| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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Coming up next on Washington Journal, your calls and comments live. | |
| We'll also talk about the future of Social Security and Doge's potential impact on the daily operations of the Social Security Administration with AARP's Bill Sweeney. | ||
| Also, Tax Foundation senior economist Erica York discusses efforts to extend President Trump's 2017 tax cuts and the congressional budget reconciliation process. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| The biggest revolution in the government since the original revolution. | ||
| Elon Musk said those words in a Fox interview last night. | ||
| Good morning, everyone. | ||
| Welcome to the Washington Journal. | ||
| We're going to get your reaction to Mr. Musk's TV interview with his Doge team by his side this morning here in our first hour. | ||
| We want to know your thoughts on Elon Musk and the work of the Doge team. | ||
| And here's how you can join the conversation. | ||
| Democrats dial in at 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can also text us with your thoughts at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Include your first name, city, and state, or post on facebook.com slash C-SPAN and on X with the handle at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Before we get to the conversation with all of you about DOE and the efforts by Elon Musk to reduce the size of the government, here's a little bit of what he had to say to Fox News last night when asked about the goals and achievements so far. | ||
| Our goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars. | ||
| So from a nominal deficit of $2 trillion to try to cut the deficit in half to $1 trillion. | ||
| Or looked at it in total federal spending to drop the federal spending from $7 trillion to $6 trillion. | ||
| We want to reduce the spending by eliminating waste and fraud, reduce the spending by 15%, which seems really quite achievable. | ||
| The government is not efficient, and there's a lot of waste and fraud, so we feel confident that a 15% reduction can be done without affecting any of the critical government services. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm going to talk to all the guys. | |
| We're talking about making it better. | ||
| And talk to all the guys here about the specifics, but for you, what's the most astonishing thing you've found out in this process? | ||
| The sheer amount of waste and fraud in the government. | ||
| It is astonishing. | ||
| It's mind-blowing. | ||
| Just we routinely encounter wastes of a billion dollars or more, casually. | ||
| You know, for example, like the simple survey that was literally a 10-question survey that you could do with SurveyMonkey costs you about $10,000 was the government was being charged almost $1 billion for that. | ||
| For just the survey? | ||
| A billion dollars for a simple online survey. | ||
| Do you like the national park? | ||
| And then there appeared to be no feedback loop for what would be done with that survey. | ||
| So the survey would just go into nothing. | ||
| It was like a good thing. | ||
| You technically are a special government employee, and you're supposed to be 130 days. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are you going to continue past that? | |
| Or do you think that's what you're going to do? | ||
| Well, I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within that timeframe. | ||
| So we're in that timeframe, 130 days. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And the process is a report at some point, 100 days? | |
| Not really a report. | ||
| We are cutting the waste and fraud in real time. | ||
| So every day that passes. | ||
| Our goal is to reduce the waste and fraud by $4 billion a day every day, seven days a week. | ||
| And so far we are succeeding. | ||
| Elon Musk saying the Doge team is succeeding in reducing the nation's deficits. | ||
| A trillion dollars is the goal, and you heard him that he thinks his team, the Doge team, can accomplish this in the 130 days that he is around as the leader of the Doge team. | ||
| Take a look at a couple of polls before we get to calls here in reaction to that interview with Elon Musk and his Doge team. | ||
| Voters frustrated with Elon Musk's Doge cuts, according to a new poll. | ||
| This is from a Quinnipiek poll that found 54% of voters believe Doge, which the Trump administration has changed with slashing government spending, is harming the country. | ||
| In comparison, 40% say Musk's office is helping. | ||
| All right, that's one poll. | ||
| NBC poll found this: voters like the idea of Doge, but Elon Musk and his early results raise red flags. | ||
| A majority of voters say they have negative views of Musk, and many are critical of the Department of Government Efficiency's rapid work slashing the federal government. | ||
| A little bit more from Mr. Musk in his interview with Brett Baer last night. | ||
| Here he is responding to criticisms that Doge cuts are being disruptive. | ||
| I do agree that we actually want to be careful in the cuts. | ||
| So we want to measure twice, if not thrice, and cut once. | ||
| And actually, that is our approach. | ||
| They may characterize it as shooting from the hip, but it is anything but that. | ||
| Which is not to say that we don't make mistakes. | ||
| If we were to approach this with the standard of making no mistakes at all, that would be like saying someone in baseball's got about 1,000. | ||
| That's impossible. | ||
| So when we do make mistakes, we correct them quickly and we move on. | ||
| Again, Elon Musk on Fox News with Brett Baer last night. | ||
| He and his team members of Doge sitting down for that interview. | ||
| Your reaction to what you heard from him and the Doge team members this morning here on the Washington Journal, as well as their work. | ||
| We'll go to Joe and Elijah Georgia, Republican. | ||
| Joe? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Grant, I've been calling your great network for over 30 years. | |
| I think Musk and Trump are the best thing that's ever happened to America. | ||
| I'm totally behind Musk. | ||
| Government is full of waste and fraud. | ||
| Thank God for Donald Trump and Musk. | ||
| I think they're the best two leaders in world history. | ||
| And I've been buying stocks. | ||
| I'm a big stock market guy. | ||
| I predict stocks will break every record in history. | ||
| I think this is the greatest thing to happen to America. | ||
| The combination of Trump and Musk. | ||
| It's incredible for every American taxpayer. | ||
| I've never been so fired up. | ||
| We down here in LAJ. | ||
| We're so I'm having a hard time sleeping. | ||
| I'm so fired up about Trump and Musk. | ||
| All right, Joe. | ||
| Jasper, Cleveland, Ohio, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Yes, Jasper, in Cleveland, Ohio, Democratic caller, your thoughts on Elon Musk and Doge. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, these people there, I'm going to tell you right now, they're put a BS. | |
| They've been taking my money. | ||
| They've been taking my money for a year. | ||
| $2.15 coming out of my Social Security. | ||
| Who are you talking about? | ||
| They taking their money. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Social Security. | |
| They've been taking my money for a year and it'll be three months coming up here in April. | ||
| $2.15. | ||
| They said they overpaid me $430 over a year ago. | ||
| I don't know where this raise came from. | ||
| It never came. | ||
| When I went in office, I talked with people. | ||
| They tell me to be patient, be patient. | ||
| Then I got a letter saying they made an error and I should not have been. | ||
| I was waiver. | ||
| They should never be going to charge me that, but they've been taking it out ever since. | ||
| So, Jasper, Elon Musk and the Doge team was asked about Social Security and their plans for it. | ||
| Take a listen. | ||
| How do you reassure people that what you all are doing is not going to affect their benefits? | ||
| No, in fact, what we're doing will help their benefits. | ||
| Legitimate people, as a result of the work of Doge, will receive more Social Security, not less. | ||
| I want to emphasize that. | ||
| As a result of the work of Doge, legitimate recipients of Social Security will receive more money, not less money. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| I want to emphasize that point and let the record show that I said this, and it will be proven out to be true. | ||
| Let's check back on this in the future. | ||
| So, Washington Post, the Social Security Administration website crashed four times in 10 days this month because the servers were overloaded, blocking millions of retirees and disabled veterans from logging into their online accounts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Freaked people out. | |
| Is that going to change? | ||
| Yes, we're going to make sure that the website stays online. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But is it a result of going in there? | ||
| Something you're doing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| The amount of issues that were the Social Security system are enormous. | ||
| As an example, there are over 15 million people that are over the age of 120 that are marked as alive in the Social Security system. | ||
| And that's an accurate figure. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| 15 million. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| This has been something that's been identified as a problem. | ||
| Again, pre-existing problems since 2008 at least from an IG report. | ||
| So there were some great people working at the Social Security Administration that found this 2008 and nothing was done. | ||
| And so 15 to 20 million Social Security numbers that were clearly fraudulent were floating around that can be used only for bad intentions. | ||
| There'd be no way to use those for good intentions. | ||
| And so one of the things the Doge team is doing is carefully and very methodically looking at those and making sure that any fraudulent ones are eliminated. | ||
| Elon Musk and his Doge team there on fixing the Social Security Administration. | ||
| And the last speaker that you just saw was Steve Davies, and that's Musk's longtime lieutenant and president. | ||
| Musk's tunneling startup company, Boring Company, has helped the billionaire cut costs at SpaceX and X. Ed in Oglesby, Texas, Republican. | ||
| Ed, your reaction to this interview by Elon Musk and his Doge team and their work so far. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I support what they're doing completely because it's needed to be done for years. | |
| And basically, I wish you hadn't said SpaceX. | ||
| That's the only problem I have with Elon Musk. | ||
| I'm glad they went and got the astronauts from outer space. | ||
| But the money that it cost me to fix my house because of SpaceX, I have windows that it's shaken out. | ||
