CSPAN - Washington Journal 03/10/2025

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March 10, 2025 07:00-10:00 - CSPAN

02:59:44

Washington Journal 03/10/2025

Participants

Main

jeffrey rosen

29:22

john mcardle

cspan 42:26

Appearances

brian lamb

cspan 00:39

donald j trump

admin 00:31

doug collins

01:13

jake tapper

cnn 00:44

rick scott

sen/r 01:40

Clips

barack obama

d 00:02

bill clinton

d 00:02

george h w bush

r 00:02

george w bush

r 00:04

jim marrs

00:09

jimmy carter

d 00:03

michael flynn

r 00:14

patty murray

sen/d 00:04

ronald reagan

r 00:01

Callers

andrew in connecticut

callers 00:14

bob in new york

callers 00:03

dave in texas

callers 00:05

mike-2 in tennessee

callers 00:13

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		And then a look at efforts to avoid a government shutdown this coming Friday as another deadline to fund the government looms with Eric Wasson, congressional reporter at Bloomberg News, and Reuters White House correspondent Nandita Bose.
		Previews the week ahead at the White House.
		Also, Jeffrey Rosen, President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, will join us to discuss President Trump's use of executive authority.
		C-SPAN's Washington Journal starts now.
		Join the conversation.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
		It's Monday, March 10th, 2025.
		The House is in at 2 p.m. Eastern.
		The Senate returns at 3 p.m., and we're with you for the next three hours.
		We begin on President Trump's efforts to reduce the size and cost of the federal workforce.
		With new agency cuts being announced just this morning and with just days to go now before a potential government shutdown, we're hearing from current and former federal workers only in this first hour today, asking what's your view of the Department of Government Efficiency.
		If you're current or former federal worker in the Eastern or Central time zones, the number 202-748-8000.
		If you're a current or former federal worker in the Mountain or Pacific time zones, 202-748-8001.
		You can also send us a text this morning, that number 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.
		And a very good Monday morning to you, federal workers, current and former, go ahead and start calling in now.
		We're hearing from you only in just this first segment of the Washington Journal today.
		As you're calling in, this tweet out from Secretary of State Marco Rubio this morning announcing more changes in U.S. foreign aid at the U.S. AID program.
		After six weeks of review, he wrote this morning, we are officially canceling 83% of the programs at the U.S. Agency for International Development.
		He said the 5,200 contracts that are now canceled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve and in some cases even harmed the core national interests of the United States.
		He said in consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18% of programs that we are keeping to now be administered more effectively under the State Department.
		Particularly there, Marco Rubio, thanking at the end, Doge and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform.
		That from Secretary of State Marco Rubio this morning.
		That tweet coming amid other headlines this morning, including this one from the New York Times.
		The weather agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is preparing for more staff cuts, new dismissals coming to the tune of approximately 1,000 workers at the NOAA, as it's known here in Washington, D.C.
		And then one more headline for you this morning, this one about the health agency, some 80,000 federal workers responsible for researching diseases, inspecting food, and administering Medicare and Medicaid under the auspices of the Health and Human Services Department were emailed an offer to leave their job for as much as $25,000 in payments as part of new government cuts.
		Those are just some of the headlines this morning about changes in the federal workforce.
		We want to hear from federal workers, current and former, about your view of the Department of Government Efficiency.
		Again, the numbers to call in.
		202-748-8000 if you're a federal employee in the Eastern or Central time zones.
		202-748-8001 if you're in the Mountain or Pacific time zones.
		You're calling in.
		It was CNN State of the Union yesterday, this discussion around federal workers and the size of the federal workers, very much a part of the Sunday shows.
		On CNN, it was Rick Scott, the Republican from Florida, the senator defending Elon Musk and Doge and the changes in the federal workforce that have already been made under the Trump administration.
		Here's some of that conversation.
jake tapper ▲ ● ▼		We've seen experts in nuclear weapons fired, then rehired.
		We've seen air traffic controllers at least attempts to fire them.
		Sean Duffy says he stopped that from happening.
		We've seen people at the Veterans Crisis Line fired then rehired.
		We've seen people investigating pandemics, infectious diseases fired, then rehired.
		Beyond that, as Musk takes his chainsaw to the government, as you know, about 30% of our federal workforce in the United States, about 30% are veterans, and a majority of that 30% are disabled veterans.
		Meanwhile, the VA is also preparing to slash up to 70,000 VA jobs providing critical services to veterans.
		You're a veteran.
		You served honorably in the Navy.
		Are you concerned about that?
rick scott ▲ ● ▼		Well, step one is I very much appreciate anybody that served.
		My dad did all four combat jumps with ASIC and Airborne in the Second World War.
		I had the opportunity to serve in the Navy.
		I'm very appreciative.
		When I became governor of Florida, unemployment of veterans was way higher than our unemployment.
		And we worked every day to make sure we got that below our unemployment rate.
		And we did.
		It took us about a year or so.
		So here's what we have to do.
		We have to rein in the size of government, right?
		All right.
		And then we have to make sure everybody can get a job.
		Now, you do that by reducing regulation.
		You do that by streamlining the permitting process.
		You do that by growing the private sector, not growing the size of government in Washington.
		Government in Washington is way too big.
		It's causing our inflation.
		It's causing interest rates to be high.
		And there's no, when Donald Trump took office, I can just tell you, my experience is there was no accountability in government and there was no transparency.
		That's what Elon Musk, that's where agency is, that's what Donald Trump is trying to bring to the table.
		And they're going to do it.
		They're going to figure this out.
		I'm very optimistic that we can get this done and balance the budget.
		Donald Trump has promised to balance the budget.
		I did it as governor of Florida.
		This is all doable.
		Now, do some people not like accountability?
unidentified		Sure.
rick scott ▲ ● ▼		Do some people not like transparency?
		Sure.
		I mean, they just want to have a job.
		But get back to, by the way, get back to work.
		This idea that you don't have to go to the office, I mean, you know, if you work in a grocery store, you have to go to the office.
		I mean, all these other people go in the office.
		Federal workers have to get back to work.
		Yeah, I mean, I didn't.
		The American public is fed up, Jake.
		They're tired of this.
		There's no common sense.
		There's no accountability.
		I just went through a campaign trail.
		Nobody said, I'm so excited about our federal government.
		Nobody.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Republican Senator Rick Scott yesterday on CNN asking you this morning to call in if you're a current or former federal employee.
		We want to hear from you about DOGE, about changes in the federal government, efforts to reduce the federal workforce, how it's impacted you, your stories.
		202748-8000 is the number to call if you're a federal employee in the Eastern or Central time zones.
		202-748-8001.
		If you're a current or former federal employee in the Mountain or Pacific time zones, by the way, this week, we are looking at a government funding deadline.
		The government set to run out of money Friday evening if no deal is made between now and then.
		We'll give you an update on the status of negotiations to move legislation this week to keep the government funded, a bill in the works.
		We'll talk more about that in our next segment of the Washington Journal.
		But as the Washington Times editorial board today notes, the government funding bill could very much have an impact on the size and scope of the federal workforce.
		It's the editorial board today talking about this process of keeping the government funded past Friday saying should the temporary funding extension that has been proposed fail, non-essential federal employees will be sent home.
		Essential employees will have to keep doing their jobs, but their paychecks will be delayed until the situation is resolved.
		They note that it's been left-leaning federal judges who have been issuing temporary restraining orders to thwart Donald Trump and Elon Musk's trimming of the federal workforce.
		Meanwhile, 76% of the public backs Mr. Trump's efforts to slash wasteful spending.
		They say a funding lapse on Friday would mean that non-essential employees couldn't be put back on the job.
		And in this way, a shutdown would bypass some meddling jurists when it comes to shutting down the government.
		That's the editorial board of the Washington Times today.
		We're hearing from you this morning asking for federal workers and current and former federal workers only specifically to call in and let us know about your stories and your experiences.
		Go ahead and call in 202748-8000 is the number if you're in the Eastern or Central time zones.
		202-748-8001 if you're in the Mountain or Pacific time zones.
		Regarding the Veterans Affairs Administration, it was Doug Collins who released a video on social media this weekend addressing proposed cuts at the VA.
		This is what he had to say.
doug collins ▲ ● ▼		In response to President Trump's Department of Government Efficiency and Workforce Optimization Initiative, VA is conducting a department-wide review of its organization, operations, and structure.
		Central to these efforts is a pragmatic and disciplined approach to eliminating waste and bureaucracy, increasing efficiency, and improving health care, benefits, and services to veterans.
		This will be a thorough and thoughtful review based on input from career VA employees, senior executives, as well as the top VA leaders.
		Our goal is to reduce VA employment levels to 2,019 in-strength numbers, roughly 398,000 employees, from our current level of approximately 470,000 employees.
		Now that's in a 15% decrease.
		We're going to accomplish this without making cuts to health care or benefits to veterans and VA beneficiaries.
		VA will always fulfill its duty to provide veterans, families, caregivers, and survivors the health care and benefits they have earned.
unidentified		That's a promise.
doug collins ▲ ● ▼		And while we conduct our review, VA will continue to hire from more than 300,000 mission-critical positions to ensure health care and benefits for VA beneficiaries are not impacted.
unidentified		There are many people complaining about the changes we're making at the VA.
doug collins ▲ ● ▼		But what most of them are really saying is, let's just keep doing the same thing that the VA has always done.
unidentified		No, not going to happen.
unidentified		The days of kicking the can down the road and measuring VA's progress by how much money it spends and how many people it employs rather than how many veterans it helps are over.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That was VA Secretary Doug Collins talking about potential cuts at the VA.
		We're asking you for current and federal employees to call in this morning to tell us your stories.
		We'll also open up phone lines for all others.
		So a phone line for current and federal employees, 202748-8000 to call in.
		All others for comments on cuts to the federal government, 202748-8002.
		We'll have this conversation in this first hour of the Washington Journal today.
		Some comments from some federal employees and some all others already in our social media page.
		Anthony writes in this morning, it seems like they, referring to those who have been making these cuts, don't have the authority to fire people without cause and impound federal funds that were appropriated by Congress.
		It's going to be a bonanza for lawyers, is what Anthony says on X. We're actually going to be talking about the constitutional issues involved in this process and in the first 50 days of the Trump administration.
		Jeffrey Rosen of the National Constitution Center joining us in our 9 a.m. hour, the Washington Journal today, and we can take up that issue.
		Ryan Klung on Facebook saying this morning: if they, again, talking about those who are trying to trim the government, stay on stomping out fraud, waste, and abuse, that's great.
		They're losing, though, highly qualified, hardworking government employees through a quick, moving, inaccurate method of ripping through mass firings, saying they're making many pay for the fraudulent, fraudulent mistakes of the few.
		And here's one more for you: This is Eddie on Facebook saying Doge has been needed for years now, too much government waste over the years.
		And with Doge, we are finally finding out about it and beginning to cut some of that waste.
		Some of your comments on social media.
		Again, at 202-748-8,000 for current and former federal employees, 202-748-8002 for all others.
		As we talk about Doge cuts this morning, the Department of Government Efficiency.
		It was President Trump who was speaking to reporters aboard Air Force Force One when he was asked about the danger of cuts at places like the Federal Aviation Administration, especially in light of recent plane crashes in this country.
		This is what President Trump had to say.
unidentified		There was just another plane crash meeting today.
		Secretary Duffy's big concern is his department has been gun in.
		He's been, you know, dealing with these crashes ever since he was sworn in.
		Does he have a legitimate concern?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Well, that has nothing to do with the department.
		That was a small plane.
		And that would have happened whether he had a big department or a small department, as you understand.
		It's just they have space like this.
		You know, they have times when things happen a little bit more often than normal, and then it goes back and you go many years without having a problem.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		President Trump on Air Force One, a few more of your comments from social media as we wait for you to call in.
		This is Henry on Facebook saying Doge is unconstitutional and lack and lacks the force of law.
		If you want change, clearly Doge isn't the route to take.
		If it is, why is Elon Musk seeking congressional sanction?
		Henry on Facebook.
		Again, we'll talk more about that, but we especially want to hear from you on the phone lines this morning asking for your view of the Department of Government Efficiency, Doge.
		This is Ron out of Liverpool, Pennsylvania, up first this morning.
		Ron, go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, if they were really going after fraud and abuse, they wouldn't have fired the inspectors' generals that they fired right away when they got into power.
		He would go in there with accountants, not hackers.
		He went in there with hackers.
		They are not getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse.
		The Wall Street Journal fact-checked Elon Musk's first claim of saving $55 billion, and they fact-checked it down to $2.5 billion.
		He is lying just like Trump is lying, and they're both traitors.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Ron, this morning, it was Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, talking about USAID that some 83% of their programs they're officially canceling.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		He said he worked with Doge, that his agency and Doge worked together to come up with these changes, keeping just about 18% of their programs.
unidentified		Yeah, that's a lie, too.
		They're going to be spreading famine and hunger by doing that.
		60 Minutes did a couple stories on them since they got rid of USAID.
		And Rubio's turned into just another Republican liar.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Ron out of Pennsylvania this morning, USA Today, with this story, a truth social post and dinner.
		Donald Trump seeks to quell the reported feud between Elon Musk and Marco Rubio.
		It's the story going into a meeting last week in which Marco Rubio disagreed with some of the cuts that Elon Musk was making.
		That was the report from that meeting from those in the meeting.
		And Donald Trump taking to his truth social page to say that Elon and Marco have a great relationship.
		Any statement other than that is fake news, signing it, DJT, Donald John Trump.
		Of course, Saturday Night Live, not taking that line.
		One of their sketches over the weekend showing Marco Rubio and Elon Musk going at it in the Oval Office.
		This morning, we're talking about cuts made by Doge and made by these agency heads asking for your view of the Department of Government Efficiency.
		Andrew is in Baltimore.
		Good morning.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Hey, just want to talk about a few things here.
		Yeah, I'm a software engineer working for the government.
		I just want to remind people how much of software and IT, which includes systems managing the operations as well as anti-fraud systems, are already contracted out to private industry.
		So by cutting the actual federal workforce to oversee the contracts, which are billions of dollars, including in the Department of Defense, if we cut out the subject matter experts to help the contractor officers oversee these contracts, it allows contractors to waste more and more money and take more time and charge more.
		If you have an expert on staff to ensure progress is done efficiently, that's where the money is supposed to be made.
		Everything else is a smokescreen to sell off as much of the American taxpayer's dollar as possible.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Andrew, you mentioned the government contractors.
		This is a New York Times story today.
		It's an accounting firm that's made some estimates on what job losses could be in this country in relation to cuts being made in the federal government.
		They put the number at perhaps 1 million.
		They estimate that that 1 million would include 500,000 government contractors being laid off alongside perhaps as many as 250,000 federal workers and then another 250,000 job losses at state and local government levels.
		This echoing down the line, what would it mean to lose some 500,000 government contractors?
unidentified		Yeah, a lot of the contractors I work with are fantastic.
		And if they go, and we're already experiencing this through attrition, the systems are just going to be left running without anyone, in addition to the federal employees, to make sure that they're actually working day to day.
		So if something pops up and the contractor we pay to oversee it isn't there, it'll just kind of die quietly.
		And again, it'll create even more waste.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So have you thought about leaving government, Andrew?
unidentified		Yeah, I mean, I get offers every day through LinkedIn, and I'm not terribly afraid of getting cut, but I'm not in it for the money.
unidentified		I'm in it because I want to do the most good I can for my kids' future and for the country.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So how long have you been in it, Andrew?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How long have you been a government employee?
unidentified		It'll be my 10th year this summer, and also doing it for public student loan forgiveness as well, which would be nice.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How much do you have in loans left after 10 years?
unidentified		Yeah, like I work with PhD biochemists right now, and these guys are just amazing.
unidentified		And I don't understand why anyone would want to get rid of the smartest people I've ever worked with in my life.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Andrew, thank you.
		Thanks for a call from Baltimore this morning.
		Andrew indicating that he could have some options, at least talking about his LinkedIn offers.
		The New York Times story on the impact of the loss of federal workers on the U.S. job market goes into that on some skills that are highly sought in this country and some very specific to the federal government.
		From that story, not everyone will have trouble finding a new job in any market.
		Those pushed out of health care roles, about 16% of the federal workforce, according to a recent analysis, are likely to find plenty of options.
		The same is true of people with advanced technology expertise whom the federal government has been focused on hiring in more recent years.
		They note scientists who have lost their jobs face a double whammy.
		Academic research institutions also depend heavily on federal grants, which the Trump administration has sought to curtail through cuts to the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
		Universities are already pulling back on admitting new doctoral students.
		And while the government employs a lot of lawyers, the legal market is being flooded right now.
