violation of my oath.
Here's a man who has billions of dollars of contracts with the federal government sitting in on cabinet meetings.
The house is on fire.
And I want people to understand this, that there is nothing normal about this.
And, you know, blaming Democrats for not having the right message or whatever, that's not the solution.
Democrats are working hard.
There's not a single Democrat anywhere that's going to vote for their stuff.
We are working with the 70 so far lawsuits that are out there to try to stop them filing amicus briefs.
But you, you, out there in Seminole, Florida, you are the solution to this.
We'll go to Ron in Hunt Valley, Maryland, Independent Line.
unidentified
Hi, good morning, Representative.
Good morning, C-SPAN.
So I think first we have to back up and look at this at a broader perspective.
How did we end up where we're at here today?
And the Democratic Party really has to take that question seriously.
And they're not.
You know, when you mislead the country on the cognitive condition of our president, when you prioritize illegal immigrants over U.S. citizens, that's how we end up where we're at here today.
And I noticed that you're using the same talking points that we can get off of YouTube, that we can hear on CNN or MSBC, but there's no substance to what you're saying.
Why Democrats Are Losing Constituents00:07:48
unidentified
Half of America is suffering right now.
And I'm an independent.
My son's mom works for the DOD, and I'm just calling every day to see if she got her pink slip.
So this is impacting me as well.
But when I'm hearing from you and from Jeffries, that there's nothing that we can do, that right there should be a shock to every single Democratic constituent that voted for you.
There's a lot that you can do.
You can start getting out the air preparing for two years from now, right?
So it seems as if your party has pretty much just, you know, just given up on those constituents who have voted for you.
Well, you know, I'm sorry that you think that I am not being substantive in my discussion here today.
And I apologize if you don't think it's substantive.
And I apologize to you for thinking that I'm not representing my constituents, you know, and that the Democratic Party has failed.
Apparently we have failed.
And that, you know, we started with our not acknowledging the aging condition of our President Biden.
You know, and I guess your suggestion is that Mr. Trump is somehow not compromised in his mental capacity either.
I guess that's the assumption that I would have to make around that.
And that people voted for Donald Trump because he seemed to be so much more prescient than Joe Biden, if that were the thing that determined the election.
I think that Donald Trump and his team, that they were very clever in appealing to people's emotions, having people focus on the, say, the 0.002% of our population that were trans,
and convincing people that we were more concerned about transgender people than we were about their grandmother who was in the hospital or who didn't want to pay more than $65 a month for her insulin or that we weren't concerned about addressing climate change, that we only cared about trans people.
And that we wanted, you know, undocumented people, illegal aliens, as they called them, and that we were spending millions of dollars on them and not taking care of American people.
That was the talking point of the Republicans that seemed to have pierced Americans' consciousness more than our concern about Project 2025, which is about third way through, and they're following it, you know, and Donald Trump's promises that, in fact, he knew nothing about it.
They apparently thought that that was a much more compelling than our efforts to lower prescription drug costs, to maintain a safety net for people, and to address climate action and to continue our alliances across the oceans with our European colleagues.
And so I do apologize for you, to you, for not appearing to be substantive and sounding like I'm on YouTube.
Just the other day, last time I checked, he just gave himself a $38 million contract.
I doubt that he has any competitors against that.
And you know, the really interesting thing is that the last time at the end of the beginning of this session, we were at the point when we were preventing the government from being shut down in December.
There was a continuing resolution that the Democrats and Republicans had both agreed upon.
And at the last minute, Donald Trump said, oh, I want you to raise the debt limit.
And there was a lot of confusion.
And, oh, we were just hours away from shutting the government down.
And Elon Musk pulled one provision out of there where Democrats and Republicans, both of them being concerned about the Chinese Communist Party, there was a provision that would have prevented people like Elon Musk from interfacing with Chinese technologies, and that was pulled out.
You know, and we know that Tesla's, Shanghai, the Chinese operations, are responsible for maybe about 50% of those productions.
And so Elon Musk is protecting his interests as he runs the government.
Okay, well, let me just get one thing straight about that, sir.
And I'm glad you really brought that up.
There is nobody that is 150 years old getting a Social Security check.
You know, my daughter was born, I happen to know this.
My daughter was born January 1st, 1970, which began literally January 1st, 1970, was the beginning of a new year of computer timing.
And people who, and at one point, the computer sort of timing for Social Security was that 150 years.
And so that was a way for them to, the Social Security system to track the very, and route out the very kind of waste, fraud, and abuse we'd be looking for.
That was a fluke that was announced inappropriately.
It should be a source of great embarrassment to the tech titan Elon Musk.
There's nobody who's 150 years old getting Social Security.
That's a Republican talking point.
He hasn't found any waste, fraud, and abuse that we can find.
But that is our job as the Article 1 of the Constitution, which makes it very clear that it is our job to appropriate monies, to take monies back.
That is our job.
And of course, if people don't like it, we're up for election every two years.
They can unelect them if they don't feel that we're doing that.