| I have had to have my house pulled back together and re-leveled because of SpaceX, because I live about one mile as a crow flies from SpaceX, and it does damage to my property, and nobody realizes how much damage that does. | ||
| And because I am on Social Security and I can't go back to work because I'm completely disabled because I've died for 25 minutes once already. | ||
| But I do completely support what they're doing in the fact that this needs to be cleaned up. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Ed, what if these disruptions to the agencies, cutting them, cutting staff, and cutting programs, what if that were to have economic fallout? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Would you still support it? | |
| Yes, because they're not doing anything that hasn't needed to be done. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Because if they can do something that's going to help the average individual like me own Social Security because I have to be. | ||
| I mean, I left a, I worked for the state of Texas for 20 years, okay? | ||
| And I was six months from retirement when I had a heart attack and died for 25 minutes. | ||
| So then I had to go on Social Security. | ||
| I had no choice. | ||
| But if they can clean the mess up, that means more profit, not just for the country. | ||
| It means a possibility that, hey, I can get a raise in Social Security. | ||
| All right, Ed. | ||
| Leon, Lincoln, Nebraska, Democratic caller. | ||
| Your turn, Leon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| My question is, he's talking about it's going to put more money into a Social Security recipient when that's false number one because it's based upon. | ||
| We're listening, Leon. | ||
| It's based upon. | ||
| All right, Leon, you have to mute your television. | ||
| Mary in Fairfax, Virginia, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Mary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, I guess I'm just really disappointed when I look at all these Congress and representatives out there that are allowing Musk to do what he's doing and allowing Trump to do what he's doing. | |
| And the fact is, most of what's happening is just not legal. | ||
| Once these funds have been appropriated through Congress, they shouldn't be just stopping them. | ||
| I have no problem with finding waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| Most people I know have no problem with that. | ||
| I live in the D.C. area. | ||
| You can't just take and be firing everybody for no reason. | ||
| And people who think that this is not going to result in a recession at a minimum and possibly depression if we continue down this way, they're just wrong. | ||
| And the fact is, you listen to Musk on the clips that you're sharing, and he doesn't show any real examples. | ||
| Even when he says that there's this 10-question park survey that was a billion dollars, I know there's information missing there from that. | ||
| And I just don't understand how come the representatives, the normal representatives, the Democrats, the moderate Republicans, why isn't Murkowski speaking up more? | ||
| Why isn't Collins speaking up more? | ||
| I don't understand why everyone is so entranced with Musk and Trump. | ||
| They are literally going to kill this country. | ||
| All right, Mary. | ||
| So Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, she did an annual address to the legislature in her state recently during the congressional recess, and she talked about standing up to Elon Musk and Doge in general terms is what she is how she spoke about it. | ||
| So if you're interested in that, go to our website, c-span.org. | ||
| We covered what she said to the legislature. | ||
| And then after she spoke, she held a news conference and reporters asked her about those comments. | ||
| You can find it all on our website at c-span.org. | ||
| Speaking of reducing the size of the federal government, front page of the national newspapers is this headline this morning. | ||
| RFK Jr., the HHS secretary, announces 10,000 employees will be eliminated. | ||
| And also consolidating 28 divisions and cutting offices. | ||
| You said that Mary was talking about the reaction from members of Congress. | ||
| Listen to what the Democratic leader of New York, Chuck Schumer, in the Senate had to say in reaction to this news yesterday. | ||
| It sounds as if Senate Republicans will soon go to the parliamentarian to push their so-called current policy baseline gimmick to hide the true cost of their billionaire tax giveaways. | ||
| This is budgetary hocus pocus. | ||
| Even Chip Roy called it fairy dust. | ||
| Republicans can try to use whatever baseline, whatever fake math they want, but the American people and the markets can see right through it. | ||
| Don't be fooled by this hocus pocus, this current baseline hocus pocus. | ||
| It'll increase the deficit by $37 trillion over 30 years. | ||
| And the American people will pay the price in higher interest rates. | ||
| And American standing in the world will go down. | ||
| That was the minority leader on the floor yesterday talking actually about the tax cuts coming down the pike and the reconciliation process that Republicans plan to use. | ||
| They will use that reconciliation because it only requires a simple majority to get through the Senate, not 60 votes. | ||
| We're going to talk about President Trump's 2017 tax cuts coming up here on the Washington Journal, that our conversation in our last hour this morning. | ||
| Front page of the Washington Post this morning related to our conversation in this first hour, document details plans to slash federal workers. | ||
| Federal officers are preparing for agencies to cut between 8 and 50 percent of their employees as part of a Trump administration push to shrink the government, according to an internal White House document obtained by the Washington Post that contains closely held draft plans for reshaping the $2.3 million person bureaucracy. | ||
| The Washington Post, with this exclusive story this morning, they've obtained documents from the Trump administration on what's next for the federal government and shrinking it. | ||
| Goes on to say that people familiar with the documents stress that planning remains fluid and that the numbers do not necessarily reflect what agencies will ultimately cut. | ||
| But it indicates that broad staff cuts are likely to have a significant income on the scope of the government's work. | ||
| For example, the document lists the housing and urban development as cutting half of its roughly 8,300 person staff, while the Interior Department would shed nearly one in four of the workers it had when Trump took office and the IRS would cut nearly one in three. | ||
| The document shows reductions of 8% at the Justice Department, 28% at the National Science Foundation, 30% at the Commerce Department, and 43% at the Small Business Administration. | ||
| Those are just some of the potential cuts to federal agencies under the Trump administration. | ||
| Steve in San Jose, California, Republican, we're talking about Elon Musk and the Doge efforts. | ||
| Good morning to you, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I am outraged about two things. | ||
| Number one, I am outraged by the fraud and the waste that is uncovered by Musk and Dodge. | ||
| Number two, I am outraged by the attempted cover-up by the news media at the findings of Musk and Dodge. | ||
| Everybody is covering it up except Newsmax and Fox News and conservative radio. | ||
| That's because they don't want you to know. | ||
| Let's remember, the Democrats lied about the cognitive abilities of Biden. | ||
| They would never admit it. | ||
| They lied about the inability of Biden to prevent migrants, illegals, from entering in because he didn't, or we wouldn't, the conservatives wouldn't pass laws. | ||
| Okay, Steve, so tell us some accomplishments of Elon Musk and Doge that stood out to you, that you've been reading about, that you've heard about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, there's two areas. | |
| One, USA aid. | ||
| The outrageous things that USA aid was giving hundreds of thousands, millions and billions of dollars to that had nothing to do with anything. | ||
| And number two, social security fraud. | ||
| Musk in his interview with Brett Baer yesterday outlined some of these fraudulent giveaways. | ||
| You have, you are well aware of Brett Baer's interview. | ||
| You play them. | ||
| Yes, we are, Steve. | ||
| That's our conversation here in the first hour this morning of the Washington Journal. | ||
| Pegging off of that interview that Elon Musk did with members of the Doge team by him on Fox News, Brett Baer's show yesterday. | ||
| A little bit more from that interview. | ||
| Here is the team talking about how Doge will improve America's fiscal outlook. | ||
| This is a revolution. | ||
| And I think it might be the biggest revolution in government since the original revolution. | ||
| But at the end of the day, America is going to be in much better shape. | ||
| America will be solvent. | ||
| The critical programs that people depend upon will work. | ||
| And it's going to be a fantastic future. | ||
| The reason we're doing this is because if we don't do it, America is going to go insolvent. | ||
| We're going to go bankrupt. | ||
| And nobody's going to get anything. | ||
| Why are you guys all doing it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, you can pipe up, but you don't have to be here, right? | |
| I mean, you don't have to be doing this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have four blessed four beautiful children, my wife and I. | |
| But we have a real fiscal crisis, and this is not sustainable. | ||
| And what's worse, back to my children and everyone else's children, is we are burdening them with that debt. | ||
| And it's only going to grow. | ||
| Your reaction to members of the Doge team there talking about their work increasing America's fiscal outlook. | ||
| They believe that in the end, that they will put the American economy in better shape. | ||
| Howard in Carmel, Indiana, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Howard, what do you say? | |
| Yes, I say a couple of things. | ||
| We as a collective, including C-SPAN, is failing to properly frame what is happening now. | ||
| This whole Doge thing is just a mess to destroy the U.S. government by a rogue administration. | ||
| Number one, Trump fired all the independent investigators and including some senior members of the military. | ||
| One of those senior members of the military, whose name I can't remember, but I think he was the head of the Air Force, has said he believes that Trump and his administration are a rogue administration that are trying to dismantle the administrative state. | ||
| And my personal belief is that Trump has some kind of agreement with Poulton, with the head of Russia and the head of China to have a triad power scheme globally. | ||
| And we're just being duped by it. | ||
| But listening to all these things, you have to remember how this Doge organization has behaved. | ||