		Law firms often prize attorneys with government experience who advise clients on compliance in dealing with federal investigations, they note.
		But if the new administration dials down on oversight as it promised, those firms may be struggling to keep their existing lawyers busy.
		That from the New York Times today.
		Asking for your view of Doge, phone lines 202-748-8000 if you're in the Eastern or Central time zones, 202-748-8001 if you're in the Mountain or Pacific time zones.
		This is Edward in Manhattan.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes.
		All right, gracious.
		Good morning to all these C-SPANners out there.
		This is Edward in New York City, Manhattan.
		I am a Vietnam, proud Marine Corps Vietnam vet, and been using the VA for 25 years here in New York.
		And I can say that the mental health capability needs to be improved.
		I don't know how it is around the rest of the country, but here, certainly, mental health definitely needs to be improved.
		There's just not enough therapists to do therapy, and it's rationed out, you know.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Edward, are you talking about?
unidentified		I submitted two claims to the VA, which were approved, thank God, for my PTSD, depression, and anxiety, you know, caused by that.
		The counselor who helped me during COVID, the counselor at the VA who helped me, his parents died of COVID.
		His uncle and his cousin died of COVID.
		But he persisted.
		He kept on.
		I was just amazed at the dedication of this young man, what he was doing for me, and I presume for other vets.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Are you worried that people like that young man?
unidentified		My quick view of Doge is I approve everything that Musk is doing, but I'm not a federal employee.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Are you worried about people like that young man will leave federal service, Edward, in light of efforts to drastically reduce the size of government?
unidentified		My sense is that, As Collins said before in that clip, you know, they want to improve service to the veteran.
		And that's their goal.
		And I hope it is.
		I hope that you're just not saying that, you know.
		But yes, what you said is a direct possibility.
		Sure.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Edward in New York City.
		This is Roger out in California.
		Good morning to you, sir.
unidentified		Yes, I think you're missing the point of all this.
		And the point of all this, in my opinion, is what is the justification for these positions?
		Why does the government hire hundreds of thousands of people?
		And the total workforce, I believe, is over two million.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You can't choose three, two, four, if you're not counting military.
unidentified		Okay.
		I'm talking to civilian workforce.
		You have all these people that they can't justify.
		And almost 100,000 so far have gladly said they'd leave tomorrow with a buyout.
		What does that tell you?
		It tells you that a lot of these people aren't doing much of anything.
		And the fact that the Democratic Party will not endorse a single job cut, not one.
		Their position is every single position the federal government is needed or the world will end.
		And that's what C-SPAN should be doing.
		And quite frankly, only having former government employees or retired government employees talking without having the rest of the country participate in this discussion is biased.
		And you need to know that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Roger out in California allowing folks to call in.
		202748-8002 for all others.
		If you're a current or federal employee, 202-748-8000 if you're in the Eastern or Central time zones.
		And 202748-8001 if you're in the Mountain or Pacific time zones.
		Also looking for your comments on social media as well.
		This is Larry responding to a previous caller asking why the Trump administration let go many of the agency's inspectors general if Donald Trump wanted to trim the federal government.
		Larry's saying if the inspector generals had been doing their job, there would not have been the hundreds of billions of BS in the budget that Doge has been finding.
		Someone needs to go to jail and look for the kickbacks is what Larry says.
		This as well from Frank in Maryland.
		If I were a federal employee, no way I would call into this segment and risk my job talking about the green card holder PhD student at Columbia who's now being detained because he protested Gaza.
		One more from Christy saying the government was never meant to be this bloated and fraught with so much waste and abuse of the system.
		Carry on cutting it back down to at least half of what it is now.
		And that would be a great start.
		Too many things have been turned over to the feds that should have been on the state level or the private sector.
		202748-8000 for you to call in if you're a federal employee.
		202748-8001 if you're a federal employee in the Mountain or Pacific time zones.
		And then 202748-8002 for all others.
		This is Cheryl in Holly Hill, Florida.
		Good morning to you.
unidentified		Hi.
		Thanks for taking my call, John.
		First of all, you're like so good looking and so nice.
		Probably one of the nicest hosts on C-SPAN.
		I want to get that out of the way.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So Cheryl, what's your feeling on federal employees?
unidentified		After spending almost 20 years involved with federal government and serving in the United States Army, honorably, I am happy about Doge.
		And every American taxpayer should be shouting from the rooftops.
		It is the most inefficient, biggest waste of taxpayer dollars on planet Earth.
		The federal government, there are so many thousands of employees that do a fantastic job, but there are thousands who are paid to do not a whole heck of a lot of much, and they're inefficient, and they change nothing.
		I get my medical services from a VA, the VA Veterans Services in the hospital and the clinic.
		Not a single one has lost their job.
		First of all, and they work.
		They do their job.
		So they're not cutting every single goo-pooch and it's doing their job.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Sure, what are some of the places that you saw it in your time?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What are some specific examples?
unidentified		Sir, it's everywhere.
		I worked with people directly in the military that came to work or didn't come to work.
		They got paid.
		They did nothing.
		They went downtown and went shopping for hours or they went out to lunch or they played games in their offices.
		This is happening all the time.
		But there are those who do their work.
		They go above and beyond.
		And they help the people that they're there to serve.
		So they're like any other industry or business.
		There are excellent workers who go above and beyond.
		And there are worthless people with trap that need to be fired.
		So millions, we are paying millions of paychecks and benefits for inefficient workers.
		That's the point.
		And the fat needs to be cut.
		The government needs to be reduced in size.
		This is long overdue.
		This should have been done decades ago.
		And the Congress has failed to do it.
		And all those IGs that Trump fired failed to do it.
		Everybody's crying about them.
		Where was the fraud, waste, and abuse while they were in?
		They didn't do anything.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Cheryl in Florida.
		This is Foster out of Suitland, Maryland.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hello.
		I worked in the federal government over 35 years, and I work at seven different agencies.
		I worked at HUD, FEMA, US MET, NIH, INS, Department of Education, the FDA, and budget and finance.
		And I didn't see any fraud.
		I didn't see any lazy employees.
		The first thing the Trump administration needed to do, each government agency has to do a financial statement.
		You have to send to GAO.
		Clearly, it tells how much money is spent, how much obligation it is.
		Another thing, they need to go to an inspector general.
		They are the people that look for waste and fraud.
		And when I finished the government, I had 4,400 hours of sick leave.
		I had 4,400 hours of sick leave.
		And when you first come in, you go on probation for three years.
		After that, you become a career employee.
		You can transfer after 30 days working permanently.
		You can go anywhere in the government.
		And I may apply maybe over 200 summit applications for other jobs.
		I always go to another agency.
		And sometimes I will submit maybe 40 a month.
		To me, a government job is the best job in America.
		I have no race about it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why do you think there are Americans like the color before you who have a poor view of federal workers?
		She said, of course, said not every federal worker and that there are good ones, but said that there's a lot of waste, a lot of abuse.
		There's a lot of lazy people as she described them.
unidentified		Okay, now I have a college degree when I started the federal government.
		The college degree people have a different kind of personality.
		They work hard because they want to be promoted.
		See what I'm saying?
		So a lot of time it's rumors.
		You know, now when I was at FBA, I could work three days a week at home, but I didn't do it.
		I came in because I like being in the office.
		And for FBA, they were like very professional, very career-oriented, very customer-serviced.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Foster, anything else you want to add?
unidentified		Another thing: government employees are paid maybe $10,000 less than people in private industry.
		Okay, when private industry layoffs, they try to get a government job.
		When private industry comes back up, they go back to private industry.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Foster in Maryland.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This is David, Wilmington, Delaware.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Good morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Are you a federal employee, David?
unidentified		No.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's your view of federal employees?
unidentified		I don't have really a view of the employees per se.
unidentified		I mean, I think they're just normal Americans who are trying to do their job.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you think the changes that we have seen in the past 50 days have been a good thing?
unidentified		I do not.
		I generally agree that the government could run more efficiently and that there's probably a lot of waste in it.
		But I think the way that it has been handled is completely wrong.
		I think it is the result of decades of congressional incompetence that has resulted in them yielding the power to change the federal government to the executive branch.
		And whether it's constitutional or not, the Republicans are giddy in their happiness.
		The Democrats are impotent in their rage about it.
		But they have only themselves to blame because they have not been able to change the programs, make the programs better, make the, you know, and the appropriations, make the government work more efficiently.
		And so, and the voters are responsible for putting this process in place.
		So I think in general, we're screwed because of the political situation.
		And but the way things, the way this is being done is just wrong.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		A headline from the New York Times today: science, politics, and anxiety mix at a rally under the Lincoln Memorial.
		Thousands protest Trump's chopping of jobs and funding.
		This is from the New York Times.
		A protest on Friday at the Lincoln Memorial called a Stand Up for Science rally.
		The protests including federal workforce members and those who support them, members of Congress with a lot of government jobs in their district, including Representative Jamie Raskin, the Democrat of Maryland.
		It was one of several dozen stand-up for science rallies that were held on Friday in cities around the country.
		Jamie Raskin putting out this tweet on Friday about it.
		Today, tons of Marylanders rallied at the Lincoln Memorial with Dr. Francis Collins and Bill Nye, the science guy, and thousands of others to tell MAGA to let our expert civil servant scientists get back to work pursuing facts and conducting critical research for the common good.
		Jamie Raskin, one of the final speakers at that rally on Friday.
		Back to your phone calls asking for your view of Doge from all over the country and especially from current and former federal employees as well.
		This is John in Akron, Ohio.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hey, John.
		Yeah, hopefully I can put this in the right terms.
		So Doge is supposed to bring, you know, turn the government so we're bringing revenue in and not spending revenue or putting it, you know, paying it out.
		So by taking some of the government employees and having them maybe re-employ in the private sector, you're going to bring more tax dollars into the private sector rather than through the government paying them money from our tax dollars that goes to the government employees.
		So I don't know.
		I think I'm making sense.
		I think that's the whole premise of Trump trying to bring more private sector jobs in, you know, with the tariffs.
		Hopefully they'll work.
		Hopefully we'll have some more manufacturing or what have coming in and re-employing our government people that are being laid off, if you will.
		They'll go into the private sector.
		The tax base will go up from the private sector into the government.
		The government money that was, the tax base that was paying the government workers will be saved.
		And maybe we can pare that down a little bit.
		You know, it's going to take time to pay that debt down, by the way.
		And egg prices aren't going to go down in a week either.
		I mean, it's going to take time.
		And, you know, hopefully in four years, we can look all back at this and all get together, united, and, you know, get our country back on track and be for one another, not against each other.
		So that's about what I wanted to say.
		And I hope people, you know, let's just get together, man.
		Be united.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's John in Ohio, Carl, Gaithersburg, Maryland.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		Just wanted to say I'm a current federal government employee that was on a contingent hire.
		I had a two-year conditional employment.
		And fortunately, I still have my job.
		And I am very grateful for that, although I can appreciate those who have lost their jobs.
mike-2 in tennessee ▲ ● ▼		As far as Doge is concerned, I think what they're doing is necessary, but like most people, I don't like the way that they're doing it.
unidentified		Recently, at the recommendation of listening to C-SPAM, I listened to Tom Cobin's book, The Debt Bomb, and I think he has a much more sane approach to doing it.
		Now, he said a lot of things in that book that I don't necessarily agree with.
		I think he was in favor for eliminating Obamacare and also for eliminating the Department of Education.
michael flynn ▲ ● ▼		But I especially liked his thing where he was looking at the inefficiencies in government and the report by the General Services Organization where they were issuing reports that showed where the federal government was duplicating services.
unidentified		And I think they should go after those things first and do this more gradually.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		In terms of duplicating services, do you see it in your work?
unidentified		Not my current work.
		I've been a federal government employee for about 19 and a half years now.
		And I spent the first probably 19 years working in the Office of Inspector General.
		And I don't know that I ever saw duplicate work myself.
		I did have exposure to that GAO report.
		And one of the things I had wished that my office had done was to take that report and investigate or at least do reports on those supposed or alleged duplications to see if money could be saved.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What got you turned on to the late Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, his book, you mentioned The Debt Bomb, a bold plan to stop Washington from bankrupting America.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It came out back in the 2010s.
unidentified		Well, that's right.
		But it's because I was listening to my favorite program, C-SPAN, and somebody had mentioned the book early on, earlier this year.
		They were talking about, you know, what Doge was going to do and how Doge should go about it.
		And a caller recommended the book.
		So I decided to get to my local library, and there's a service called Coopla that gives you audio books through the public library in Montgomery County.
		And I got the book, and I listened to it as I was driving around.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You can also listen to and watch Senator Tom Coburn's interview from back in 2012.
		He sat down with C-SPAN's Peter Slen for our in-depth program when we talked to an author about all their various books.
		But very much the debt bomb was part of that discussion.
		You can find it on our website.
		It was a December 2nd, 2012 sit-down with Tom Coburn.
		C-SPAN.org is where you can go.
		Carl, appreciate the call.
		This is Stephen, West Palm Beach, Florida.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		Can you hear me?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		All right.
		So, John, please be patient.
		What I want to try to do is give the audience, the listening and viewing audience, a feel for what goes on when a large organization is downsized and what goes on inside it.
		First of all, when a company is restructured, like in bankruptcy, do you know what percentage of the workforce is normally eliminated, John?
		What's your guess?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You tell me, Stephen.
unidentified		Okay.
		The answer is roughly 50%, 5-0.
		I was involved with two different companies, one just before they were restructured and one after they restructured.
		One was affected by terrible mismanagement in the semiconductor industry, which is why we're going to have a hell of a time getting the semiconductor industry up and running again in this country.
		I'm an engineer by training.
		And the other, of all places, was IBM, the most powerful company in the United States or on earth at the time in the early 90s.
		Just to give you folks an idea, 50%, 5-0.
		So that means that you're going to easily have to reduce the federal workforce by, let's say, minimum, 15%, minimum.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why is 15% your minimum?
unidentified		I'm just saying, that's the minimum.
		That's all I can say.
		If you will allow me to move on.
		Second, Margaret Thatcher, when she came into power in 1979 in the United Kingdom, the government was hugely bloated and was tied in knots by the labor unions.
		She won her majority, riding a wave of conservative, a conservative wave all over the country.
		So many labor voters, or Democratic voters we would call here, voted for her.
		She wanted to downsize the British government.
		And all these people who were supporting her, of course, went into cabinet positions.
		Thatcher asked for a 10% cut across the board in all departments.
		And she had all kinds of problems with the very people she had brought in her cabinet, including with her most ardent supporter, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which is the number two in charge in that government, a guy by the name of Jeffrey Howe.
		Do you know what he said?
		He wouldn't do it.
		And you know what he said in his memoirs?
		Because that's when you find out about these things in the memoirs.
		What he said was, if I went back and actually started implementing that, I would be viewed as a failure by everybody in the department.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So, Stephen, bring that to right now in America.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that Donald Trump is facing pushback from those he's brought into his own government?
unidentified		You bet your life.
unidentified		You bet your life.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What cabinet secretary are you most concerned about?
unidentified		Oh, pardon me, say it again, please.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What cabinet secretary are you most concerned about?
unidentified		Because they're all that way.
		Those budgets are their power.
		The whole idea is to spend your entire budget.
		Once I read a story about, for example, the Swiss Defense Department.
		Now, you know, Switzerland doesn't go to war with anybody.
		At one point, they had not used up all their budget for the year.
		And what they did was they went on maneuvers.
		And the Minister of Defense told the soldiers, just have fun.
		Use up all the ammunition.
		Why?
		To get a bigger budget the next year.
		Please let me continue.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Steven, I've got other folks waiting, but I appreciate the comments.
		Louie in Highland Park, Illinois is next.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thank you for putting me on.
		You know, I'm impressed with how traffic runs in this country.
		It's pretty smooth.
		There are problems.
		I'm impressed with when I turn on the faucet, I get cold water and I get hot water.
		The water's safe to drink.
		The air is not perfect, but it's okay to breathe.
		So I think government works pretty good for us.
		You hear about crime a lot in certain news programs, but I've never seen anyone shot, and I feel safe in walking around my neighborhood.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Louie, do you think there's areas that could be cut, trimmed back?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Efficiencies?
unidentified		Efficiency is not extermination.
		I mean, closing down USAID is not a surgical relief to any problem.
		You know, when we help people around the world who are hungry or in need of medicine, that makes America look good.
		And from what I see in the news, we have to look good.
		We can't continue bombing and killing everybody in cities and countries that don't agree with us.
		I think it's a great PR mechanism to give money through USAID.
		And just exterminating the whole entire program, to me, is not well thought out.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Marco Rubio announcing today that USAID is canceling 83% of its programs, its contracts, 5,200 contracts that are now canceled that he said spent billions of dollars in ways that did not serve the interests of the United States.
		That text, I'm sorry, that tweet, ex-post, I should say, came early this morning.
		This is Ruth in Hyattsville, Maryland.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thank you.
		So I haven't heard anyone talk about the consultancy and training and technical assistance.
		So you just mentioned the severe cuts coming for USAID, but a lot of that is actual services that are being provided.
		There's a whole class of folks in the U.S.
		And the boundaries are porous between the federal agencies and the consultants across the country.
		So you will have someone from an agency that provides training consulting services go into, say, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as a senior advisor, over-complicate regulations for very simple human solutions like housing, housing vouchers, homeless shelters, and then go back to their consulting agency, get a contract to decomplicate that on the ground in the country.
		And that isn't just a big ticket item that HUD could immediately slash.
		It has implications for the communities because you've seen homelessness get worse over the last 25 years.
		And you can look at the consulting line item for technical assistance to, say, write plans to end homelessness, convene people to talk about homelessness.
		That line item has increased at the same level that homelessness has increased.
		So I just want to offer that the federal workforce isn't the problem.
		Maybe it's a small slice of the problem, but the bigger problem is that folks come in and out of the federal government and direct contracts to their own consultant organizations.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So Ruth, how do you fix the revolving door?
unidentified		Well, first, you have to eliminate the technical assistance and training line item because how do we know less about Section 8 than we did when it was set up in 1970?
		It's ridiculous to think you would need more training, technical assistance.
		It's a complete boondoggle.
		So number one, eliminate it, but just prohibit folks from coming in and leaving and say make it like the Dodd-Frank Act where you can't benefit from your role with the federal government.
		There's like a two-year hiatus or something like that.
		But there are ways to fix it, but the folks in these consulting agencies are essentially running puppet regimes at the federal agencies and it has to be stopped.
		So I hope that Doge takes a look at that.
		Thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Ruth and Maryland, back to New York.
		This is Richard in Brooklyn.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		Thank you for having me on.
		I don't know.
		I think Doge is a scam, you know, because I keep hearing this common thread where everybody is praising Doge for uncovering fraud and waste and abuse or what have you.
		But my thing is this.
		If they're uncovering, first of all, they should be going through Congress.
		That's the first thing.
		So that's a first flag for me.
		Second of all, if Elon Musk is uncovering all of this waste and fraud, how come they're not telling us what they're going to do with the waste and fraud that they're uncovering?
		Is this coming back to the American people or are they going to use it for their own dark projects or something like that?
		Because they never actually explained to you, you know, in uncovering this waste and fraud.
		Like, where's the money going to go?
		What are you going to do with it?
		So just on that note alone, I think it's something fishy with them.
		And I'm not part of this chorus that's going to, you know, say that Doge is this and Doge is that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		No, I want to know what you're going to do with the money because one of the things they're going to do is Richard, one of the things they say they're going to do with it is simply just not spend it to reduce federal spending, bringing down the deficit each year and not contributing to the overall debt of this country.
unidentified		Okay, but how is that going to benefit the American people?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		In terms of not adding to the debt?
unidentified		Yes.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you think, are you concerned about the debt, the national debt?
unidentified		The national debt is going to be what it is.
		They're not going to erase the national debt.
		I got common sense to know that.
		They're not going to erase no national debt.
		Something with $37 trillion.
		They're not going to raise that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Just about right.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		$36.5 trillion as of right now.
unidentified		Yeah, this is what I'm saying.
		So, what exactly are they planning on doing with this money?
		How's it going to benefit America and the American people?
		Donald Trump just made an agreement with the Japanese president.
		Okay, they're going to bring their people over here to be getting these high-tech jobs.
		You got Scott, Tim Scott is going to allegedly invest half a billion dollars in America.
		You got 13 billionaires on the dose.
		Do we really think that these people have America's best interests at hand?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Richard in Brooklyn.
		This is Kim out of Boston.
		Good morning.
		You're next.
unidentified		Yes.
		Hi.
		Good morning.
		I was just calling to say that America looks exactly how the president looks now: dirty, disrespectful, a criminal.
		That's what America has turned into.
		That's exactly how we look by the person that leads us.
		No one cares about the next person.
		Everybody's for themselves.
		It's all about the dollar belt.
		But the people in Washington are not worried about us.
		It's all about them and their money.
		It's time that we get rid of everybody and start clean.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What does that mean, Kim?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Fire everybody out there?
unidentified		Everybody needs to be fired because everybody's there.
		They're not there for us.
		They're there for them.
		When you get power, power just does something to you.
		It turns you into a whole different animal.
		You don't care about the people that you represent.
		That is our money that they are spending and doing whatever they're doing with it.
		It's better.
		Like if you're at your house and you have a budget, you go line by line by line.
		You just don't take a scaffold to this or scaffold to that.
		You see what's important, what we need.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So, Kim, if they're not paying attention to their constituents, why do so many of these members of Congress keep getting re-elected year after year, oftentimes without much competition?
unidentified		You could talk anybody into anything with a good game, with a good conversation.
		But we really need to start looking at these people, looking at their finances, because I assure you that all of them, if they were poor and wasn't that rich, they're all rich now.
		They all own stocks and something.
		We don't own stock.
		Everybody in America don't own stocks and this and that.
		Even though I'm a Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, look at all that money.
		You didn't have all that money.
		How did you earn all that money?
		Because you got stock tips.
		You got advanced knowledge of stuff.
		It'll be all right in America if we start just treating everybody equally, equally, the money, everything.
		Because in the end, it is American taxpayers' money.
		Everybody in this country has an account at the Treasury Department, at the Treasury Department.
		It's their Social Security number and the number on their birth certificate.
		I don't know how many people know that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Kim in Boston.
		This is Ben in Bowling Brook, Illinois.
		Good morning.
		Just about seven minutes left in this first segment of the Washington Journal.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, John, I just want to say you're probably the best host that C-SPAN has.
		I've got a comment about it's really dear to my heart.
		I heard something on TV a couple days ago about we give up to $2 million a day to Planned Parenthood.
		That would be an excellent start.
		You're talking almost a billion dollars a year.
		And that's something that's easy and it's moral.
		And it's just, I had to make that comment.
		I tell people that, and they tell me, how do you know that?
		I said, well, I heard it.
		And they're talking about they're saving $5 billion here or $4 billion there, $10 billion, or you're talking about Megan, I should say, but you're talking almost a billion dollars a year.
		They could save just that fast.
		The government should give that money to something like St. Jude Research Hospital that every penny that goes to saving little children rather than taking little children off this planet.
		So, John, I want to say once again, you're the best host that C-SPAN has.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Ben, what are your views on scientific research grants, concerns about cuts to those programs?
		You talk about that there's St. Jude's is a program that you support.
		There's a lot of concern right now about many of these federal grant programs being on the chopping block.
unidentified		Well, what do you talk about?
unidentified		What programs thought?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		There's research cuts being proposed for health and human services, let alone some of the buyouts at Health and Human Services.
		It was something like 80,000 employees or so being offered a buyout.
		But cuts to that program, are you concerned about an overall drop in funding for research, I guess is what I'm asking?
unidentified		Well, I have no problem with research.
		You know, I was telling my ex-boss one time, I was making a comment about stuff.
		And he said, well, you know, if you could make cuts to stuff like this, you're not going to have research on medicines and stuff.
		I told my wife, I said, the only difference between now and back in the Western days, and back in the Western days, there was no medical research.
		I got no problem with that stuff.
		But the trouble is with this world is we spend more money on weapons to kill people than spend money on stuff to save people's lives.
		And you're talking $2 million a day to save hundreds of babies' lives.
		And, you know, I just, everybody said that's a personal thing between a woman.
		No, that's God.
		That's a person.
		I don't think it's your right to take another person's life.
		That's like every life is precious, whether it's a dog or a cat or whatever, but that's a human life.
		And I just, but that's very dear to my heart.
		I'm just very passionate about this, and I upset a lot of people, especially my family.
		I've alienated a lot of my family members over this issue.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Over the abortion issue, Ben.
unidentified		Wonderful host.
unidentified		You're the best that that C-Fan has.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Ben in Illinois.
		This is Brent in Baltimore.
		Good morning.
		You are next.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		Good morning.
		Two quick points from my side.
		The Doge cuts, performative theater, taking an axe to everything, running and going on national TV with the chainsaw, firing all the probationary workers.
		I mean, it's performance theater.
		If there's one thing we both sides should agree on, it's that if anybody had a boss like Elon Musk who's coming in, sending emails, scaring all the workers, posting everything on his social media platform, all of us would have quit because he's a miserable boss.
		And all I heard from 2016 to 2020 was, oh, we need a businessman running the country, a businessman.
		Well, that's not how you handle business.
		You don't come in and just try and get as many people to quit as possible.
		You have to go through each agency to find out, take the time, find out where the inefficiencies are.
		And he's not doing that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Brent, there's been callers who've made the point in the past 50 days or so, as we've had these conversations, that what they think he's doing is something akin to zero-based budgeting, that we're going to start over and say, okay, tell me what you need in these agencies.
		And that in that sense, it's a businessman's approach to this.
		What do you say to those folks?
andrew in connecticut ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think that if that's how you're viewing it, the first step wouldn't be to come in and just make a blanket effort to get 10% of the federal government to quit via resigning.
unidentified		I think that if you're actually tying in with the agencies and figuring out how lean you can get, that wouldn't be like your day one approach to say, hey, you have two weeks to decide if you're quitting and it goes to everybody in the government.
		My second point is that, And this ties into why it's performative because even if you want to tip into the deficits, and every economist will tell you that you have to hone back Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, those social safety blankets, as well as you have to start bringing in money.
		So Trump wants to expand the tax cuts.
		That's not bringing the money.
		I think we've heard a little bit about how Medicare and Social Security may be on the table, but let's be honest, that's a pipe dream.
		So until then, everything's just a drop in the bucket.
		Military aid to Ukraine is a drop in the bucket.
		USAID drop in the buckets.
		All of firing probationary workers from the federal government drop in the bucket.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So Medicare and Medicaid at $1.7 trillion in the federal budget.
		Social Security, $1.5 trillion.
		Defense spending, just under $900 billion.
		And then interest on the national debt, a little over $1 trillion a year.
		Those are the four biggest line items in the federal budget.
unidentified		So it would be political suicide to cut those social programs, and it's not going to happen.
		Otherwise, the midterms would be a complete flip.
		It'll just always be like that for both sides.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Brent and Maryland.
		Time for maybe one more call this morning.
		This is Elaine in Massachusetts.
		One more call in this segment.
		It's a three-hour show this morning.
		We go until 10 a.m.
		Elaine, go ahead.
unidentified		Okay, yes.
		I think that Doge is illegal because the departments of the government have to be, I think, made up by Congress.
		And also, Musk should have been confirmed by Congress.
		And I think that everything concerning Doge seems to be predicated on cruelty because just going in and lopping people off their jobs, they have absolutely no idea what these people's lives are like.
		They probably all have mortgages and condos and things like that.
		And then you just fire them.
		So what are they supposed to do?
		I think it's absolutely ridiculous.
		And I think that Doge, as I say, is illegal and has really should have absolutely no authority to do anything.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Elaine in Massachusetts, our last caller in this first segment of the Washington Journal.
		Stick around, more to talk about this morning, including Capitol Hill staring down a potential government shutdown at week's end.
		We'll get an update on the latest from Eric Wasson of Bloomberg, and later a discussion with the National Constitution Center president and CEO Jeffrey Rosen about President Trump and the use of executive authority.
		Stick around for those conversations.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		Mr. Speaker, on this historic day, the House of Representatives opens its proceedings for the first time to televised coverage.
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john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		On this Monday morning, it's a look at the week ahead in Washington.
		Eric Wasson of Bloomberg News is back with us.
		And Eric Wasson, this week, it's all about the looming government shutdown potentially at the end of the week.
		Deadline is Friday, midnight.
		Where do things stand right now?
unidentified		It's a bit of a game of chicken, actually.
		Over the weekend on Saturday, Speaker Mike Johnson and the House Republicans released a stopgap bill through September 30th.
		This essentially freeze funding, although it's a small increase to defense, $6 billion, a decrease of $13 billion to non-defense.
		But most state programs stay as they are, with some exceptions.
		And they're going to put that on the floor as soon as Tuesday.
		And this is really daring Democrats to vote against it and sort of take the blame potentially for a government shutdown that would start on Saturday morning.
		Democratic leadership in the House is against it.
		They say this just allows Elon Musk and his Doge Operation free reign.
		They've been pushing for language that would limit Doge, would specify certain levels of program funding, for example, that they could not violate.
		That's not in here.
		And then if it does pass the House, it would go to the Senate.
		And they need at least seven, probably eight due to Rand Paul probably voting against it, Democrats to get this thing through with a 60-vote filibuster margin.
		And that'll be a really interesting vote.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Come back to the House before you go to the Senate.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This is something that has the votes of enough House Republicans to pass because in recent time we've seen some very narrow votes and even Mike Johnson, his team putting legislation on the floor and then having to pull it back.
unidentified		Right.
		It's going to be very similar to the House budget vote.
		Now the budget is different than spending bill.
		It's fairly complicated.
		I have to explain to people a lot.
		But the budget is a method that they're using.
		It's an outline that will greenlight the tax cuts, $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, $2 trillion in entitlement spending.
		That was a very close vote in the House.
		It took President Trump arm twisting.
		Members like Victoria Sparts at the very last minute switching their vote to an I. Thomas Massey, who's the conservative libertarian, has already come out against this CR.
		He was a no also on the budget vote.
		So I think it's going to be very similar.
		There are people who are affiliated with the House Freedom Congress, not necessarily in it, who have real concerns about the deficit and who have never voted for a continuing resolution, a stopgap bill such as this is.
		So it's going to be a really tight vote.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I think Kim Jeffery is potentially going to lose some Democrats.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		There's a budget that would say, hey, a clean CR, essentially a clean CR, meaning keeping funding about where it is, is what we've asked for in the past, right?
unidentified		Right.
		So we're looking at the Blue Dogs, Gules Camperes, and others who are in these swing districts who would probably feel the heat for any government shutdown.
		So I think they could gain.
		There's also Democratic absences.
		Unfortunately, we had one member, Mr. Turner, pass away last week, right after the Trump speech.
		Raul Grahalva is very ill, has not voted for most of the time.
		So there's a bit of margin there.
		So it's going to be a very tight vote.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		I just think the House Republicans want to demonstrate that they can muscle this through because that gives them leverage.
		For years, they've had to say, we have to strike a deal with a bipartisan deal with Democrats.
		We can't get it on our own.
		We have rebels in our own caucus.
		If they can get this through the House, then they have more leverage and talks going forward.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so come back to the Senate.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Who would be the seven or eight Democrats who would be most likely to support something like this, or at least be targeted by Republicans to try to put a pressure campaign to pass something once it goes through the House?