| They have fraudulently and illegally lied about all of these employees having poor performance records as a basis to fire them. | ||
| It's not like they're just coming to reduce things. | ||
| They're doing it in an evil and unethical way. | ||
| And you're not framing it that way, C-SPAN. | ||
| You frame it as if they're just going through and they're reducing things. | ||
| No, that's not what they're doing. | ||
| They're lying about people's work records. | ||
| They're using that as a basis to fire them. | ||
| And why would they do that? | ||
| I mean, only domestic enemies would do something like that. | ||
| We are in a big problem because we are failing to grasp what's happening. | ||
| We are being taken over by a rogue government that has ambitions that are not consistent with the ambitions of this country and our Constitution. | ||
| And we're just being duped by it. | ||
| All right, Howard. | ||
| We're showing you this morning what Elon Musk and the Doge members told Fox News, getting your reaction to that. | ||
| And you shared your perspective. | ||
| Others are sharing theirs this morning. | ||
| We're getting your view of Elon Musk and Doge. | ||
| What do you think about the work that they're doing and the justifications that they had in that interview with Fox News? | ||
| We'll go on to Malcolm in Lewisville, North Carolina, Democratic Caller. | ||
| Malcolm, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Quick comment and question. | ||
| First of all, I do not believe in Elon Musk or Doge. | ||
| In my opinion, Doge is illegal. | ||
| And the question that I'm going to leave with everyone, and I will hang up is, was any analysis work done by Doge before cuts were initiated? | ||
| If work was done in the analysis, that should have been produced before anything was done. | ||
| I will hang up on that comment. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Malcolm there with his thoughts on this. | ||
| And as you heard at the top during that clip with Brett Baer of Fox News and Elon Musk about the role that Musk has in the company or in the government, you heard Brett Baer note that he is a special government employee. | ||
| That's the status he has, which means he can work on government business for 130 days in every 365-day period. | ||
| Fox News, as you heard, Brett Baer asked Musk if he had plans to stay on past that 130-day window. | ||
| And he said he thinks he can get the work done that needs to be done. | ||
| Let's go to Jerry, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Jerry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I'd like to say that I am for Doge and what they're doing. | ||
| It seems like they're going to help save America. | ||
| But at the same time, I'm deeply concerned over the propaganda that seems to be coming from the Democratic Party. | ||
| And even the callers that you have coming in. | ||
| Certainly, even like you read the Washington Post, there will be people that are going to lose jobs when you cut bureaucracy and you take out waste fraud and abuse. | ||
| And so there's going to be people laid off work. | ||
| And what gets me worse, y'all, is how that there's so much propaganda against Elon Musk, his business, all that that's going on. | ||
| And at the same time, we're seeing they're trying to help America, trying to help cut waste fraud and abuse and illicit spending and illicit grants. | ||
| But the liberal left media continually demonizes Elon Musk, demonize President Trump, when the truth is there's never been a president that I know, I'm 66 years old, that's ever kept his promises. | ||
| And President Trump keeps his promises. | ||
| Promises made, promises kept. | ||
| All right, Jerry, Charles, Alexandria, Virginia, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Charles, what do you say? | |
| Oh, good morning, Charles. | ||
| Yeah, we're listening to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, listen, thank you for taking my call, too. | |
| I am, quite frankly, totally, totally against what this guy, Elon Musk, and Trump is doing. | ||
| I agree with the callers from Indiana and others callers. | ||
| Show us the paper. | ||
| Where are the receipts? | ||
| And I agree that C-SPAN, I don't, I mean, I know you're reading and listening to what Fox News is saying, but do you ever see Elon Musk on any other channels other than Fox? | ||
| I mean, I don't see the receipts. | ||
| And what makes federal government employees such an enemy to the country? | ||
| What makes DEI such an enemy, such a phrase that's become so terrible to this country? | ||
| I mean, what's wrong with inclusion? | ||
| I mean, you are taking jobs from millions of people. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| No one wants to see a whole lot of fat in the government, but you got to have a better way to do it than just cut people's lives apart. | ||
| Just tell them apart as if you have, you know, just no heart. | ||
| You know, it's being cruel. | ||
| And America is allowing this for everybody that supports Donald Trump and Elon Musk and what they're doing. | ||
| Maybe you're not affected if your Social Security is affected or your moms or your grandparents or whatever. | ||
| Maybe you're rich like that, but everybody's not rich like that. | ||
| You only see rich people. | ||
| I mean, you know, this is crazy because in this country, money sure gets you power. | ||
| So for all the money that he invests into Donald Trump's campaign, it appears that he's getting exactly what he there's a return on his investment. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And this is return. | ||
| One other thing. | ||
| And then America has the audacity to agree with this man to take over another country. | ||
| I mean, I served in the military for 24 years and I never served for this purpose, just to take over the arrogance of a Greenland, Canada, Panama Canal. | ||
| I mean, the arrogance of this country that you can just go in and just take over. | ||
| I mean, just like Russia. | ||
| You're no different. | ||
| All right, Charles, I'm going to leave it there so that we can stick to the conversation this morning about Elon Musk and Doge. | ||
| I want to go back to the Senate floor and show you what the Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York had to say about HHS cuts, which were announced yesterday by the secretary of that agency. | ||
| 10,000 people or 20,000 jobs reducing offices. | ||
| The Democratic leader responding to that, and Doge. | ||
| Let's be very clear what these layoffs represent: an assault on Medicare, an assault on Medicaid, an assault on families and consumers from one corner of the country to the next. | ||
| When you fire people who provide Medicare and Medicaid, that is the same as a benefit cut. | ||
| When you fire people who prevent the spread of diseases like measles, America will get sicker. | ||
| Schools will get sicker. | ||
| People, families will suffer. | ||
| Mass layoffs to Medicare workers will not make things more efficient. | ||
| Mass layoffs to Medicaid workers will not make things more efficient. | ||
| It is more sabotage, just like the attacks on Social Security. | ||
| Donald Trump and Secretary Kennedy should reverse this attack on Medicare and Medicaid immediately. | ||
| And where are our Republican colleagues? | ||
| They say they want to protect Medicare. | ||
| Some of them are worried about cutting Medicaid. | ||
| We heard them say it. | ||
| Well, when you cut 10,000 employees from HHS, you are cutting Medicare and Medicaid in terms of the benefits people will receive. | ||
| Similar to what they're doing on Social Security. | ||
| They don't say outright they're going to eliminate it, but they try to strangle it. | ||
| They try to strangle it. | ||
| And the American people suffer. | ||
| So that happened on Social Security yesterday. | ||
| Yesterday, after a huge wave of public outrage, the Social Security Administration temporarily delayed its plan to cut phone services for seniors and people with disabilities. | ||
| But this is only a two-week delay. | ||
| This is not stopping it. | ||
| It's just delaying it because of the outrage, hoping it'll subside. | ||
| But it won't. | ||
| Americans from one end of the country to the other want to keep their Social Security. | ||
| The outrage will not stop because they know that Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Doge want to cut or even eliminate, as Musk said, Social Security. | ||
| Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer yesterday reacting to the news about cuts to staff at the Health and Human Services Department. | ||
| We're getting your thoughts on Elon Musk and Doge after sitting down with Fox News's Brett Baer yesterday for their first TV interview. | ||
| We'll get back to those calls in just a minute. | ||
| I want to share some other headlines with you. | ||
| From the business and finance section of the Wall Street Journal, stocks fall after those new auto tariffs are announced by President Trump. | ||
| And then there is this related to that, the front page of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| The president gave auto executives threat on tariffs. | ||
| When President Trump convened CEOs of some of the country's top automakers for a call earlier this month, he issued a warning they had better not raise car prices because of tariffs. | ||
| Trump told the executives that the White House would look unfavorably on such a move, leaving some of them rattled and worried they would face punishment if they raised prices. | ||
| People with knowledge of the call said. | ||
| Instead, Trump said they should be grateful for his elimination of what he called former President Joe Biden's electric vehicle mandate, which involves subsidies and emission requirements to encourage electric car production. | ||
| He made a lengthy pitch for how they would actually benefit from tariffs, according to people on the call. | ||
| That was before the president announced this week those new auto tariffs. | ||
| This is Tim Kaine, who the Virginia senator, writing in today's opinion pages of the Washington Post, why I'm forcing a vote on Trump's Canada tariffs. | ||
| He says this, Fortunately, the National Emergencies Act of 1976 included a provision allowing any senator to force a vote to block emergency powers being abused by the president. | ||
| I will be pulling that procedural lever to challenge Trump's Canada tariffs early next week. | ||
| I'm leading this effort alongside Senators Amy Klobuchar, Mark Warner, and I'm glad to be joined by our co-sponsors, Senators Chris Van Holland, Sheldon Whitehouse, Angus King, Chris Coons, Ram Paul. | ||
| All 100 members of the chamber, including the 52 other Republicans, will have to make a public choice about whether to side with American families, businesses, and farmers or with President Trump. | ||
| Republicans, he say, will be judged based on their actions. | ||
| Two, when the Senate votes on this resolution, the American people will be watching to see whether they walk the plank for Trump's economically ruinous taxes or stand up for American families. | ||