unidentified		Well, we can almost guarantee that John Fetterman will vote for this no matter what.
		He came out on X, formerly known as Twitter, saying he's not going to oppose a CR.
		You have people like John Ossoff, who are in Georgia up for re-election in 2026, very vulnerable, perhaps the most vulnerable, a Senate Democrat.
		People like Gene Shaheen, also, if she's running for re-election, which is not yet clear, in New Hampshire, it could be among them that we see these seven votes.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Come back to a potential shutdown and what it would mean with Donald Trump in control of the White House.
		There was a lead editorial in the Washington Times today.
		It was the editorial board saying that if there's a shutdown, then essential government employees stay on the job and non-essential government employees go home and don't get paid until there's a funding bill.
		And it would almost make the point that there's essential and non-essential government employees, i.e., what's happening at Doge is something that the wider federal government has efficiencies and has people who are just not essential.
unidentified		Indeed, you know, there's an upcoming reduction in force process going on initiated by OMB and OPM that does use the last big government shutdown, which was under President Trump 35 days in 2019, where you saw essential and non-essential, and those who were deemed non-essential during that shutdown will be the first targeted for potential layoffs.
		Since that shutdown has occurred, there's now in permanent law that after a shutdown, all employees, essential and non-essential, will get back pay before Congress had to proactively pay the non-essential workers.
		So I think it does make that point.
		OMB has a lot of flexibility in who they define as essential and non-essential, so they could go in and really add a lot more people to this list potentially if they saw fit.
		And that had some Democrats certainly nervous about what would happen in a shutdown.
		One of the interesting things about the CR, and we're still, I'm sorry to use technical term, but the stopgap bill through September 30th is it doesn't contain earmarks, first of all, the normal congressionally community-funded projects that lawmakers direct specific spending down to the program and project level.
		But it also doesn't contain all the report language.
		This is stuff that really, where it's not in the law itself, but it's always attached to the law, and usually agencies traditionally, until Trump have followed that.
		And then Patty Murray, the top appropriator on this top spending panel Democrat, said without that report language, Doge would be even more empowered, potentially in the courts, to make these kinds of cuts and changes without congressional approval.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Eric Wasson with us in this segment of the Washington Journal.
		It's Monday.
		It's our usual week ahead in Washington look.
		And this week it's particularly important because there's a potential shutdown at the end of the week.
		If you have questions or comments, now's the time to call in: 202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202748-8001 for Republicans.
		Independents, 202748-8002.
		Let me stay in the agencies for a little bit longer.
		As we get closer to these shutdowns, the agencies often put out their shutdown plans.
		What are those going to look like in a second Trump administration?
		Are they even going to put those out?
		Would that give us some insight as to where Doge might begin looking as they go beyond USAID and some of these agencies that have been the early look for Doge?
unidentified		That's a really good question.
		I mean, I think there will see Friday, if we have not made advance on a shutdown bill, that the OMB will release that.
		OMB so far, they cooperated on the stopgap bill.
		They're acting a lot like a traditional OMB would with regard to the shutdown, at least as far as advising on what's called anomalies.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And remind people OMB and their role here.
unidentified		OMB is the White House budget office.
		They're basically in charge of this whole show.
		And controversially, the head of OMB is Russ Vogt, who has this unitary executive theory and backs the idea of impoundments.
		So this is not something that's yet been tested, but something that I've been watching very closely, which is that Doge and OMB with these reductions in force and firing of probation or employees, is, you know, they're allowed, basically, everyone agrees to fire people.
		You're allowed to find efficiencies.
		But the big question is, can they just pocket the money?
		Can they put it back to the Treasury?
		There's a 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which says no.
		You've got to go to Congress and do this fast-track bill called rescissions.
		And last week was very interesting.
		Elon Musk came to the Senate lunches, and Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham, and others said, look, you've got to follow this process.
		Let's not have a constitutional crisis on impoundments here.
		Bring a bill that says, okay, we cut USAID contracts by 83% and let's rescind that money, put it back into the Treasury.
		So Edlon Musk is on board with that.
		That'll be interesting.
		It could be a way to sidestep what would otherwise be really a Supreme Court case on whether the administration cannot spend money.
		Now, the interesting thing about this, there's two laws that govern appropriations.
		Anti-deficiency, which means you can't spend money Congress hasn't given you.
		That's a criminal violation.
		If you go out there and your agency employee and start spending money in a bunch of stuff that you don't have the money for, you could go to jail.
		Empoundment, there is no criminal penalty.
		So interestingly, you could get a slap on the wrist.
		You could be told this is a no-no, but no one's going to go to jail.
		So it would be a very interesting sort of confrontation.
		Potentially, they're going to sidestep this by going to Congress sometime later this year.
		House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole is very open to this with a rescissions package.
		Interestingly, the Trump administration, number one, tried it and couldn't get that through.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This is why we enjoy having Eric Wasson on this program to help explain these constitutional issues, these congressional issues.
		And it's not as important as the constitutional issues that you just brought up, but the palace intrigue side of this.
		So Marco Rubio sends this tweet this morning announcing the 83% cuts at USAID.
		And then make sure at the very end to thank Doge and then his own staff and hard work.
		That tweet coming in the Monday after there were some reports last week of a dust up between Elon Musk and Marco Rubio that Donald Trump had to step in and have a dinner with them over the weekend to settle things.
		What's your read on all that?
unidentified		Well, you know, it's interesting, the interpersonal interactions between them.
		I've covered Marco Rubio for many years in the Senate, you know, and he's well respected.
		He won confirmation with 99 votes.
		And Elon Musk is much more controversial.
		So it's an interesting battle on the personal side, but also legally.
		And before the courts, the administration has been arguing that Elon Musk is not the head of Doge, that Doge is not doing these firings, because certainly he's not appointed and confirmed.
		So that could be a constitutional violation right there.
		And in the wake of this dust up, potential dust up, the president also basically made clear that it's the agency heads who are going to be firing anybody.
		I think that serves their legal case pretty strongly in the courts.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Let me get you some callers and there's plenty for you.
		This is Chris Woodbridge, Virginia Independent.
		Chris, you're on with Eric Wasson.
unidentified		Good morning and happy Monday.
		How is everybody today?
		Chris here, 28-year-old African-American.
		I just wanted to bring some concerns to Mr. Watson today.
		Good morning, sir.
		I do trust my federal government.
		I'm only 20 years old, as I said.
		I've only voted so many times, but I do trust my federal government.
		I thank everybody that is a part of the DOD, civilian active duty, whatever you play a role in our government, I thank you.
		But the government shutdown.
		So we've had a few of these occurrences more in the last decade, I'd say, more than I've seen with my own eyes.
		And I just want to ask, are there any more prevalent negative impacts to this continuous and consistent pattern in an organization like the United States government?
		And then with ideas like those coming into play so rapidly, are there any determined or excuse me, are there any guidelines or parameters that are going to combat this and assist us with continuing our fiscal year and staying on track?
		And then if that is not the case and we are putting too much faith in these private corporation ideas, is there anything that the constituents of the United States can do to call our local legislation to attest to what is going on or to just try and mediate what's going on in any way, shape, or form?
		And lastly, I would just like to say the government shutdown again with the multiple occurrences and the continuation of the pattern.
		Does this situation affect our allies and their financial diplomacy as far as foreign entities?
		Do we need to be worried about how we affect their dollar and not only ours and our government?
		Thank you and have a good day.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Chris, thanks for the questions.
		A few there.
		Where do you want to start?
unidentified		Quite a few.
		So are shutdowns and continuing resolutions a bad way to run the government?
		Certainly.
		I think everybody agrees with that.
		A shutdown is very disruptive.
		And the stopgaps are not ideal.
		The full appropriations process where they supposed to do 12 individual bills is a chance for Congress through its oversight power to go in and update, especially contracts.
		And we're seeing in this stopgap actually for defense, Defense Department has never operated in its history under a full year stopgap measure.
		So they've gone in there and given the new Defense Secretary flexibility to move money around and to try to start some new weapons buys.
		This is especially important for defense contractors that these new weapon systems, especially we're looking at Virginia-class submarines, ships, can get underway.
		And the stopgap normally would prevent that.
		They've put some wiggle room language in here.
		But nonetheless, throughout the rest of the agencies, they don't have that ability to update contracts, to move, you know, if programs aren't working to end them and move them around.
		So I think traditionally Congress agrees that it's a bad way to run the show, but the deadlock that happens between the parties, the need for bipartisan agreements, led again and again to these funding cliffs and these continuing resolutions.
		As far as contacting congressmen, I think that's actually showing to work.
		Tom Cole is the head of the Appropriations Committee.
		He was very concerned with Doge and Elon Musk recommending the closure of three, at least three, federal buildings in his Oklahoma 4th District.
		And he revealed over the weekend that he had gotten those reversed.
		So I think we're going to see a lot more of that, especially if you have Republican members that the administration will be sympathetic to.
		Contacting them, if you find out the Social Security Office in your area or a federal building or other services, we've seen a lot of cuts to the Indian Native American school system.
		They might be able to get reversed for people who can get to the ear of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
		I think there were some other questions there.
		There was what about what it means for our allies and the Yeah, well I think that the real thing there is the end of USAAD, which many people, including Marco Rubio, were big supporters of.
		This is the idea of soft power.
		You know, United States spends a lot on its military, would probably have to spend a lot more if it was going to use purely hard power sort of posture.
		And in Africa especially, you see China and other nations rushing in there, Russia as well, to gain influence, a lot of critical minerals and resources there.
		And to the extent that USAAD, especially in Africa, is spending to combat the AIDS crisis, other health emergencies, the sudden withdrawal of that money is going to not only hurt the U.S. reputation, but lead to global instability, I would suspect.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Can I ask a very basic question?
		So the fiscal year, we're in fiscal 2025 and it's September to September, right?
		So we're about six months into the fiscal year, a little less than September 2010.
unidentified		October 1st to September 30th.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		To September 30th.
		So what is going on with fiscal 2026?
		Is there anything happening now to avoid getting into this situation again?
unidentified		Yeah, that's the thing.
		You keep backing up and it leads to a continuous vicious circle.
		Basically, the president's budget is the start of the process.
		That's supposed to be on the second week of February, and we're going to see that delayed now until May.
		That's actually pretty typical for our first administration.
		So they need to bring that up.
		That's going to be his vision.
		In the past, the President Trump talked about major cuts that were never made, and actually the deficit ballooned under his presidency.
		But that normally would then go get reviewed.
		And the appropriations committees would start with their hearings.
		They usually have a hearing for every agency.
		They have a bunch of subcommittees.
		And then they draft their bills.
		Supposedly, during the summer, they're supposed to pass individual bills and have that all wrapped up by the start of the September end of September.
		Probably we're already on track to miss deadlines again, but they're going to try.
		They say they have unified control.
		Republicans are going to put forward some deep cuts.
		I do think, even though I actually think the shutdown risk this week is a bit small because they could pass short term if they can't get the long term through, in 26 the risk is going to be high because that's where you're going to see the administration really push to permanently end USAAD, to permanently curtail all the programs they don't like, and Democrats may have a fight on their hand and lead to a shutdown.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Forgetting, what would be a short-term fix to this problem to avoid shutdown on Friday?
unidentified		Right.
		So I think people on the Hill are talking about a six-week stopgap.
		There's what's called a sequester, which is an automatic spending cut for any short-term bill.
		This is actually something that Thomas Massey, who is one of the rebels on this long-term deal, got into law.
		And that's after April 30th.
		So they really don't want any short-term or past that, but they could back up against that deadline, give themselves some motivation to maybe complete the full bills.
		This is in a scenario where Mike Johnson really can't get the long-term stopgap through the House, and they have to go bipartisan.
		And then we see some sort of wrangling going on for a couple of weeks on that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Michael, in the Bay State, in Chatham, Mass, Republican, good morning.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		I'd like to have your guests speak to the inefficiency of government.
		Specifically, with technology, the government was set up with all these NGOs and the distribution of money, which is very inefficient on its face.
		What unions don't want is they don't want you to discover automation, technology, or anything.
		It's time that you reduce the government.
		And you talk about essential workers versus non-essential, et cetera, et cetera.
		It's the unions who have created jobs that are make work jobs.
		They're going to keep fighting.
		What you've got to do is employ AI and modern technology to really reduce the number of work workers in the government.
		Thank you.
		Yeah, no, I think it's a fascinating.
		I only know what I read on AI.
		I'm not an expert, but it seems like in the Times this weekend, they were talking about how can AI really be used to streamline a lot of the decision-making process AI is not good at right now, right?
		You're going to have to have decisions made by human beings, but certainly a lot of the boring routine tasks.
		One thing we saw, the predecessor to Doge, the digital service, set up the direct file in the IRS, which was an example of government technology working by most accounts, making it much easier for many Americans, especially if they use a standard deduction in many states to file their taxes this year.
		That's not AI, but that is a technological fix where you're taking a very complicated and terrible form and making it easier.
		I think even Democrats, most of them, centrists anyhow, agree that the government is inefficient, that there can be a lot of reforms there.
		I think one of the objections was, for example, when you fired all the probationary employees, these were new, potentially young, probably cheaper federal workers that could bring some new ideas and you're taking a hatchet approach.
		And the president himself in the recent Truth Social post said they're going to take a scalpel instead of a hatchet.
		So I think he's hearing some of that complaints as far as an across-the-board cut.
		But again, and also with the probationary employees, from my understanding, is some people who were just recently promoted, but they were there for in probationary status.
		So you actually get ready to the best people.
		So I think in the end, maybe we find a compromise here where they go with a more detailed approach.
		We'll see there's a deadline of this week for agencies to come up with reduction in forest plans.
		I know Rubrio himself is putting forth one that closes a lot of consulates, gets rid of local staff at embassies, and maybe we're getting towards more of a detailed approach there rather than an across the board that even drew some criticisms from Republicans.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And then any thoughts on federal employee unions and union membership among federal employees is significantly higher than it is in the private sector.
		And then some reports even recently amid these Doge cuts that union numbers in the federal government are increasing.
		People are joining unions in the wake of what they're seeing over the past 50 days.
unidentified		Yeah, that's going to be a really contested space, for example.
		There are collective bargaining agreements in most agencies.
		We see on TSA, Christy Noam, the new DHS secretary, is moving to curtail the collective bargaining agreement for Transportation Security Administration.
		You know, that's all going to go up into the courts, but they do specify how the methods in which people should be removed.
		You know, there's performance reviews.
		There's a process.
		You know, proponents of it say, you know, there's a civil service law, and the unions are sort of the ones who sort of maintain this will not become a politicized job.
		Certainly they're controversial and the controversy is reflected in the caller's question.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Just a number from the Economic Policy Institute.
		Private, this is 2023, private sector unionization was about 7% in 2023.
		Public sector unionization, so that's federal, but that's state workers as well, was 36%.
		So just so viewers can see some of the comparisons there.
		This is D in Sparks, Nevada.
		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Oh, hi, good morning.
unidentified		Can you hear me?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Yes, ma'am.
unidentified		Okay.
		Thank you.
		I love the show.
		People, there was a caller who asked where the money's going.
		I think people need to realize he wants to buy Greenland, annex Canada, Panama Canal.
		I think the money's going to go there.
		And let's not forget he added $8 trillion to the deficit the first go-around.
		So he has no intention of lowering the deficit.
		And number two, you know, the government does not run like a private company.
		So Musk and Trump have no idea about how the government is supposed to work.
		They're private.
		He was real estate and Musk is whatever he's doing.
		And Trump being a real estate person, he never paid his bills.
		His business tactics were horrible, right?
		I mean, he filed bankruptcy all the time, was always sued.
		So that's all I want to say.
		And I just pray every day that we get through this somehow.
		Thank you very much.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Dee in Sparks, Nevada.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		One thing I wanted to pick up on, but you go ahead and start.
unidentified		Well, I was just going to say, as far as actually reducing the budget deficit, there's an important point to be made, which is that the House budget, which is a separate, again, process where they're going to greenlight these $4.5 trillion or more in tax cuts, that would add $3 trillion to deficits over 10 years.
		So Trump has gone out and said we're going to balance the budget.
		Musk has made similar pronouncements saying Doge is going to do that.
		Those are just enumerate.
		They're not actually reflective of where the government spends money.
		There are large tax cuts coming down the pike compared to current law.
		And there are some spending cuts, including controversial ones to Medicaid on the table, but they don't even cover the tax cuts.
		So I think Doge, in the end, Musk is going to find $1 trillion a year, and no one really believes that.
		There could be tens of billions of dollars in savings potentially, but the House is going to go forward and the Senate likely along with it to add $3 trillion in deficits.
		Now, the Senate's going to use a budget gimmick, it looks like, to assume that the Trump tax cuts cost nothing.
		I can get into that and why that's controversial.
		But nonetheless, by standard measurements, their big plans are to add to the deficit.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Can I come back to Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal?
		You talk to members of Congress all the time when you're on Capitol Hill.
		What's their reaction to this, the idea of expanding the territorial size of the United States?
unidentified		You know, that's not my specialty, but I will say that I think people are probably privately pretty skeptical of the idea.
		Certainly, if you ask that we're going to invade Greenland.
		But Greenland's having its own election tomorrow, I believe, March 11th.
		And it'll be kind of interesting to see.
		I think many people believe that they will ultimately, and they can under their Constitution, basically have a referendum to sort of leave formally Denmark.
		So we'll see what happens there.
		But at least the polling and reports that I've seen is that the population of Greenland does not want to become American.
		So it may become an independent entity.
		It may increase the U.S. base presence there, which already we have military presence there.
		But I think privately, at least, members of Congress are not ready to get on board with an invasion.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I know you've got to go start your day.
		One more call.
		Bob's been waiting in Ohio.
		Independent.
		Bob, go ahead.
unidentified		Thank you very much for taking my call.
		I'm a former government worker, former veteran.
		I've noticed that what's going on is kind of chaotic around the country.
		Everybody knows about the price of eggs, but it's chaotic that they're going to try to drop one or two trillion dollars from the budget to actually have a balanced budget this year.
		It's interesting what that would take.
		It would require to take the elderly people in nursing homes that are on Medicaid and just not give them any more money.
		They're only allowed on Medicaid in the nursing homes to have $2,000.
		And so if anybody tries to help them out, it's got to be done on such a basis that they never have over $2,000 in any bank account.
		They'll be the easiest ones to save money from.
		Another thing we've got to look at is the fact that if you're going to drop at least $1 trillion from the budget, you're going to have to change Social Security either by increasing the age or by paying everybody less.
		They promise not to.
		But if they're serious about the $1 trillion reduction in the budget, they're going to have to do that.
		I'm so sorry for the people that are in nursing homes on Medicaid.
		Their relatives are going to have to make very quick plans for what they're doing.
		Government shutdowns in the past were very interesting how they did it politically.
		They told the public that in a government shutdown, federal workers that are non-essential would be laid off and not paid.
		Then when the shutdown was over, to please the workers that were left, they actually took the federal workers and paid them for the time that they didn't work.
		But that wasn't made known to the public.
		That was just known to the workers.
		So they do things by saying we're not going to pay them for not working, which would please the public.
		But then when they actually end the shutoff, they will pay federal workers for not working.
		That's what they've done in the past times when there have been at least eight or nine government shutoffs.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Got your point, Bob.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And running short on time, Eric Wasson wanted to give you two things.
unidentified		He's completely correct on the shutdown.
		In fact, now Congress doesn't even take another action.
		Federal workers who do not work during the shutdown will, in fact, be paid.
		So this is just waste right there off the bat.
		As far as Medicaid, you know, first of all, on Social Security, it's off budget.
		That's a technical matter.
		But I think everyone kind of agrees right now, including the president and the professional leaders.
		They're not going to touch Social Security necessarily.
		You said if they're serious about cutting $1 trillion from the budget every year, I don't think they're actually serious.
		I think that's a made-up number.
		On Medicaid, that is on the table.
		They say they won't affect current beneficiaries.
		Two things that we're hearing is work requirements.
		They're looking to cut about $880 billion from the program, maybe a little bit less if they go after children's health insurance.
		But you can't get there just with work requirements.
		That's got $126 billion.
		So what they're looking at is per capita caps.
		What this does is shift the cost onto states.
		So you're going to see state income tax, state property tax, et cetera, go up, or states will leave the program, especially Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, which allowed insurance for people with higher income than traditionally.
		That's the thing that's on the table right now.
		We're looking very closely.
		My gut suspicion is that the Senate doesn't have the stomach for that.
		They'll look at much smaller credit cuts to the deficit, and we'll see even bigger deficit increases from the Trump tax cut extension.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Two good places to go this week as this shutdown showdown plays out: Bloomberg.com and on X, follow at EL Wasson, Eric Wasson, congressional reporter, Bloomberg News, and we always appreciate your time.
unidentified		Thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Coming up in about 40 minutes this morning, a discussion with the National Constitutional National Constitution Center President Jeffrey Rosen will be talking about executive authority.
		But first, it's our open forum.
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		Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, the numbers are on your screen.
		Go ahead and start calling in now, and we will get to your calls right after the break.
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		Washington Journal continues.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Time now for our open forum.
		Any public policy issue, any political issue that you want to talk about, any state issue, now's your time to call in and lead the discussion.
		202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans.
		Independents, it's 202-748-8002.
		As you're calling in, two headlines this morning, one in foreign policy.
		Canada's Liberal Party chooses a central banker, Mark Carney, to replace Justin Trudeau.
		Here's the lead from the New York Times on it.
		Amid a generational crisis in Canada's relationship with the United States, the Liberal Party of Canada on Sunday chose an unelected technocrat with deep experience in financial markets to replace Justin Trudeau as party leader and the country's prime minister and to take on President Trump.
		Mark Carney, 59 years old, steered the Bank of Canada through the 2008 global financial crisis and the Bank of England through Brexit.
		That's the story from the New York Times.
		That story in all the international papers today.
		And then one story closer to here in Washington, D.C., Secret Service personnel shot an armed man near the White House early Sunday morning, hours after obtaining information that a suicidal man might be traveling to Washington, D.C. from Indiana.
		A Secret Service spokesperson said in a statement that the shooting took place after an armed confrontation with law enforcement.
		President Trump was out of town according to the White House schedule.
		The shooting they note in USA Today comes a month after a man was taken into custody after attempting to scale the White House South Lawn Fence on February the 3rd.
		That story in USA Today.
		Now your phone calls in open forum.
		This is Charlotte in Maryland, Democrat.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes.
		The previous conversation about federal work as opposed to being in the private sector, after the assassination of the public, of the insurance agent in New York or wherever it was, there was a lot of discussion about the cost of services.
		Medicare has 2 to 3% overhead administrative costs.
		The company that this insurance executives work for was 20 to 30% overhead administrative costs.
		And that's because the private sector has to make money for its shareholders, whereas the federal government has to get things done within the amount of money that's allotted to them.
		And Medicare and Social Security are very, very accurate.
		So I find, have found that the private sector costs a lot more.
		For example, certain loans, when they originally started and the federal government was totally administering them, you could pay them off.
		When they went to the private sector, they charged so much for enters.
		And if you're late, now you can't pay them off.
		Things in the private sector cost more.
		Thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Charlotte.
		This is Chuck out in California, Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes, how you doing?
		I have about three questions I want to ask real quick.
		The first question is, we hear a lot of talk about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, but no one ever talks about funding Social Security.
		There was funds taken from Social Security in years past that was never replaced.
		Is anyone interested in replacing the funds that was taken and adding interest to it?
		You know, and second of all, I was just wondering, why do President Trump, why is it such a necessity for him to give tax cuts to people that's already, you know, millionaires and billionaires?
		You know, why do they need to do that?
		Why is that such an important thing to do?
		And the third question I would like to ask is I'm just confused as to why they won't fund the government.
		I know we have waste, but why are they allowed?
		This is it.
		Why is Elon Musk or persons like him allowed to come in to do what he's doing?
		I thought that was a job for Congress to do instead of a guy who haven't been elected or selected by the people to come in to do what he's doing.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And Chuck, you know, you say all this as a Republican.
unidentified		Pardon me?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You're calling in on the Republican line.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You say all this as a Republican?
unidentified		Yes, yes, I am a Republican.
		But I have questions.
		I'm just worried about that because why don't they add to Social Security and Medicaid since so many people need these things?
		We know we have waste and fraud, but that's everywhere.
		You know what I'm saying?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Chuck, and I'm interested.
		What makes you a Republican?
		What are the tenets of the Republican Party that you agree with?
unidentified		What I agree with is the waste and the fraud.
		But like I was saying, waste and fraud is in every aspect of the government.
		It's in every aspect of life.
		But let's get rid of that, but let's do it with the scalpel, not with the hatchet or chainsaw.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		We'll take the point.
		That's Chuck in California.
		This is Brian in Salem, Mass, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I thank you for the opportunity, and I love the program.
		First, I think we need to talk about the issues in the country.
		Trump won an election, and unfortunately, we had two parties.
		One ran on hope and joy, and the other one ran on fear and hate.
		And I just, I don't know how the people can turn on fellow citizens like we do.
		And as far as waste, we all know there's waste in government.
		But the problem with Medicare is not the people trying to work there.
		The problem with Medicare is the billing.
		And we have a governor, I mean, excuse me, we have a senator from Florida that ran public health HMOs, and he was fine the biggest fine ever in the history of the federal government, 1.7, 1.7 billion for Medicare fraud.
		Why aren't we looking at that?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Brian in Massachusetts.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This is Robert in Michigan, Caspian.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Yes, this is Robert calling from the bascown of Caspian, Michigan.
		Your monitor asked me wanted me to elaborate why I elaborate on why I call it a fascist town.
		I moved into this small town coming from southeast Michigan, and the first thing that happened after two days of living here, I had my constitutional rights.
		There's an officer in this small little town that walked right into my house without a warrant.
		And that's why I call it a fascist town.
		Other things too, but I don't have time.
		But the reason why I'm calling is during this display when President Zielinski and Trump was in the office, it was really weird.
		And one thing I did notice that there was no American flag behind the setting of this thing.
		I don't know why I noticed that, but I mean, there was no American flag there.
		And it just seemed kind of like weird.
		The whole thing went kind of like really crazy.
		And if you want to get back to this fraud and waste, I still think Elon Musk should stand in front of the Congress and Congress should nail him with a bunch of questions about his fraud and waste in his own rocket program and going to Mars.
		He had two explosive rockets already explode over this country.
		And I bet you there's tons of fraud and waste in his programs.
		I mean, the American people are giving him tons of money on contracts to do whatever he's doing with, you know, and the rockets and stuff.
		And it's just, it's laughable.
		It really is.
		And I'm glad I can laugh about it.
		Robert.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Can I ask what the officer walked into your house about?
unidentified		Apparently, he had a call.
		He told me he had a call, which I know for a fact.
		I didn't call.
		I was just there for two days after I moved into this small town.
		And I don't have the facts, but I can pretty much guarantee that I think it was my neighbor.
		My neighbor knew these two officers.
		They knew them pretty good after living here now for 20 years and got to know the area.
		And it is a very, you know.
		Robert, you got to know.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You've been there for 20 years at this point?
unidentified		Yes.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You still think it's a fascist town?
unidentified		Oh, absolutely.
		After I lived here even more, I learned a lot more about this town.
		It's about favoritism.
		And if you don't know anybody, if you don't have any family or friends around here, you're an outsider.
		You'll always be an outsider.
		And I've been getting a lot of slack from the city worker and my neighbor and a few other people that live around here, including the officers.
		You know, they just are crazy, basically, in my opinion.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Robert in Caspian, Michigan.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This is Joe in North Carolina, Lineford Democrats.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thank you for the call.
		I was just going to say on the firing of the Inspector Generals, if you want to commit the perfect crime, get rid of the police.
		And that's what they did.
		There's no oversight.
		They can claim whatever they want to claim at that point.
		So thank you for your call.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		John is in New Hampshire Independent.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Thanks for taking my call.
		I worked downsizing large corporations for about 25 years, and there really isn't any such thing as a scalpel or a hacksaw.
		There's no right way to do this.
		You have to understand the organization and go in to do it.
		The other thing I think needs to be mentioned is the government hired 1,200,000 people over Biden's last two years.
		So we're talking about cutting a few people, even 70,000.
		That doesn't even put a dent in that number.
		So I just wanted to mention that.
		And as far as the Zelensky meeting, people need to understand the senators that met with Zelensky before Zelensky met with Trump, those were the senators that were planning on going on the Sunday shows, Klobuchar and the other two, and talking about how the deal wasn't going through.
		It's amazing how that happened, especially since it was supposed to go through.
		So, what did the Democrats do?
		I want to see the minutes on those meetings.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		John, if you were hired to come in and be the head of Doge, where would you look first as somebody who said you've done this for decades?
unidentified		Exactly the way they're doing it.
		First, you have to notify the people, and the email was the best way.
		I've seen it done several different ways.
		The worst way was putting 3,000 people.
		It was a computer company in Salem, New Hampshire.
		They put 3,000 people in a room, told them all at the same time they were losing their jobs.
		That was a devastating moment for all of those people.
		It was unbelievable, the crime, everything else.
		And the other thing that needs to be said: this is not dead weight.
		These are good workers, I'm sure, these government workers, just like in private industry.
		These are good workers that need to be cut.
		We need to get control of our government.
		Thank you for taking my call.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's John in the Granite State to the Sunshine State Jim in Winter Park.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Republican, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
		I agree with John from New Hampshire about how they're cutting people and stuff.
		I saw it with a big major corporation that I worked for for years.
		But my call is: I wish I would have been able to get in on with that gentleman before because at one point he talked about it, but he didn't get into it.
		Over the weekend, I watch you guys all the time.
		I love this show.
		I was so bad, I was shocked that 27% of our country is on Medicaid.
		Over almost 80 million people are receiving Medicaid benefits.
		I thought when Obamacare went into place, Obamacare was going to get people that couldn't afford insurance through the marketplace to have insurance.
		But it was a scam.
		It was totally designed to stick it to the working class so that Obama could expand Medicaid for people that don't work.
		I am all for Doge going in and looking at what's going on in Medicaid.
		All the Democrats, they were running around with their hair on fire about Medicaid.
		Well, you know, the Republicans have tried for a couple of times to try and get people to have, you know, have to have a work job to get Medicaid if they can work.
		And I am just sick and tired of this government and the people that work in Washington, D.C., just getting voted in by the people because they come and they talk the good game, and then they get there and they stick it to us.
		And it has got to be changed.
		I want Doge to get into all, and I'm talking about all Republicans, Democrats, Conservatives, Independents.
		I want them to look at how they get to $1 million and more on a $200,000 salary.
		Because I worked my whole career.
		I am 73 years old.
		I should be a multi-millionaire by now.
		And I'm not.
		And you know why?
		Because I didn't rip people off.
		I didn't rip the country off like the rest of these people that are career politicians.
		That's another thing.
		Career politicians that they get in there at 30 or 25 or 28 and they go till they're 90.
		And they've got to be rooted out because after they're there for two or three terms, they are owned by big government, by big industry, and they don't do anything for the people that are their constituents anymore.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Jim, the numbers on Medicaid as of October, some 72 million Americans enrolled in Medicaid, and then another 7.2 million enrolled in CHIP, the children's health insurance program.
		All total, 37,600,000 of those enrolled either in CHIP or more traditional Medicaid were children from the 50 states, accounting for about 47.4% of total Medicaid and CHIP program enrollment.
		Those numbers available for anybody to see.
		It's Medicaid.gov, their October 2024 report, if you want to look at the numbers.
		This is Thomas in Newport News, Virginia.
		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Hello.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, Thomas.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You're on the air.