| Tune in to C-SPAN 2 next week when Tim Kaine says he'll be offering this resolution on the floor. | ||
| We will have coverage of it. | ||
| An update for you on the Signal group chat. | ||
| The same judge who took up the case on the Venezuelans deported was randomly assigned the case the lawsuit brought forth on this group chat. | ||
| Washington Post, the judge yesterday says the messages on the U.S. strikes must be preserved. | ||
| In addition to that, Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker, Republican in Mississippi, and the committee's top Democrat, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, on Wednesday sent a letter to the Defense Department's Inspector General requesting an inquiry and assessment of the information exchanged over the messaging app. | ||
| Happening today, the Vice President and the Second Lady will be traveling to Greenland. | ||
| Here's the headline on the front page of USA Today. | ||
| Chili reception alters the U.S. delegation's Greenland trip. | ||
| They were supposed to be there visiting several stops in Greenland. | ||
| The trip has been scaled back significantly to just one stop at a U.S. military base. | ||
| Front page of USA Today. | ||
| And in case you missed it yesterday on Capitol Hill, senators grilled the FAA chief on missed warning signs at DCA. | ||
| The National Transportation Safety Board chair, along with the acting FAA administrator, were testifying on that deadly mid-air collision here in the Washington, D.C. area at the end of January. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras were there. | ||
| We covered the whole hearing, and you can find it on our website at c-span.org. | ||
| Finally, one other headline to share with you. | ||
| Elise Stefanik, who the president had nominated to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, her nomination pulled by the president yesterday. | ||
| That's the headline here in the Wall Street Journal this morning. | ||
| Trump pulls nominee to protect the House Edge because of their very narrow margin of majority in the House. | ||
| The president decided to pull her nomination. | ||
| Posting on Truth Social, he said this, that I have asked Elise as one of my biggest allies to remain in Congress to help me deliver historic tax cuts, great jobs, record economic growth, a secure border, energy dominance, peace through strength, and much more so we can make America great again. | ||
| Next to this headline on your screen in the Wall Street Journal is this headline. | ||
| Florida race is worrying Republicans. | ||
| Related to that very thin majority, Republicans are worried about an April 1st special election to replace Mike Waltz in that Florida seat. | ||
| Mike Waltz, as you know, now serving as National Security Advisor in the Trump administration. | ||
| And according to the Wall Street Journal and a heavily GOP district, one poll shows the Democrat closing in. | ||
| In reaction to pulling Elise Stefanik's nomination, Speaker Johnson said that Elise Stefanik is truly a great leader and a devout patriot, devoted patriot. | ||
| Today's selfless decision shows America what those of us who work with her already know. | ||
| She is deeply devoted to our country and fully committed to see President Trump's agenda succeed in Congress. | ||
| And then from the Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, he says House Republicans are running scared. | ||
| Donald Trump won the Elise Stefanik district by 21 points in November 2024. | ||
| He withdrew her nomination to be UN ambassador because the extremists are afraid they will lose the special election to replace her. | ||
| News update for all of you this morning. | ||
| Let's go back to our conversation about Elon Musk and Doge. | ||
| Ronald in Cookville, Tennessee, Republican. | ||
| Ronald, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Go ahead. | ||
| We're listening to you. | ||
| Your thoughts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
People, wake up. | |
| The Democrats are lying to you. | ||
| We're just trying to save the tax money that you've paid in to take away the fat, the lies, and stuff. | ||
| Be with Donald Trump and Elon Musk. | ||
| They're to help us. | ||
| Wake up. | ||
| That's all it's about. | ||
| But the Democrats have lost power and they hate it. | ||
| That's why they're lying to you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right, Shelly in Ohio, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Shelly, what do you say about the work of Doge? | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Actually, I'm all for it. | ||
| After what I just lived through under the Biden administration, I'm absolutely kind of what word I want to use, but to see the people being lied to all the time and the propaganda and everything. | ||
| Everybody has Trump derangement syndrome, and now they have Musk derangement syndrome. | ||
| And instead of working together, and like I am independent, I don't vote a straight ticket. | ||
| I vote for the person and what they're going to do to benefit the country. | ||
| Now we have people over here who are saying, well, this is a terrible thing they're stealing from us. | ||
| Never once, I don't believe, and I think you said it just a little bit ago, that Elon Musk said that he was going to, that they were trying to get rid of Social Security. | ||
| I watched that. | ||
| I never saw that. | ||
| Well, Shelly, let's play a little bit more from the interview. | ||
| This is Doge team member and Airbnb co-founder Joe Gibeah speaking about the efforts to make to modernize the government's retirement process and transform it. | ||
| Listen to what he had to say. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Turns out there is actually a mine in Pennsylvania that houses every paper document for the retirement process in the government. | |
| Now, picture this: this giant cave has 22,000 filing cabinets stacked 10 high to house 400 million pieces of paper. | ||
| It's a process that started in the 1950s and largely hasn't changed in the last 70 years. | ||
| And so as he dug into it, we found retirement cases that had so much paper they had to fit it on a shipping pallet. | ||
| So the process takes many months, and we're going to make it just many days. | ||
| Will it be digitized? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| So this will be an online digital process that will take just a few days at most. | ||
| And I really think, you know, it's an injustice to civil servants who are subjected to these processes that are older than the age of half the people watching your show tonight. | ||
| So we really believe that the government can have an Apple store-like experience. | ||
| Beautifully designed, great user experience, modern systems. | ||
| Fox News, Brett Baer, sitting down with Elon Musk and the Doge team yesterday for their first television interview, and we're getting your reaction to what we heard from them and the work that they are doing. | ||
| Josephine in Livingston, New Jersey, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My concern is something I feel very strongly about. | |
| I happen, when I listen to the news, and I'm talking about Elon Musk, when I listen to the news, I listen to the BBC, I listen to the station at the broadcasting from Germany, from Japan, all around the world. | ||
| And I have to tell you, especially Europe, what they think of Musk, his car sales have gone down 68%. | ||
| If Germany just had an election and labeled Musk a fascist because he favored the fascist candidate, listen to someone who's been there and done that. | ||
| Now, to get back to what you were talking about, the money that supposedly he's discovered and all that, there is a New York Times reporter who's been following Trump through all these years, who's financially a wizard on all of this, and he's going to go to the New York Times to do it. | ||
| And I wish C-SPAN would break it down dollar for dollar. | ||
| All of that is nonsense. | ||
| He hasn't done one iota of savings. | ||
| It is a joke. | ||
| You've been duped. | ||
| He's a confidence man, the president, and you've been duped. | ||
| As far as Social Security goes, you're absolutely right. | ||
| He hasn't said, I'm going to take money away from Social Security. | ||
| You're absolutely right. | ||
| But if I tell you that I have to put the lights on and I have to operate Social Security and I have no one there, you have effectively eliminated the program. | ||
| Keep in mind, both he and Musk, I'm talking about the president, have started cryptocurrencies in El Salvador. | ||
| You say, oh, she must be making this up. | ||
| Oh, I wish I was. | ||
| They are looking at the surplus money that is sitting in Social Security to get their hands on, because during the summer, they're going to give a $4 trillion tax cut to the rich. | ||
| All you had to go to was the Project 2025. | ||
| 922 pages. | ||
| It's verbatim out of that book. | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| All right, Carlos in Washington, D.C., Republican, let's hear from you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I wanted to point out as a Washingtonian, I've been here all my life. | ||
| I'm speaking to you less than two miles from the White House. | ||
| And doing well today, the best in our country with the highest per capita income in America are these seven counties and the District of Columbia that comprise the Washington metropolitan area. | ||
| The average federal government salary for the first time last year exceeded $100,000 a year. | ||
| In 1960, it was the motor city of Detroit with the highest per capita income in the world, where we actually made things. | ||
| I was born in 1960, and I've seen our world turned upside down, at least here in Washington, because people who worked for government used to make half what we in the private sector did here as Washingtonians who do the real work in this town. | ||
| And I just wanted to point out that we do need good people in government. | ||
| We just have too many of them. | ||
| And what Dodge is doing is correct, and it's long overdue. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Vicki in Homewood, Illinois, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Vicki. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Hi. | ||
| I just wanted to say, I just don't see any of the savings that Doge is doing. | ||
| When you look at, yeah, you're cutting people, so that saves, I guess, salaries and things like that. | ||
| But the programs that they're gutting eventually will affect all of America because we're reshaping our whole economy. | ||
| We don't know what we're going to look like in another year or two because this is an experiment that we're doing that we've never done before. | ||
| So we don't know what the savings are. | ||
| Not yet. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Thank you, Stop. | ||
| Hi there in Illinois. | ||
| Democratic caller. | ||
| Steve's next. | ||
| He's in Prairie Hill, Texas, a Republican. | ||