unidentified		Yes, I'm a paralyzed disabled veteran, and I agree with the last three or four callers.
		I've had a little bit of difference with the guy who was talking about the one in between there.
		But we absolutely need to just put a stop on government for a moment so that we can see exactly what's going on.
		It seems like Congress has gotten stuck in a place where they don't know what to do.
		The job is theirs to figure out what's going on, to choose who's doing what.
		Doge is nothing.
		Mr. Musk is the pain.
		It's that no idea what's really going on.
		And I feel like I'm being clowned.
		I've been an American for 47 years.
		And I've never seen the individuals be so ignorant.
		We act like we're all just dumb.
		And I feel really, really bad about it.
		Thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Thomas in Newport News, Virginia.
		Go ahead and keep calling in for our open forum.
		Phone lines for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, as usual.
		As you keep calling in, we are going to head to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue now for a few minutes.
		Reuters, White House correspondent Nandita Bowes joins us from 1600 Pennsylvania.
		And Ms. Bowes, want to know what the latest is at this point from the White House on the government shutdown.
		What sort of guidance is the president and his team giving Republicans on Capitol Hill as we start this week?
unidentified		Thank you for having me, John.
		It's a big week for President Trump here at the White House.
		He's trying to make sure the government doesn't shut down this Friday.
		It's going to be his big legislative spending battle.
		So a really key test for him.
		And the president has made it very clear over this weekend that he is not going to tolerate any dissent within the Republican conference.
		He wants unity.
		That's his message.
		And he will continue to sort of use his political capital to build that unanimous support within the GOP that he needs to get this stopgap funding built through and keep the government open.
		The president hosted a bunch of Freedom Caucus members at the White House last week.
		And a lot of these hardliners have typically voted against any sort of CR or stopgap funding bill.
		And so his message to them was very clear.
		He wants them to come together and he wants them to stay united.
		And that's going to be his role this week, where he continues to demand that loyalty, use his political capital to demand that loyalty, and try to get this bill through.
		I will also note that the Speaker is actually relying on President Trump quite extensively this week to deliver him the 218 votes that he needs to get this bill through.
		And that's going to be the President's role.
		I mean, Democrats are in absolutely no mood to do the president any favors.
		And so, and the Speaker any favors.
		So it's really going to come down to what this White House and what this president are really able to do to get this measure through the House and the Senate.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Are you expecting more of those meetings at the White House?
		Could we see President Trump back on Capitol Hill this week after his big speech last week?
		And in the same vein, what about the Vice President, JD Vance?
		Could he be an intermediary here in the Senate?
unidentified		Absolutely.
		I can fully expect the President to be on the phone the entire week, you know, make a couple of trips up to the Hill, have his vice president involved in building that consensus that he needs.
		He has to play a very critical role this time around to get this bill through.
		And he's going to be doing everything, including hosting members here, if needed, to get this bill through.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Switching fronts for a second, bring us to the latest on Ukraine-Russia negotiations and what you're expecting this week at the White House?
unidentified		It's also a big week for diplomatic talks, right?
		After we saw that big shouting match between President Trump and President Zelensky at the White House.
		And so this is going to be an important week to see if the U.S.-Ukraine relationship can come back on track.
		There is a high-level delegation from the United States that is headed to Saudi Arabia for meetings with the Ukrainians on Tuesday.
		It involves Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, the Middle East envoy for Trump, Steve Witkoff.
		So there are several of them who are going to be in Saudi Arabia to get these talks back on track.
		What I will note is that, again, what the president wants from these talks, and I was in the Oval office with President Trump on Friday, and we had an opportunity to ask him what he is really expecting from these talks.
		And he was very clear.
		He wants Zelensky to move on the peace deal, to settle.
		Otherwise, he says he's out.
		He said it is harder to deal with the Ukrainians than it is with the Russians.
		So President Trump is sending his team into this meeting with some very clear expectations.
		I will also note that a lot of sources are telling us what the president has told his aides, and that is he doesn't just want a signed minerals deal.
		What he's really looking for is President Zelensky to settle on a peace deal, give up land to Russia if needed, hold elections if needed.
		So his demands are very clear.
		The Ukrainians, of course, are approaching this, and this is going to be very important for them because they want that military aid back.
		They want the U.S. to share intelligence with them, all of which was stopped after the Oval Office blow-up.
		So a big week for Ukraine talks as well.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You mentioned Marco Rubio as part of that delegation.
		How did you read that tweet from Marco Rubio very early this morning about an 83% cut to programs at USAID, saying it happened after a review, and then thanking Doge for their efforts here.
		Interesting in light of the reports last week of a rift between Marco Rubio and Elon Musk when it comes to Doge cuts at the State Department.
unidentified		Yeah, it's so interesting because now the White House is in total damage control mode.
		And the way I view Marco Rubio's tweet is they're trying to show that all the cabinet secretaries and Elon Musk are on the same page.
		One thing that happened last week for your viewers is this cabinet meeting where the president was very clear.
		He had a message for Elon, and that was Elon was going to play an advisory role.
		And this happened after several cabinet secretaries complained about how Elon is, and Doge is running around suggesting these spending cuts without consulting with them.
		And the president had to play peacemaker.
		He has been tweeting ever since that things are fine between Marco and Elon.
		So I think what Marco Rubio is trying to do is really show the world that everything is fine.
		People are on the same page here at the White House and they're all trying to cut government spending.
		I think the key test really here is going to be whether Elon listens to what the president has to say and if he sticks to what the president has asked him to do, which is play an advisor's role.
		One other thing I think that is very important to note is that a lot of these agencies have to produce a report this week detailing their spending cut plans.
		And so how Elon reacts to that, how Elon reacts to what Marco puts out, what Sean Duffy puts out, is also going to be something that we'll be watching for.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And then finally, yesterday, Canada chose its next prime minister to replace Justin Trudeau.
		Brings us to this week in trade and tariffs.
		And do we know if President Trump has reached out or will have a conversation with that incoming prime minister, Mark Carney?
unidentified		I absolutely expect him to have a conversation with Mark Carney.
		I think Mark Carney is already out on X, you know, making his thoughts and his positions clear on tariffs.
		And that is Canada is going to respond to the U.S. the same way as the United States has with reciprocal tariffs, with other tariffs on cars and on other items.
		And I think on the tariff issue, it's obviously very tricky.
		The president has constantly gone back and forth with how he wants to impose tariffs and that whiplash, imposing tariffs one day, then offering an industry reprieve the second day.
		And he's done it so many times, it's almost confusing what is in place and what it isn't.
		And so businesses don't really have a lot of clarity.
		And the administration is asking for more clarity from President Trump.
		And I know the Canadians will be asking for that as well because of the confusion that has ensued since the president has been going back and forth on this issue.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Nandita Bose, White House correspondent for Reuters, it's Reuters.com, of course, reporting from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And we appreciate the time this morning on the Washington Journal.
unidentified		Thank you, John.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Back to your phone calls.
		About 10 minutes left here in our open forum.
		Any public policy, any political issue that you want to talk about?
		Now's the time to call in.
		Gary's been waiting in Greer, South Carolina, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		I'd like to bring up two issues, if I may, one concerning taxing and one concerning the government shutdown.
		If our representatives cannot agree on how we should operate our government financially, then they're the ones that should not get paid.
		As far as the taxation issue, President Trump said that he believed that people in the service industry should not have to pay taxes on tips and that people who work overtime should not have to pay taxes on their overtime.
		I agree with the point about the service industry employees, employees who sign up for overtime or have to work overtime because their companies are doing well should not be exempt from paying taxes on that earned income.
		Thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Gary in the Palmetto State, so Bluegrass State, Steve in Owensboro.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Republican.
unidentified		Hello there.
		I'm Steve Gary from Owensboro, Kentucky.
		I would just like to make a point about one of the previous callers from Owensboro, I mean, from a Democratic caller, who said that Biden added more.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And Steve, it works better here if you turn down your television and just talk through your phone.
		So you wanted to make a point about a previous caller.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		I would just like to make a point about the previous caller.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Steve, we're going to let you fix your TV.
		When you call in, turn your TV down.
		We'll come back if we can get you to do that, and then we'll let you chat.
		This is Johnny in Port Orange, Florida.
		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Yes, how you doing, John?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Doing well.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		We're fighting a government shutdown by this Friday.
		Now, I don't know much about how I'm not a lawyer or nothing.
		I'm not a politician or nothing.
		But I do know the Republicans have control of the House and the Senate and the presidency.
		So why is it that they're doing something shady?
		You have some Republicans that want to step up and stop in what's going on.
		They're doing something shady with the government, and the government shutdown should not be happening when you got control of all three branches.
		Now, you also have the voting issue.
		The white people are losing their voting block.
		So that's why they're doing all this stuff.
		Somehow, they got Trump into the White House.
		Somehow they got him into the White House, and they're doing whatever they can do to pass whatever they need to be passed to keep their views at point.
		And then you have the cutting off of all this federal waste and federal departments and stuff.
		You have Elon Musk chopping this, chopping that.
		Basically, you need better management of the federal department, the CIA department.
		And that them cut where they need to be cut.
		You just can't walk in there cutting people because you're trying to make sure everything gets smaller.
		You have to have people that can manage the situation and do it, just like on your job.
		You got managers, you got workers, you got team leads, or whatever.
		You got those people to decide what should be cut and what should not be cut.
		And I really don't see no more than this being a supremacy grab for the power they can get because they may not be able to get the voting block back.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Johnny, you talk about voting blocks.
		You talk about white voters.
		Donald Trump certainly did well among white voters, but how do you explain that he received the large, he was a Republican who received the most votes from black voters in some 48 years, more than any other Republican in that time in terms of the percentage of black voters for him.
unidentified		Even with that group of black people, you say voted for him, it wasn't enough to get him in there.
		He still needs his white folks to come in and do what they had to do.
		He disenfranchised a lot of different groups, Spanish people, black people, women, and they still went and voted for him.
		Come on, it don't work that way.
		If I tell you, if I beat up on your daddy, you're not going to help me.
		You're not going to help me.
		So the deal is that something went wrong, even with the three states, Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
		I thought it was all coming in.
		They were all naked neck, and the Democrat vote hadn't fully come in.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So, Johnny, you don't believe the results of the 2024 election?
unidentified		I don't believe in those three states because I saw it come in.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How did you feel about some Republicans after the 2020 election who doubted the results of Joe Biden winning the 2020 election?
unidentified		Okay, if somebody's stealing from me today, should I go back and talk about the person who stole from somebody else?
		No, I'm talking about what's going on right now.
		What happened right now?
		We can't worry about something we didn't take care of a long time ago.
		We have to take care of problems at hand.
		Like I say, the results were coming in.
		They were neck and neck, and the Democrat votes hadn't quite come in.
		So if the Democrat votes come in, shouldn't it overthrow them for the state?
		No.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Got your point.
		That's Johnny in Florida.
		This is Kenny in the volunteer state in Dunlap, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Yeah, people talk about term limits.
		We have term limits.
		It's at the voting booth.
		You never vote for an incumbent.
		Always, always, always never vote for an incumbent.
		That's our term limits.
		Thank you very much.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Chris in Georgia is next.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Republican, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		I think one of the biggest problems we have is the media.
jim marrs ▲ ● ▼		I have yet to see one positive, one positive story on Trump on CBS, NBC, or ABC.
unidentified		They are just doing their best to get a resistance again.
		Even your reporter today, she called that Stelinsky a shouting match.
		No one was really shouting, and the shouting match sounds horrible.
		It sounds like two people are standing up against each other, shouting at each other.
		It was a disagreement, sure, but no shouting match.
		And also, if they made government employees not able to keep their travel models, I worked in the headquarters of the federal government, and people will take a trip.
		Managers will take a trip just to keep their diamond status.
		I witnessed one department head go to London, stay for four hours.
		I'm the government diamond now, not on his own money, stay for four hours and come back because he was going to lose his diamond status.
		When Newt Ginridge said, hey, you can keep your travel miles.
		Look at what happened.
		And they all got these Zoom conference rooms where they only need to go to places.
		They got conference rooms that cost well over a million dollars.
		And so when you talk, he cuts everybody else out on the microphones, all sorts of stuff.
		And they don't even use it because they've got to get their travel miles.
		They get their families' vacations on the travel models.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What agency did you work in?
unidentified		I worked for the FAA.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And how long were you there?
unidentified		I was with the FAA since 1990.
		I'm sorry, since 1989.
		And I retired about 2019.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Chris, thanks for the call from Georgia.
		This is Robert in Scottsville, Virginia.
		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning to you.
		The problem we're having right now is that a lot of people, black, especially people of color, have forgotten where we came from.
		Let's go back to the basics.
		They say that we've lost over 20 million acres of property in the U.S.
		I believe it's much more than that.
		Go back to your family tree.
		Go back to your great-great-grandparents.
		Go back to your great-great-aunts, uncles.
		Look at your family tree.
		Let's see what you used to own.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Where you?
unidentified		What county, what state?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Bring me to 2025.
unidentified		Up to 2025, they're still messing with property as of now, January of 2025.
		It's in public records.
		Go back to your records book.
		Look back.
		Look what you own.
		If it's in public records, it has to have something to do with the government.
		Go back and look what you own and try to find out where your family tree is.
		Where's your boundary line of your property?
		And do your research.
		Let's try to get back what we own and what we don't have.
		Let's concentrate on that later.
		Go back to what you own.
		That's more important than anything else.
		You'll be surprised how much acreage that's in your name in public records that you don't even know anything about.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Robert in Scottsville, Virginia.
		Another Robert in Hollywood, Maryland, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		How are you doing?
		Doing well.
		I'm independent.
		I used to be a Republican.
		I'm an independent because this last election there was nobody good to choose from.
		Now, with that said, I agree there's a whole bunch of government fraud and waste going on, and somebody needs to cut the fat out of the government.
dave in texas ▲ ● ▼		Two places I think they should look at because it affects me both ways.
unidentified		The Department of Defense, if you look at the Department of Defense over the last couple of decades, they have gone down to dozens and dozens of big contractors bidding for a certain program down to just a handful.
		So you're going to have to pay whatever they dish out because you don't have many choices left in the world.
		And I've witnessed so much waste and abuse of money in my past in the government.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		But with the other side of that, Robert, were you in the Department of Defense?
unidentified		I worked at a certain shipyard.
		I got to stop with that one.
		But the healthcare side of it, you know, the government's got all these employees that are on Blue Cross, and they pay a huge, the government pays a huge amount of money for insurance, along with some employees.
		But also, this is a good example.
		A surgery was done in my family just recently, and we were given 10 band-aids, surgical band-aids, to cover the incision on the back.
		We were charged $3,000.
		Our insurance was charged $3,000 for 10 band-aids.
		Okay?
		They're about 8 inches wide, 10 inches long.
		You can go to Amazon and get an equal amount of that for like 50 bucks.
		And this is what is wrong with the medical side.
		$3,000 for 10 band-aids.
		The insurance knocked it down to like, I don't know, $1,200.
		But still, $1,200 for 10 band-aids.
		Here's the problem.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Robert in Hollywood, Maryland, our last caller in our open forum.
		Stick around.
		About 45 minutes left this morning in that time.
		A discussion with Jeffrey Rosen, the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center.
		We'll be talking about President Trump and executive authority.
		Stick around for that conversation.
		We'll be right back.
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ronald reagan ▲ ● ▼		Democracy is worth dying for.
george h w bush ▲ ● ▼		Democracy belongs to us all.
bill clinton ▲ ● ▼		We are here in the sanctuary of democracy.
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		Washington Journal continues.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Today marks halfway to the first 100 days of the second Trump administration.
		Also a great day to have Jeffrey Rosen.
		C-SPAN viewers know him as the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
		And I want to start with sort of you taking the lead here.
		What do you think has been the most interesting constitutional question that has come up in these first 50 days of the second Trump administration?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		The most interesting question is the scope of the unitary executive.
		Ever since the Reagan administration, conservatives, as well as some liberals, have been arguing that the president should have complete control over the executive branch, and that means he should be able to fire any official he wants for political reasons, not just for cause.
		Ever since the 1930s, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of independent agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communication Commissions, some of which say the president can't fire their officials except for good cause like corruption or malseasons.
		So the big constitutional question is, are independent agencies constitutional?
		Should the Supreme Court overturn the decision from the 1930s that's called Humphrey's Executor that allowed Congress to set up independent agencies?
		And should the president have total control over the executive branch or not?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's an independent agency?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		An agency established by Congress to check the president whose heads can't be fired by the president.
		In upholding them, the Supreme Court said they're quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative.
		The Federal Trade Commission, for example, might adjudicate claims against companies for violating antitrust laws, as well as enforcing those laws.
		Or the Federal Reserve, famously, is independent.
		A head is appointed for a term that transcends the term of a particular president, and the president can't tell the Fed what to do.
		So that's what makes them independent.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Unitary executive theory.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What does that term mean?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		Unitary executive, it comes from Alexander Hamilton writing in the Pacificus letters of all things.
		Alexander Hamilton's the most famously pro-executive of all the founders.
		He wants an executive so vigorous, so energetic, that Jefferson accused him of trying to set up a quasi-monarchy.
		Remember at the Constitutional Convention, he says the president should serve for life so that he can't be corrupted by the legislature.
		He didn't win on that score, but he did insist the president should be very vigorous.
		And in a case called the Myers case, Chief Justice William Howard Taft, who's a huge admirer of Hamilton and thinks that Hamilton is the greatest founder, says the president should be able to fire any executive branch official.
		Myers involved a postmaster, and the president wanted to be able to fire him.
		And Chief Justice Taft agreed, saying Article 2 of the Constitution, which gives the president the executive power and vests the executive power in the president, to use the language of the Constitution, means that the president's control over executive officials should be complete.
		So these questions about hiring and firing, removal they're called, are central to the unitary executive theory.
		In the Myers case, Justice Louis Brandeis, another great hero, who's, except Brandeis' hero is Thomas Jefferson, not Alexander Hamilton, he dissents and says the point of the Constitution is liberty, not efficiency, and it's designed to prevent the president from being an autocrat.
		So therefore, Louis Brandeis thought that Congress should be able to protect certain executive officials from being fired.
		And the U.S. Supreme Court embraced Brandeis' view in this case called Humphrey's Executor in the 1930s.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Wasn't it Brandeis that said sunlight is the best disinfectant?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		Such a great hero of transparency and free speech.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		On the hiring side, we were talking about this week in Doge, and there was a caller earlier that said that Elon Musk was never confirmed by the Senate that he should be confirmed, that what he's doing is illegal.
		When does the advise and consent role apply?
		And should it apply to an agency within the White House like Doge?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		A crucial question that will likely be tested before the courts.
		And the Constitution gives the president power to appoint what are called inferior officers.
		And inferior officers do that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		They probably don't like that term.
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		No, no, nor did lower court judges like being called inferior court judges.
		The Constitution is pretty rough when it comes to language.
		But inferior officers do have to be appointed by advice and consent.
		So if Elon Musk is an inferior officer, he does have to go through Senate confirmation.
		And it's a big question, is he running Doge?
		In their court representations, the administration has said that Elon Musk is not running Doge, but in a State of the Union address, President Trump said he was.
		So a lot is likely to hang on whether or not he is.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's your read on the Supreme Court right now, and especially that decision last week when it came to the White House trying to cancel contracts out of USAID and the Supreme Court coming back and saying with the, in a five to four ruling last week, that the USAID had to honor some $2 billion in contracts.
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		Such a fascinating and illuminating decision.
		So there, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Koney-Barrett join Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson in saying they allowed a lower court to basically stay the cancelization of $2 billion in funds.
		And the claim is that there'd be irreparable harm because a lot of foreign countries have come to rely on this aid, and therefore it was arguably a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act to cancel the funds without further study.
		What's so interesting about this case is it suggests there might be a split on the court, in particular with Justices Roberts and Barrett.
		They might be far more sympathetic to claims about a unitary executive branch and the president's power over the executive branch than they are to the president's effort to refuse to spend congressionally allocated funds.
		This is called impoundment.
		When the president doesn't want to spend money Congress has allocated, there's a law on the books, the Impoundment Control Act, passed in the wake of Watergate when President Nixon tried to refuse to spend funds, that some say is an unconstitutional infringement on the unitary executive power.
		But it's possible, although we have to see, that Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett, along with the Liberal justices, might say, no, we have to enforce the separation of powers.
		Congress allocates money, and the president is infringing on congressional prerogatives when he refuses to spend it.
		So that would be a significant difference on the court, broad power of the executive over the executive branch, but also broad power of Congress to require that he spend funds.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Staying on the courts for a second, what do you make of some of the concern that's out there right now that the president, that Donald Trump, could defy the courts?
		It's Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the Berkeley School of Law at the University of California, column today in the New York Times.
		If Trump defies the courts, then what is the question that he asks saying that judges are constrained in their ability to actually make presidents obey their court orders?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		The most widely accepted definition of a constitutional crisis is if the president defied an unambiguous order of the U.S. Supreme Court.
		That's never happened before in American history.
		Andrew Jackson famously may have said John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it in the Cherokee Indians case.
		He probably didn't because the court didn't actually order him to do anything.
		But neither Jackson nor any other president has directly defied an unambiguous order.
		If the president did that, that would be a crisis.
		If he doesn't, according to that definition, it's not a crisis.
		And it's true that the president can't be forced to obey the Supreme Court.
		The courts have neither purse nor shield, as Alexander Hamilton again said in the Federalist Papers, and they rely on the President's voluntary acquiescence.
		So it is significant that despite some very serious judge bashing by administration officials of lower court decisions, the president has not said he'll defy the U.S. Supreme Court.
		In fact, he suggested he would comply with the U.S. Supreme Court.
		And in that sense, we are not yet in a constitutional crisis.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you think we throw around the term constitutional crisis too easily or too much these days?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I think we do.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why should we use it then?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		I like that really rigorous definition.
		The president defies an unambiguous order of the Supreme Court.
		That would indeed be a crisis.
		Nothing in the Constitution gives us a mechanism for resolving that.
		But short of that, I don't think we're in a crisis.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Jeffrey Rosen is with us, taking your phone calls in these last 35 minutes or so of the Washington Journal today.
		Phone lines split as usual.
		Democrats 202-748-8000.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		Independents 202-748-8002.
		As folks are calling in, and if they've never visited that beautiful building in Philadelphia, what is the National Constitution Center?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		It's so exciting.
		As we prepare for 2026, in the 250th anniversary of the Declaration, you've got to come to the National Constitution Center.
		C-SPEN friends, bring your kids and come see it.
		Of course, there's the, it's right on Independence Mall across from Independence Hall, the most inspiring view of Independence Hall in America.
		And there's the statues of the framers, so you can see how tall they were and imagine what it was like to be in the room where it happened.
		Live theater for kids.
		We're about to announce a new founding principles gallery with some really exciting documents for 2026 that I'll be able to talk about soon.
		And just amazing exhibits about the First Amendment and Reconstruction and the 19th Amendment.
		It's just the most inspiring place imaginable.
		In addition to all that, of course, if you can't come to Philly, you've got to go to the website, constitutioncenter.org.
		The Interactive Constitution is such a illuminating resource in these challenging constitutional times.
		You can find the best scholars on the left and the right, liberals and conservatives, exploring areas of agreement and disagreement about the Constitution.
		So you can find Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Catiel with a thousand words about what they agree, the habeas corpus clause means, and separate statements about what they disagree about.
		It's just this remarkable modeling of civil dialogue about the Constitution and a great resource as you try to figure out what's going on in the news.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And I will say it's a great resource as somebody in this job.
		It's always very helpful.
		Each week I find myself going to it.
		Constitutioncenter.org is where you can go.
		Barbara in Vermont is up first.
		Independent, you're on with Jeffrey Rosen.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hi.
		So I have a question about, it was in the news and nobody's been talking about it, where in the last, at least last year or even before, President Biden was actually not signing his executive orders, supposedly.
		It looked like there was a robosignature of some sort, you know, the same, you know, like a print signature.
		And the question is, who was signing those documents?
		Now, Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, met with Joe Biden, oh, a year and a half ago, and he asked him a question about when you signed the order to stop the LNG, you know, delivery, whatever, having LNG available to people.
		And he said, no, Biden said, no, I didn't do that.
		It was really for an investigation to see how that would work, whatever.
		So Joe Biden didn't know what he was signing.
		So how is constitutionally, and talking about a crisis, what's going to happen to those documents and who was signing them going further?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Barbara, I think we got your questions.
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		Thanks so much.
		I don't know the details about whether or not President Biden signed executive orders, so I can't answer that question.
		But the question is important because it does remind us that the use of executive orders by presidents to achieve, by fiat, what they're unable to achieve from Congress, is something that presidents of both parties have been doing.
		And they've been doing it, well, ever since the New Deal, when the executive order number jumped from about 300 in the Theodore Roosevelt administration to 3 or 4,000 in the FDR administration, the number has settled into something like 300 a term of Republican and Democratic parties in the last couple of administrations.
		But President Biden famously attempted to cancel student debt even after the Supreme Court said he couldn't.
		He didn't defy an unambiguous ruling of the Supreme Court.
		He tried to pass the debt relief under a different statutory provision.
		So it certainly wasn't a constitutional crisis.
		But it was a vigorous use of executive authority to try to get around the courts in Congress.
		And in that sense, President Trump is not trying something new.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How much of the Constitution refers to executive orders?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Or is there a specific place where it lays out what he or she can and can't use an executive order for?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		There's not.
		The word executive order doesn't appear in the Constitution.
		The first executive orders were issued by President Washington, who issued just a handful of them, I think less than 10.
		There's this amazing copy of Washington's Constitution that you can see at Mount Vernon, which is another place that everyone should visit.
		And President Washington is going through the Constitution and writing president powers.
		He's taking notes in the margins, basically, here's what I'm allowed to do, president, and here are my powers.
		But there are so few powers.
		He's got to execute the law.
		Washington decided on his own that he could receive ambassadors, even though that's not written in the Constitution.
		So George Washington decided that he had a power to issue executive orders, even though it wasn't explicitly enumerated, and presidents have been expanding on their powers ever since.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Amazing to see the first president do his homework and be able to read it.
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		It's so diligent and thoughtful and rooted in the text.
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		He had such a sense of role of what he was and wasn't allowed to do, and that's why he was the greatest American of all times.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Lester, Virginia, Democrat, good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You're on with Jeffrey Rosen.
unidentified		Yes, my question is, I'm just thinking that being that the Supreme judges are government officials, the congressmen are government officials, the services are government officials, what will stop the president for firing those folks and taking over their responsibilities and duties?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		Great question.
		And the Constitution would stop him.
		Article III of the Constitution appoints judges of the Supreme Court for life, for good behavior, along with the judges on such inferior courts as Congress may choose to establish.
		So life tenure for judges comes from the Constitution, and congressional terms come from the Constitution as well.
		The Constitution specifies how long House members and senators are appointed.
		And therefore, it's really clear from the text of the Constitution that although the President may have a lot of control, some say complete control, to hire and fire executive branch officials, he has no power, zero control over the other branches of government.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Robert in Ohio, Republican, good morning.
unidentified		You're on with Jeffrey Rosen.
unidentified		How you doing?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's your question, Robert?
unidentified		My question is, is that, you know, you say we've never been in a constitutional crisis, but just when Biden was president, he refused to accept the Supreme Court's ruling over us not paying for everybody else's college.
		I didn't get to go to college.
		I didn't go to college.
		The reason was because I couldn't pay for it.
		I couldn't afford it.
		But now I'm paying for everybody else's college.
		If we ain't never been in a constitutional crisis, what was that?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		Great question.
		And as I suggested a moment ago, President Biden was not defying an explicit order of the Supreme Court.
		Remember, the Supreme Court said he couldn't cancel the debt under one provision of federal law.
		And in fact, Chief Justice Roberts, in his Supreme Court opinion, made exactly the same point you do, that some people save so that they can try to go to college and it's not fair to cancel the debt.
		And when President Biden tried to re-cancel the debt, he was trying to do it under a different provision of federal law.
		So it was kind of a legalistic effort to parse the statute and say, okay, the Supreme Court said I can't do it here.
		I'm going to do it here instead.
		That's why I said that it wasn't a crisis because he wasn't refusing to carry out an order.
		But you're absolutely right that he was trying to circumvent the spirit of the Supreme Court's opinion.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Is that a unique thing for Joe Biden?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Have there been other presidents that have, if I can't do it this way, let me try circumventing it and going another way?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		Happens all the time.
		Remember, President Trump in his first term and the Muslim travel ban, the Supreme Court said you can't do it this way, and he tried it another way.
		That's what lawyers are for.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Jennifer in Brandywine, Maryland Democrat.
		Good morning.
		You are next.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		I was just wondering, where is it constitutional that the president can pardon people that try to murder federal police officers, those people that attack the Capitol, those people that scale the walls of the Capitol?
		Is that in the Constitution?
		Those people, they attack federal police officers.
		They try to kill those people.
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		Another really important question.
		Yes, the Constitution gives the President the pardon power, and the pardon power is deemed to be unlimited, that basically he can pardon people for any reason as long as it doesn't violate some other provision of law.
		So he can't corruptly sell a pardon.
		That would violate bribery statutes.
		But even, you know, if he thinks that they're freedom fighters rather than insurrectionists and wants to pardon people who've murdered someone else, he has total power to do that.
		Now, of course, no president has ever tried to pardon himself.
		And that would raise a novel constitutional question.
		If President Trump or any president were to say he himself couldn't be prosecuted, that would go up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
		And since they haven't confronted that question before, we don't know what they would say there.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Yesterday, Canada's Liberal Party chose its next prime minister to replace Justin Trudeau.
		What does the Constitution say about tariffs and the president?
		Certainly an issue that the next prime minister will be dealing with when it comes to this administration.
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		Really interesting, the Constitution gives Congress the power to pass duties and imposts, but ever since the wave of tariffs at the turn of the 20th century, Congress has delegated that power to the president.
		So tariff policy has tended to be driven by presidents.
		Interestingly, it was the main defining distinction between the Democrats and the Republicans in the late 19th and early 20th century with the Republicans in the spirit of their hero, Alexander Hamilton, favoring moderate tariffs for income as well as protection and the Democrats being less sympathetic to tariffs.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You talk about Congress delegating the power to the president.