| Steve? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| Do I have you? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yes, we're listening. | ||
| Yep. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| All I can say is these radical left Democrats and those loons that keep calling in. | ||
| I swear, it doesn't matter if Donald Trump or Elon Musk and all these good men, if they saved six babies out of a burning house, you know, the Democrats would still criticize them. | ||
| It doesn't matter what they do. | ||
| They're just radical. | ||
| The Democrats are the same ones that let murdering killers come into this country. | ||
| They're the same ones that lied about Biden being competent for four years. | ||
| Oh, he's great. | ||
| He can do trigonometry while he's sleeping. | ||
| I mean, they went on and on and on. | ||
| And the left-wing radical newspapers like the Washington Post, The Hill, The Atlantic, all these left-wing MSNBC, the CNN, these are good men. | ||
| Elon Musk is a good man. | ||
| These men could be off vacation somewhere. | ||
| They're going to get all the money done. | ||
| It's costing Elon billions of dollars because left-wing lunatics are burning these cars to try and destroy. | ||
| He don't need this. | ||
| Steve heard that point. | ||
| All right. | ||
| In case you missed it, yesterday, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, held a couple of news conferences during his travels abroad, and he was asked about revoking visas, student visas, and here's what he had to say. | ||
| Let me be abundantly clear, okay? | ||
| If you go apply for a visa right now, anywhere in the world, let me just send this message out. | ||
| If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student, and you tell us that the reason why you're coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds, but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus, we're not going to give you a visa. | ||
| If you lie to us and get a visa and then enter the United States and with that visa participate in that sort of activity, we're going to take away your visa. | ||
| And once you've lost your visa, you're no longer legally in the United States, and we have a right, like every country in the world, has a right, to remove you from our country. | ||
| So it's just that simple. | ||
| I think it's crazy. | ||
| I think it's stupid for any country in the world to welcome people into their country that are going to go to your universities as visitors, they're visitors, and say, I'm going to your universities to start a riot. | ||
| I'm going to your universities to take over a library and harass people. | ||
| I don't care what movement you're involved in. | ||
| Why would any country in the world allow people to come and disrupt? | ||
| We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses. | ||
| And if we've given you a visa and then you decide to do that, we're going to take it away. | ||
| I encourage every country to do that, by the way, because I think it's crazy to invite students into your country that are coming onto your campus and destabilizing it. | ||
| We're just not going to have it. | ||
| So we'll revoke your visa. | ||
| And once your visa is revoked, you're illegally in the country and you have to leave. | ||
| Every country in the world has a right to decide who comes in as a visitor and who doesn't. | ||
| If you invite me into your home because you say, I want to come to your house for dinner, and I go to your house and I start putting mud on your couch and spray painting your kitchen, I bet you you're going to kick me out. | ||
| Well, we're going to do the same thing if you come into the United States as a visitor and create a ruckus for us. | ||
| We don't want it. | ||
| We don't want it in our country. | ||
| Go back and do it in your country, but you're not going to do it in our country. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Just tell me your follow-up and I'll tell everyone. | ||
| And depending on your question, I'll answer it or not. | ||
| All right, I know invite a little guy in the English. | ||
| Can I get her follow-up real quick? | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| We're recording that 300 visas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Maybe more. | |
| Might be more than 300 at this point. | ||
| We do it every day. | ||
| Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa. | ||
| Secretary of State Marco Rubio is saying that revoked more than 300 visas so far. | ||
| And you heard his explanation there. | ||
| Back to our conversation about Elon Musk and Doge. | ||
| Jason is waiting in Maryland, Independent. | ||
| Jason, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have three points I like to make. | ||
| One, they say Musk is going after waste, but what about all the science and research that was going after disease prevention and such like that around the world? | ||
| Trump talks about Ukraine, Putin, and Russia wanting to end all the deaths of the war. | ||
| But what about all the deaths and disease and everything that they were preventing over pretty much across the world? | ||
| And I mean, like, you know, USAAID, you know, and all the ones in the U.S. | ||
| The second point I like to make is, too, when I was in Iraq, we had a saying, complacency kills. | ||
| They use single on their personal devices. | ||
| They justify that it's okay because the mission was a success. | ||
| But what about the next mission or the mission after that? | ||
| True, killed? | ||
| All right, Bill. | ||
| We're going to be an open forum later where you can call in and talk about that signal group chat by the leaders of the intelligence community. | ||
| Bill in Cypress, California, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Bill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| I'm one of those Democrats who get along, want to get along with everybody, okay? | ||
| I'm not out there, I'm not advocating to bomb Teslas or anything like that. | ||
| So I had a question about the Doge, the way C-SPAN is covering the Doge. | ||
| Are you a producer? | ||
| What's your question, Bill? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I wonder why you have never put up anything on the website for Doge. | |
| You never let the viewers know where the website is to go to see what they're finding, nor have you ever put a list of what they're finding. | ||
| Like on some of these other right-wing news shows, they show that. | ||
| They show the list of a whole bunch of screwy things that they're finding. | ||
| And I never see on C-SPAN, not once, not once. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, at the top of the hour this morning, we showed you what Elon Musk told Fox's Brett Baer about the achievements that they have made so far. | ||
| Corey in Edgerton, Wisconsin, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Corey. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you doing? | |
| Hey, first off, long, long time. | ||
| Watch your first time caller ever. | ||
| When I listen to the savings and so forth, I'm kind of maybe a little more independent, perhaps, but typically Republican, but not party line necessarily. | ||
| Zig Ziglar said, is it the cost or the price? | ||
| So it just strikes me that they talk about their savings and then they got all these programs and you're saving some money, but at what cost? | ||
| And it's powerful if you think about it. | ||
| And I think in the big picture, we're seeing the demise of our infrastructure. | ||
| And we think about the amount of people, the knowledge that we're losing, and all these agencies that they perhaps would have passed down to the newlings as they come up through years of experience. | ||
| All gone. | ||
| And how could we never recover that? | ||
| Because I think at some point things are going to reverse if we survive it. | ||
| But we won't have the tenure of all these people who have knowledge to educate what at that point is strictly book learning, but without the hands-on experience. | ||
| All right, Corey's thoughts. | ||
| Nancy in Houston, Texas, an independent. | ||
| Hi, Nancy. | ||
| What is your view of Elon Musk and Doge? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, regarding your topic this morning, I think it's wonderful what they're doing. | |
| What I don't understand is every time you get an independent or a Republican on your phone, I'm watching you all morning, and you cut them off. | ||
| You let these, I timed two calls over 10, 12 minutes, and you just sat there. | ||
| The minute you get somebody that's talking in favor of what the Republicans are doing, your arm goes right to that button and you cut us off. | ||
| I'm so tired of this show. | ||
| You might as well be called CNN. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Goodbye. | ||
| All right, Nancy. | ||
| Once people make their point, we do move on. | ||
| Ron in Florida, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Ron. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Robert Morris was the richest man in the United States in 1775. | |
| George Washington used him to set up the first treasury, the bank that used his fleet of ships to attack the incoming supply ships from England, and he was his right-hand man. | ||
| There was in 1775 also Chaim Solomon. | ||
| And there's a statue of a level foot of George Washington with Robert Morris on his right side. | ||
| Haim Solomon, the Jewish financier who helps supply. | ||
| We're going to go on to Rick in Pennsylvania, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Rick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Rick, how are you doing today? | |
| Morning. | ||
| What are your thoughts on Elon Musk and Doge? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I watched last night, and I really wasn't sure what was going to happen. | |
| And I was totally impressed. | ||
| Totally impressed and really scared, scared over the fact that the Democrats are spilling lies all over the place. | ||
| And I saw dedicated, intelligent, well-intent people that want to help their country who pointed out waste after waste after waste, communication systems that didn't work, money that was randomly being spent out. | ||
| And I'm wondering, why are we not hearing these things? | ||
| Why are we not, why are people telling us that they're not doing things and they're young people ravaging? | ||
| These are successful professionals who care about their country or volunteering to make things better. | ||
| And all they're getting is abuse and resistance. | ||
| And I was totally impressed. | ||
| And I'm now seeing the lies that are being put out about them. | ||
| I basically, I just, I'm dumbfounded. | ||
| I'm dumbfounded. | ||
| I can't wait to see when they're done and what they do. | ||
| And hopefully people appreciate what's being done here. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Rick there, Republican in Pennsylvania with his thoughts. | ||
| We're going to take a break. | ||
| When we come back, turn our attention to Social Security. | ||
| We'll talk with Bill Sweeney of AARP about the future of the Social Security Administration amid efforts by Doge to overhaul the agency. | ||
| And then later, Erica York of Tax Foundation will discuss Republican plans to extend President Trump's 2017 tax cuts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll be right back. | |
| The cherry blossoms are in season, and we're marking the occasion with our cherry blossom sale starting Tuesday at c-spanshop.org, our online store. | ||
| Save up to 25% on our entire cherry blossom collection of t-shirts, sweatshirts, and drinkwear. | ||
| Scan the code or visit cspanshop.org during our cherry blossom sale. | ||
| American History TV, Saturdays on C-SPAN 2, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | ||
| This weekend, at 6 p.m. Eastern, Calvin University art history professor Henry Ludekaisen talks about political cartoonists with a particular focus on Pat Oliphant and his depiction of presidents. | ||
| Then at 7 p.m. Eastern, watch American History TV's series First 100 Days as we look at the start of presidential terms. | ||
| This week, we focus on the early months of President Ronald Reagan's first term in 1981, including the release of American hostages in Iran and the assassination attempt on the president by John Hinckley Jr. on March 30th. | ||
| At 8 p.m. Eastern on Lectures and History, Santa Clara University art history professor Andrea Pappas on the mid-19th century American landscape painting movement known as the Hudson River School. | ||
| And at 9.30 p.m. Eastern on the presidency, Port of Oakland retired CEO Walter Abernathy recounted the storied history of the USS Potomac. | ||
| Franklin Roosevelt used the yacht throughout his presidency, including to arrange a clandestine meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. | ||
| After FDR's death, the Potomac had a colorful history and is now a National Historic Landmark docked in Oakland, California. | ||
| Exploring the American story. | ||
| Watch American History TV Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org/slash history. | ||
| Book TV, every Sunday on C-SPAN 2, features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | ||
| Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend. | ||
| At 2:30 p.m. Eastern, we'll feature this year's Savannah Book Festival. | ||
| You'll hear from authors discussing scientist Marie Curie, the role of big tech in politics, FBI sting operations, and more. | ||
| And at 8 p.m. Eastern, biology professor Neil Schubin shares his book, Ends of the Earth, which highlights the scientific discoveries made by exploring the North and South Poles. | ||
| Then at 10 p.m. Eastern, on Afterwards, writer Paul Bluesteen makes the case for why he believes the dollar will remain the world's dominant currency in his book, King Dollar. | ||
| He's interviewed by author and council on foreign relations senior fellow Zhongjuan Zoe Liu. | ||
| Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| Democracy. | ||
| It isn't just an idea. | ||
| It's a process. | ||
| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
| It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| At our table this morning is Bill Sweeney. | ||
| He's the Government Affairs Senior Vice President for AARP. | ||
| Thank you for being here to talk about Social Security, of course. | ||
| We've, in our first hour, talked about Elon Musk and the efforts of Doge. | ||
| We heard from viewers saying, what specifically have they done? | ||
| One person said, where are the receipts? | ||
| Do you know what work they have done within the Social Security administration? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, what I can tell you is that for the last couple of months now, there's been a lot of changes, a lot of news coming out of Social Security. | |
| And it's very concerning and worrying for our members, for seniors across this country who rely on Social Security. | ||
| This is money that they've paid into their entire working lives, and they deserve to get the money and the customer service that they paid into, that they've earned. | ||
| And so there's been just a ton of news stories, a ton of new announcements, changes. | ||
| There's been lists of field offices that are closing, and then maybe they're not closing, or maybe there are different kinds of offices that are closing. | ||
| And it creates just an enormous amount of sense of insecurity for people. | ||
| And I think it is really, it's having an impact. | ||
| It's having a real psychological impact. | ||
| It's having a real impact with voters who are getting very angry about what's happening at Social Security, and they want to see a little bit of a return to normalcy. | ||
| They want to make sure that their checks arrive on time and that when they do need help from Social Security, they can call that 1-800 number and get the help that they deserve. | ||
| Have there been any disruptions to Social Security and the work that the administration and the work that they do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I have not heard of any disruptions in terms of money going out, payments going out the door to people. | |
| But I believe that there are disruptions in terms of the customer service. | ||
| We've seen a real decline in customer service over the last couple of months now. | ||
| Call wait times at the end of last year were down to about 11 minutes. | ||
| They're up to sometime, I'm hearing reports of people waiting two and a half hours to get a call back from Social Security when they need help. | ||
| And so there clearly is a significant change in the call wait times and the customer service delivery from the agency and not in the right direction. | ||
| So I definitely think that there's reasons to be concerned about Social Security's customer service focus right now and what they're doing to really make sure that people who need help, when they have a problem, when something happens, they're able to get help quickly, respectfully, and within a reasonable amount of time. | ||
| What are you expecting the Doge team to do? | ||
| What have you heard is next for Social Security? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I'm not sure that I know what's next for Social Security. | |
| What I've heard is that they're looking into the database systems. | ||
| They're looking at the computer systems at Social Security. | ||
| What I do know is that as recently as last year, Social Security just finally upgraded their phone service after, I think, probably decades of people advocating for them to have a modernized phone system. | ||
| So Social Security has been on a pathway toward modernizing some of its systems for a while. | ||
| And if what they're focused on is modernizing the computer systems and getting things up to speed, I think that's a great idea. | ||
| What I'm worried about is that the impacts to customer service with all of these announcements, new changes, things happening. | ||
| Just the other day, Social Security put out a new release, partially rolling back some confusing new rules that they had about identity verification. | ||
| And we're encouraging them to roll that back even further. | ||
| We think that they're moving too quickly without a clear sense of what they're trying to accomplish. | ||
| And so I think there's a lot happening with Social Security. | ||
| And I hope that, again, we can get back to a little bit, a sense of a normalcy with Social Security, a little bit more of a sense of really prioritizing customer service, prioritizing people who need help from Social Security when they need it. | ||
| What is AARP's message to Congress about what's happening? | ||
| And what actions do you want to see members of Congress take? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So our message to Congress is to use your oversight power as Congress to put a stop to this policy that would require people to verify their identity for routine tasks that we've been able to do over the phone for years now. | |
| It's also, our call to Congress is also about ensuring that Social Security has the resources and the focus on customer service that it needs. | ||
| Congress sets Social Security's budget, and Congress limits how much money Social Security can spend out of the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for customer service. | ||
| And they've been doing that for years to the point now that Social Security has the lowest staffing levels in 20 years and a record high number of Americans who are claiming Social Security every day as a result of the generational changes in this country. | ||
| So we've got more customers and you've got less staff handling those customers. | ||
| It's a recipe for disaster. | ||
| So we're urging Congress, as we've been doing for years, to make sure that Social Security has the resources it needs, but also that Social Security does the oversight of the Congress does the oversight of Social Security to ensure that that money is being used to improve customer service. | ||
| The SSA says it plans to cut 7,000 jobs, bringing total staffing to about 50,000. | ||
| You said they're already at an all-time low. | ||
| So what will that do to the agency? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it depends on where those staffers come from. | |
| What we've been told by Social Security is that those are going to be, those aren't going to be frontline staffers. | ||
| We've been really urging them to give us a better plan about exactly which staffers and where and how are they going to backfill the frontline jobs where people are taking early retirement and make sure that people who answer the phones are trained and know how to answer the phones correctly. | ||
| You know, the thing about Social Security is you engage with Social Security at the most stressful moments of your life, when someone has died, as you're trying to get ready for retirement. | ||
| And it's really important that when you call and you make decisions that you can't change. | ||
| Once you retire, once you decide I'm going to start claiming Social Security, you can't go back and change your mind, right? | ||
| And so I think it's really important for the agency to make sure that the staff who are answering the phones are trained well and can give people correct answers when they need them. | ||
| Frank Bizignano, who is FISERV CEO, is President Trump's pick to serve as the commissioner of the Social Security Administration, testifying on Capitol Hill. | ||
| And this is what he had to say about this idea of privatizing Social Security. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think my job as a commissioner is to ensure that every beneficiary receives their payments on time, that disability claims are processed in the manner they should be. | |
| So my first actions are going to be to get organized around delivering the services. | ||
| And I've only been given one order, which is to run the agency in the right fashion. | ||
| And what role will privatizing Social Security, bringing in private equity and tech people, and giving Elon Musk and his little crowd a role have in all of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've never thought about privatizing. | |