		Has it been a one-way street over the centuries?
		Is there a place where the president delegated a power back to Congress saying, oh, this is your territory?
		Or has it always been more of the creeping executive theory?
		Is that what it's called?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		the imperial presidency.
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		I like the creeping executive is a really good phrase because that's what happens.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Didn't mean to coin a new phrase.
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		No, no, there you go.
		I think there's a law review article in our future.
		That is a, it is a one-way ratchet.
		And the phrase imperial presidency comes from Arthur Schlesinger, who's describing in the mid-20th century how all power seems to rush from Congress to the president.
		It really started the election of 1912 turns out to be really important here because both Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson insist that the president is a steward of the people who directly channels popular will.
		This completely alarms William Howard Taft, my hero, who is a constitutionalist president, the last president who thinks his powers are constrained as a kind of chief magistrate.
		And he thinks Wilson and Roosevelt are demagogues who are trying to accrete power in the presidency in an unconstitutional way.
		Taft, of course, loses.
		And ever since Roosevelt and Wilson, presidents of both parties have insisted that because they're the one national office elected by the whole nation, they should have all the power.
		Congress has responded by delegating more and more power.
		And the biggest delegation happened during the New Deal when Congress created all of these executive agencies, some of the independent agencies that are now being questioned, and then passed laws allowing the executive branch to fill in the blanks.
		There's a huge question on the Supreme Court, is that delegation constitutional?
		And there's a legal doctrine called the non-delegation doctrine, which says Congress can't give the president a blank check.
		It can't give the president power without specifying the contours.
		That would strike down several of the regulations that Congress has passed since the 1930s.
		And the Supreme Court just recently overturned a case called Chevron, which had required judges to defer to administrative interpretations of federal statutes when the statutes were ambiguous.
		And in this case, called the Loper-Bright case, said the judges should make their own decisions about whether or not the text allows the regulation or not.
		So that's one example of the Supreme Court's pushback on congressional delegation to the executive branch, an effort to enforce Congress's prerogatives, but in the process, really empowering judges.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I love the history here.
		1912, so Taft was running as the Republican, Roosevelt, the Bull Moose Party, and then Wilson's the Democrat.
		And Taft and Roosevelt split the vote, sort of, and Wilson comes in and wins that election, right?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		And Taft runs specifically to defend the independence of judges and the Constitution.
		Remember, he's yearning to be Chief Justice.
		He never wanted to be president.
		His wife and Theodore Roosevelt made him basically be vice president.
		And he, although he wants to retire, is just so afraid about demagogic presidents.
		He thinks once populist presidents start insisting that they alone represent the people and also attacking Supreme Court judges.
		Taft was really upset that Roosevelt was attacking Supreme Court justices by name.
		Justice's ruling in railroad cases for workers were attacked by Theodore Roosevelt.
		And Roosevelt said that Congress should be able to pass a constitutional amendment overturning Supreme Court decisions by majority vote.
		Taft thought that was a grave threat to the Constitution.
		It is worth thinking about these attacks on judges today.
		And just speaking historically, calls for the impeachment of judges because you disagree with their rulings are pretty unprecedented.
		Ever since Justice Samuel Chase was impeached during the Jefferson administration for his drunken partisan harangues on the bench.
		And he was indeed a drunken partisan who would attack defendants who were convicted under the Sedition Act passed by the Adams administration.
		The Jeffersonian Republicans come in and say he's a big partisan.
		We've got to impeach him.
		John Marshall thinks if that impeachment succeeds, the whole independence of the judiciary is finished for all of American history.
		And because of Marshall's efforts and ultimately the patriotism of Jeffersonian Republicans, the Chase impeachment fails.
		Ever since Chase was acquitted, that precedent has come to stand for the proposition, you cannot impeach judges and justices simply because you disagree with their rulings.
		We don't do that in America.
		That would undermine the independence of the judiciary.
		So to the degree that some members of the Trump administration, I think in particular Elon Musk, who's been very explicit about this, are calling for lower court judges to be impeached because he disagrees with their rulings.
		That's a grave violation of the chase precedent and of the independence of the judiciary.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Can I just one more question on Congress ceding over power to the executive?
		Has there been an instance that you can think of when that happened and Congress was later able to claw back that power?
		Or once it's gone and that imperial presidency has taken that, is it gone?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		Really great questions.
		I think they clawed it back during the Watergate era.
		That Impoundment Control Act passed in 78 was a response to Nixon's efforts to impound.
		And presidents ever since Jefferson had tried to impound funds.
		Jefferson, I think, successfully managed to not spend some congressionally authorized funds.
		So it wasn't totally clear from precedent or the Constitution whether or not he could do it.
		Congress had basically acquiesced.
		But after Watergate, they said you can't do that and passed the Impoundment Control Act.
		They also passed the War Powers Resolution as another example.
		Presidents had been sending troops without a congressional declaration of war.
		Congress says after a certain amount of time, you've got to come back to us and ask.
		So Watergate was the biggest backlash against the unitary executive.
		People felt Nixon had corrupted the presidency by insisting that the president was above the law, and many of the post-Watergate reforms tried to claw back power to Congress.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Plenty of calls for you.
		Maurice Portage, Michigan, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Maurice.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's your question?
bob in new york ▲ ● ▼		I got to shut off the TV just a minute, please.
unidentified		My question is, why are we so upset about somebody trying to control excessive spending?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Jeffrey Rosen.
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		Good question.
		Some people are upset and others like it, of course.
		But the constitutional question is how do you control excessive spending?
		If Congress passes money and requires it to be spent, as was the case with USAID, it's a question of upholding a law.
		And the president can't arbitrarily refuse to spend money Congress has allocated because people have come to rely on it.
		There are contracts that are let, foreign governments expect it, and there are jobs at stake.
		That's why this lower court decision last week said the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires notice and comment and reasonable procedures before you can make a policy change, forbids what the president is doing.
		That's just not a rational way of cutting spending.
		And that's the decision that the Supreme Court, at least temporarily, has upheld.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So is it, as of right now, it's not that you can't do it, you just have to do it the right way?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		I think that is the case when it comes to USAID.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Boynton Beach, Florida, Alicia, Independent.
unidentified		Good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Alicia, you with us.
		Then we go to Anne-Marie out of Tampa, Republican.
		Ann-Marie, you are on with Jeffrey Rosen.
unidentified		Hi.
		I was calling regarding one of the last callers that was talking about the January 6th insurrection, how the people were pardoned.
		From what I've read, of course, they don't show this on all the networks, but it was a setup by the committee that was looking to it, and it looks like they did a whole big setup, and you don't see that in all the news.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What do you think was a setup, Anne-Marie?
unidentified		That the people that were on the committee, There were so many things about it.
unidentified		They were not.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You're talking about the Select January 6th Committee?
unidentified		Yes.
		Yes.
		They did want, you know, I know the president asked to get back up because he, you know, to make sure nothing crazy happened, but he did tell his people, go peacefully and, you know, and then all these crazy things happen and I guess the bomb went on.
		I don't know, other things happened and they never went into who did that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Anne-Marie in Tampa.
		What was your view during those hearings, the Select January 6th Committee?
		And did it bring up constitutional issues in your mind?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		Well, it certainly brought up the question of whether there's historical precedent for this kind of insurrection.
		The committee found in findings that have not been challenged factually that the president invited his supporters to come to Washington, that he encouraged the march on the Capitol,
		that he didn't stop the violence for three hours as the crowd was attempting to hang Mike Pence, that a tweet that the president sent in the middle of the insurrection expressing sympathy for it helped to threaten Pence's life and that only after three hours did he call off the attack.
		And I think those findings have not been challenged factually.
		Is there a precedent for this in American history?
		Certainly ever since the Whiskey Rebellion at the time of the founding, there have been armed insurrections against federal power.
		Thomas Jefferson's family famously encouraged the Whiskey Rebellion.
		He always said that a little rebellion every couple years is good for liberty.
		He also encouraged violence against Alexander Hamilton when a mob threw a rock at him during the early Republic.
		And Jefferson pardoned the Sedition Act, people who were convicted on the grounds that the law was unjust.
		So you can agree, you can debate whether or not that tolerance for insurrection by Jefferson and others justifies President Trump's pardons.
		But in terms of the facts of what happened, I do think it's important to note that the committee's report has not been factually challenged.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I want to come to another column from today's papers.
		Philip Hamburger writing in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, talking about a tweet from March 4th from President Trump on, I should say X, a post on X, about illegal protests on college campuses.
		Philip Hamburger writing, when President Trump tweeted on March 4th that all federal funding will stop for any college, school, or university that allows illegal protests, he puzzled many academics as most protests are lawful and constitutionally protected.
		What's an illegal protest?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		Well, the Supreme Court said in the Brandenburg case that speech is protected in America unless it's both intended to and likely to cause imminent violence.
		And of course, the question of whether January 6th itself was a legal protest or an illegal insurrection is exactly the legal question that President Trump solved by pardoning the protesters or insurrectionists, as you have it.
		So in January 6th, the argument was that although President Trump may have encouraged the march, he didn't intend to and succeed in inciting illegal violence.
		And in the case of protests before universities, there are a few examples of protesters who are intending to and succeeding in inciting legal violence.
		So that's why you can understand Philip Hamburger saying that President Trump is applying a double standard there.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What was Brandenburg v. Ohio about?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		It was about a Ku Klux Klan rally.
		I mean, that shows how vigorously and deeply we protect free speech in America.
		There's a Klan rally.
		This is the 1960s.
		A guy gets up in a Klan outfit and says, unless the white people are attended to in this country, there's going to be revengeance.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Revengeance?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		Revengeance was his word.
		And the U.S. Supreme Court said, even though that's poisonous hate speech, the guy's standing up in a Klan outfit, he's threatening revenge, the speech wasn't intended to and likely to cause imminent violence.
		It's an incredibly high standard.
		It makes the U.S. the most speech-protective country in the entire world.
		It's really one of the crowning jewels of our free speech tradition that even the thought we hate, as Olive Wendell Holmes called it, is vigorously protected unless it's intended to and likely to ripen into violence.
		Brandenburg was channeling and building on a brilliant concurrence written by Justice Brandeis, who, as you can tell, is one of my heroes, who in the Whitney case in the progressive era said that those who won our independence believe that the final end of the state is to make men free to develop their faculties.
		And in its government, the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary.
		I won't do the whole thing as a party trick, but it's this incredibly inspiring passage that C-SPAN viewers go to the National Constitution Center website and read the Whitney versus California case and then read Brandenburg and you'll get a sense of really how strong free speech protections are in America.
		And that's why generally, even if speech is hateful and upsetting and even if people gather and rally around in response to it, unless it's intended to and likely to cause imminent violence, it's protected in America.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Just about seven or eight minutes left with Jeffrey Rosen this morning.
		A reminder, the House is in at noon Eastern for morning hour, 2 p.m. for legislative business.
		The Senate is in at 3 p.m. today.
		You can watch Gabble Gavel coverage, of course, as always, here on C-SPAN and C-SPAN 2, respectively, for the House and Senate.
		And Alicia is back from Boynton Beach, Florida, Independent.
		We'll try a second time.
unidentified		Go ahead.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's your question or comment?
unidentified		Yeah, my question is, well, no matter how we cut the mustard here, when we run the numbers, no matter in any direction, we understand that 70% of the voting, eligible voting population in the United States, 70% did not vote for Donald Trump.
unidentified		So moving forward, is there any historical methods that previous populations have dealt with this in history?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		Great question.
		It's really striking how the founders didn't expect popular majorities to necessarily elect the president.
		They thought that many presidents would not get a majority in the Electoral College and that the elections would be thrown into the House of Representatives.
		And that was the method that they thought would resolve elections.
		That happened in 1824 when John Quincy Adams is running against Andrew Jackson.
		No one gets a majority in the Electoral College.
		Thrown into the House.
		The House chooses Adams, even though he's gotten less votes than Jackson, in exchange for the support of Henry Clay, which Jackson says is a corrupt bargain.
		And then he does accept the election results, but he wins against Adams four years later.
		So the The fact that the president's elected without a popular majority is not historically unprecedented, but it certainly does violate the increasing expectations in the 20th century that majority will rules.
		And to that degree, whenever there's a president who's elected with a minority of the popular vote, but a majority of the Electoral College, as we saw in 2016 and in 2000, people feel that that violates the democratic principle.
		And the fact that we may have a whole series of presidents elected without majority vote, it seems like it may become a structural reality of our current politics.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You mentioned the founders.
		There's a great book that came out last year.
		It's titled The Pursuit of Happiness, How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America.
		We featured it on C-SPAN's book TV.
		What's it about?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		It is about the classical moral philosophy that inspired Thomas Jefferson and the other founders when they put that famous phrase, the pursuit of happiness, in the Constitution.
		During COVID, I read the books on Thomas Jefferson's reading list that he said defined the pursuit of happiness for him.
		This is Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and Epictetus and Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, which so many of them read.
		And what I discovered came as a revelation, which is that for the founders, happiness meant not feeling good, but being good.
		Not the pursuit of immediate pleasure, but the pursuit of long-term virtue.
		And that discovery really changed my life.
		It changed the way I think about how to be a good person, how to be a good citizen.
		Most important, it changed my reading habits.
		And now, having spent a year reading these great books during COVID, when I wake up now, my rule is that I have to read before I browse or surf.
		And that's just been a great new habit.
		And C-SPAN viewers should check it out.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What are you reading right now?
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		I am reading the biographies of the forgotten founders, because the next book is about how, it's called The Pursuit of Liberty, how Hamilton versus Jefferson ignited the lasting battle over power in America.
		And that'll be out in October, and it tells the story of all of American history through the Hamilton-Jefferson battle.
		But the one after that, which I've just started, is going to be about how the character of the founders shaped America.
		And founders like Governor Morris, Roger Sherman, George Wythe, that I was just reading about today, an amazing biography of George Wythe, are so exciting.
		I can't wait to tell their stories.
		Shall I just share the George Wythe story?
		Okay, so here's the amazing story of George Wythe.
		This is Thomas Jefferson's favorite law professor who teaches him everything he knows about law and also his youthful abolitionism.
		Wyth's grandfather, George Keith, is a Quaker and a huge abolitionist.
		Wyth is devoted to ending slavery.
		He frees his own slaves.
		He writes an opinion for the Virginia court striking down slavery.
		Then he leaves the convention because his wife is dying.
		He goes home and he has a kid with his housekeeper, who's a formerly enslaved woman, who he frees.
		He has a son, Michael, with her.
		And then he leaves half of his estate to the housekeeper and to Michael and half to his wastrel nephew who's come to live with him.
		The nephew notices that the will gives half the estate to Michael and the housekeeper and he poisons all three of them.
		He puts arsenic in their coffee.
		Wyth and the son, Michael, die in agony, the housekeeper, who sees him put the arsenic in the coffee, wants to testify against the nephew, but Virginia law at the time forbids black people from testifying against white people.
		So this horrific, murderous nephew is acquitted, and the heroic Wyth goes unvindicated.
		Isn't that an amazing story?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Jeffrey Rosen is always one book and sometimes two books ahead and always willing to talk about the United States Constitution.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's the National Constitution Center, constitutioncenter.org, and we do always appreciate your time.
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		So great to be here.
jeffrey rosen ▲ ● ▼		Thank you so much.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And that's going to do it for us this morning on the Washington Journal.
		Remember, we'll, of course, be back here tomorrow morning.
		It's 7 a.m. Eastern.
		It's 4 a.m. Pacific.

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