| It's not a word that anybody's ever talked to me about. | ||
| And I don't see this institution as anything other than a government agency that gets run for the benefit of the American public. | ||
| Bill Sweeney, your reaction to what you heard from the nominee? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, look, ARP, we don't take positions on nominations. | |
| We've never done that in our whole history of 65 years. | ||
| But what I can say is that we're eager to meet with whoever gets confirmed for this role and to talk to them about how to improve customer service. | ||
| Whether and how they do that is really not up to me to decide. | ||
| But what is up to me as an advocate for older Americans in this country is to ensure that when people call Social Security, they get an answer within a reasonable amount of time. | ||
| that they don't have to wait hours to get a call back. | ||
| They don't have to drive halfway across their state to get basic questions answered at a field office when they could do that over the phone. | ||
| And so that is really our focus is making sure that the deliverables from Social Security, that the customer service, the needs that people have are met, that checks come out on time, and that people get, again, the benefits that they've earned when they need them. | ||
| All right, we're talking about the future of Social Security this morning. | ||
| Rick in Pennsylvania, Republican, you're up first. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I got a question about these phone services for the Social Security. | |
| I'm getting mixed signals here. | ||
| Hey, well, Schumer said they were going to cut the phone system off. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| So what's happened is they made an announcement a few weeks ago that anybody who wanted to get certain kinds of customer service or changing your benefits or signing up for benefits in the first place would need to use an app on your smartphone to verify your identity or to go to a field office to do that in person. | ||
| You needed an appointment to go to the field office, but if they don't have a phone to make an appointment, how do you do that? | ||
| That's our concern. | ||
| This is our concern. | ||
| And the idea that you have to go to a field office to get, again, basic stuff that you've been able to do over the phone is a real challenge. | ||
| It's a real big challenge for people in rural America, too. | ||
| You know, we've got a team in Alaska who works, the ARP Alaska team, and they told me in parts of Alaska, you can't drive to a field office. | ||
| You have to fly to get on a plane and fly to a field office to show your ID, to prove that you are who you say you are, so that you can get the benefits that you've been able to get on the phone right now. | ||
| That doesn't make any sense. | ||
| And again, that's why we're urging Social Security to sort of stop this new policy, to take a step back, let's have a conversation about what we're trying to accomplish, and let's do it the right way. | ||
| And there's been talk of Doge closing up to 50 field offices. | ||
| Where in the country are they looking at? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, this is the, and again, there's so much confusion about this. | |
| We've seen this list of 50 offices. | ||
| I've seen reporting that at least one of those offices never existed. | ||
| Reporters went to the address, and there's an empty field there. | ||
| There's nothing there. | ||
| And so there's a lot of confusion about what this means. | ||
| We've heard from the Doge team, they say that they're not closing these offices or that they're hearing offices or parts of offices that they don't need anymore. | ||
| All of this is, again, this level of confusion. | ||
| This is not the way to roll out news, right? | ||
| To put stuff on a website without any background or without any real communications plan. | ||
| So we're really urging them to take a step back. | ||
| If they're going to make office closures, let's do this in a transparent way so people aren't worried about what's going to happen to them or what's going to happen to their appointments and just be really clear and transparent about what's going on. | ||
| Angela is next in Maryland, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Angela. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| I was wondering, I thought a judge told Doge to get out of the Social Security system. | ||
| So it's my understanding they shouldn't even be in the system right now. | ||
| But following with that, Elon Musk admits sometimes they make mistakes. | ||
| How do they know they wouldn't make a mistake and wipe out someone's work history? | ||
| Right now I'm not working, but when I became a housewife, I did get my last benefit statement, thank goodness. | ||
| So it shows like when I go do get my Social Security, I show all my work history. | ||
| But who's to say they couldn't? | ||
| Billions of people just wipe out their work history in 5, 10, 15 years they go to apply, and they're like, what's this little amount? | ||
| You know, that's where's the rest of my work history. | ||
| And my other question, what was this? | ||
| Oh, could they privatize Social Security without going through Congress? | ||
| So there's three questions. | ||
| One, aren't they supposed to be out of the system? | ||
| Two, what if they accidentally did something horrible, like wiping people's history out? | ||
| And three, can they privatize it? | ||
| Can the administrator privatize it? | ||
| All right. | ||
| Thanks, Angela. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, look, on the first question, I can't comment on an ongoing legal case, but I know that there is an ongoing legal case. | |
| A judge has made a ruling. | ||
| There's appeals, and there's more of this case to go. | ||
| And so this will be an ongoing thing that we'll be watching very closely in terms of who's allowed access to the data. | ||
| What we've been told by Doge team and by the Social Security Administration is that these folks have read-only access to the databases, that they can't change any data. | ||
| And so we are going to hold them accountable if that happens. | ||
| If there are changes to the data or if there are issues, it's absolutely something that Americans who have paid into Social Security should demand that Congress step in and fix. | ||
| And so, and on the last question, you know, this is questions around whether to privatize Social Security or the employees. | ||
| Those are questions that Congress will need to answer. | ||
| And they're going to need to listen to their constituents about whether that's a good idea or not. | ||
| Frank's next. | ||
| In New York, Social Security recipient. | ||
| Good morning to you, Frank. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I work for a company called First Data, and then it was brought up by FiveServe. | ||
| Frank Bizignano was the CEO of First Data. | ||
| Let me tell you what they tried to do. | ||
| They wanted to fire the entire information technology staff and move that over to a company called Accenture. | ||
| This would save them money on benefits and such like that. | ||
| So what they did is they came to us, programmers, and they said, we're going to let you go. | ||
| We're all going to let you go in like three phases. | ||
| And you're going to be responsible for transferring your knowledge to this other company, Accenture. | ||
| So they went about trying to implement this. | ||
| And within a short period of time, they realized that they didn't do a very good feasibility study because our systems were not that simple. | ||
| They were not easy enough to transfer the knowledge. | ||
| And that's the way it is with business people don't really understand technology all that well at all because and I'm sure the Social Security system is similar. | ||
| In fact, I know it's a mainframe legacy type system. | ||
| It would take forever to upgrade or change it or whatever it is. | ||
| Well, let's talk about that, Frank. | ||
| Let's talk about that. | ||
| I mean, what do you know about the system, the software that they are using at Social Security Administration? | ||
| What does it look like? | ||
| How old is it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, they're using a fairly old operating system as far as we know. | |
| And that's actually one of the reasons why there's this kind of question around some of the data about how old people are in this system is because it doesn't handle dates very well. | ||
| And it was written a long time ago with data that's really old in the system. | ||
| And so it is a challenging system, is our understanding. | ||
| It's also, you know, the different rules around Social Security are really complicated, right? | ||
| The age that you decide to retire changes how much money you're going to get. | ||
| And the money you get when you retire is based on how much money you've paid in for so many quarters and so many years. | ||
| And there's all these different rules and regulations. | ||
| And so for the people who answer the phones at Social Security, they actually need to know a lot of stuff about Social Security in order to do their jobs well, which is why we're nervous about these changes in customer service. | ||
| It takes a long time for people to get trained to learn all the things they need to know about how Social Security works so that when someone calls with a question, they can give them the right answer. | ||
| And so I do think there's a lot of questions about how the system works, how the team who works at Social Security, how do they get trained and how do they know all of this stuff? | ||
| Again, it is really complicated for Social Security. | ||
| It's really complicated for Americans to understand. | ||
| And the idea that you could do any big, easy changes, if there were easy changes, someone would have done them already. | ||
| Well, let's listen to what Doge is thinking about changing at Social Security Administration. | ||
| During that Fox interview last night, Elon Musk and Steve Davies, who's been a longtime lieutenant of Musk, they talked about what they would like to do with Social Security. | ||
| How do you reassure people that what you all are doing is not going to affect their benefits? | ||
| No, in fact, what we're doing will help their benefits. | ||
| Legitimate people, as a result of the work of Doge, will receive more Social Security, not less. | ||
| I want to emphasize that. | ||
| As a result of the work of Doge, legitimate recipients of Social Security will receive more money, not less money. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| I want to emphasize that point and let the record show that I said this and it will be proven out to be true. | ||
| Let's check back on this in the future. | ||
| So Washington Post, the Social Security Administration website crashed four times in 10 days this month because the servers were overloaded, blocking millions of retirees and disabled veterans from logging into their online accounts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Freaked people out. | |
| Is that going to change? | ||
| Yes, we're going to make sure that the website stays online. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But is it a result of going in there for something you're doing? | |
| No. | ||
| The amount of issues that were with the Social Security system are enormous. | ||
| As an example, there are over 15 million people that are over the age of 120 that are marked as alive in the Social Security system. | ||
| And that's an accurate figure. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| Correct. | ||
| This has been something that's been identified as a problem. | ||
| Again, pre-existing problems since 2008 at least from an IG report. | ||
| So there were some great people working at the Social Security Administration that found this in 2008 and nothing was done. | ||
| And so 15 to 20 million Social Security numbers that were clearly fraudulent were floating around that can be used only for bad intentions. | ||
| There'd be no way to use those for good intentions. | ||
| And so one of the things the Doge team is doing is carefully and very methodically looking at those and making sure that any fraudulent ones are eliminated. | ||
| Let's get your response to two things. | ||
| One, Elon Musk promising more money, not less. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I don't know how that, I don't know, I don't know what he's referring to by more money. | |
| There's the amount of money you get from Social Security, again, is based on how many years you've worked, how much money you've paid into the system, a very complicated formula. | ||
| And so I don't know what he's talking about. | ||
| I think Congress would be the only entity that could change the benefit allocations for people for Social Security. | ||
| So I don't know what he's referring to. | ||
| The second thing is the 15 million accounts of people that are over 120 years old. | ||
| Is there evidence that money is going out to these 15 million accounts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I'm aware of the IG report that he's referring to, and there is no evidence that money has gone out to those people. | |
| Again, the computer system at Social Security is very old and doesn't have a good handling about the way they do dates. | ||
| And so there were a lot of records in Social Security where there wasn't a date of death and there wasn't information about those deaths. | ||
| My understanding from the Inspector General's report was that they made a decision back then that fixing this would cost about $9 million and that it wasn't worth the money given that there wasn't any money going out to those people, right? | ||
| And so they sort of recognize that people aren't getting those benefits. | ||
| Nobody who's that old is getting any benefits. | ||
| And so they sort of chose to say, we're going to save the money by not going through a very painstaking process to try to fix this, try to look up and identify all of the death dates for all of these people and sort of said, you know, we're going to set that aside and we're going to move forward. | ||
| And so I think what they're looking at is old data that isn't, again, isn't being used for fraud. | ||
| People can't use those Social Security numbers to commit fraud. | ||
| And again, we know at Social Security that they have a number of processes in place, actually, where somebody starts, if you get to a place where you're living to a very old age and beyond the norms of statistics, that Social Security actually looks at some data to make sure, you know, are you going to the doctor? | ||
| Are you using your Medicare card? | ||
| Are you doing some things to make sure that people aren't getting Social Security who shouldn't be getting Social Security? | ||
| We'll go to Greenville, Texas. | ||
| Robertson, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| The future of Social Security. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Mr. Sweeney, a couple of questions for you. | ||
| Sounds like we're kind of going in and cutting and creating a whole lot of problems, a lot of confusion, as you've said a dozen times. | ||
| A lot of confusion, difficult problems. | ||
| Seems to me, instead of creating more problems, wouldn't it make a heck of a lot more sense just to look at the cap of what people pay into Social Security? | ||
| And I'd love to hear that number. | ||
| And consider after reaching that number, we continue to collect money from people that have incomes higher than whatever the current amount is. | ||
| Let's say it's $150,000. | ||
| You're paying in roughly 6%. | ||
| After $150,000, you continue to pay in at a little bit lower rate, say 3%, because obviously, you know, the higher-income people, the main complaint with them is they're not going to rely on Social Security, so why should we invest in it? | ||
| So they've put this arbitrary cap on it. | ||
| But in reality, it's a national program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's kind of like you don't put a cap on when you respect civil rights. | |
| You do it all the way through. | ||
| All right, Robert, let's take your point. | ||
| He's talking about the fiscal condition of Social Security and how do you address that, dealing with caps. | ||
| So first explain what is the cap, how it works, and address his idea of increasing it on wealthier Americans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thanks, Robert. | |
| It's a great question. | ||
| It's probably one of the most popular ways that Congress could fix Social Security. | ||
| There's a lot of things that Congress needs to do to fix the shortfall in Social Security. | ||
| I think it's important to remind people that Social Security is about 80% solvent for about the next 100 years. | ||
| And so what Congress needs to do is fix the about 20% shortfall that is likely to come in about 10 years from now. | ||
| We're waiting on the Social Security Trustees report for this year, but most estimates say about 2035, 2034, we're going to see this situation where Social Security comes up about 20% short. | ||
| So they need to fill that gap somehow. | ||
| There's lots of different ways they can do it. | ||
| And the last time they did this was in 1983, Ronald Reagan, Tip O'Neill. | ||
| And the way they did it was they raised taxes a little bit, they reduced benefits a little bit. | ||
| And so we'll have to see. | ||
| And Congress is going to have to decide how do they want to dial that between raising taxes and reducing benefits. | ||
| But as Robert points out, people pay Social Security taxes up to about $160,000. | ||
| It changes every year and it's adjusted for inflation, up to about $160,000. | ||
| And it's called, we call it the tax max is the expression people use. | ||
| And once you hit that dollar amount, you don't pay any more Social Security taxes going forward for the rest of the year. | ||
| The vast majority of Americans never hit that tax max. | ||
| And so they're paying Social Security on every dime that they make throughout the course of the year. | ||
| But really wealthy Americans hit that tax cap sometimes pretty early in the year. | ||
| And they don't pay Social Security taxes for the rest of the year. | ||
| So that is one way that changing that max, changing what that level is, making it a little bit higher, moving it. | ||
| There's lots of different ways you can do it. | ||
| Having it be a slightly lower tax, that's an idea that people have put out. | ||
| There's lots of ideas around using those dollars to try to backfill the Social Security Trust Fund. | ||
| So that's something that Congress needs to decide. | ||
| Congress is the only group of people that can decide that. | ||
| And there's some special rules in Congress around the reconciliation process that require that that be done in a bipartisan way. | ||
| You can't use a reconciliation process to do Social Security changes. | ||
| And so Congress, really, Democrats and Republicans in Congress are going to have to come together. | ||
| They're going to have to work on this. | ||
| And frankly, the longer they wait, the harder it gets. | ||
| The harder the choices get. | ||
| And so the longer they wait on this, they're going to wait till 2034 till the very last minute. | ||
| As you know, and as your callers know, Congress often does. | ||
| It's going to be really challenging to fix this problem. | ||
| We'll go to Marie, Social Security recipient in Middleton, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bill, I just wanted to say to you that I retired when I was 62 years old. | |
| Well, I retired at 57, but I started collecting Social Security when I was 62. | ||
| And I just want to say the people that were there that helped me when I retire, they were very knowledgeable, very helpful. | ||
| And even when I got, you know, went down to the office and did what I had to do and had to use the phone system, the people on, you know, the phone system, they were very helpful. | ||
| The automatic audit, the auto line that you're calling and can do stuff yourself, that was very helpful. | ||
| So I'm hoping that they don't decide to change a whole bunch of things, like you said, you know, change everything at one time instead of looking into the areas that need work. | ||
| You can't just dump everything and say, hey, let's start over. | ||
| I mean, this has been going on for years and years. | ||
| So I think they need to look into it and make sure that the changes that they're going to make are going to benefit the people. | ||
| And that's what it's about. | ||
| We elect these people to help us. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Help these people that they're bringing in. | |
| Understood. | ||
| Is there any discussion of provisions in the budget reconciliation that would pertain to Social Security? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, no. | |
| And it's really, these are really old rules that are written into law that you cannot use the budget reconciliation process to change Social Security's budget or the trust fund. | ||
| And so that is something that is off the table for reconciliation. | ||
| It can only be done in a bipartisan way, Democrats and Republicans working together to solve these challenges. | ||
| Adrias in Pennsylvania, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The people. | |
| And that's what it's about. | ||
| All right, caller in Cuddy, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Are you with us? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| All right, mute that television, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, I just want to ask a simple question. | |
| I'll make it simple. | ||
| About how much money does Social Security collect on a monthly basis? | ||
| Do you know? | ||
| I don't have that figure out the top of my head how much money they collect on a monthly basis in terms of taxes. | ||
| But they, you know, it's a sizable amount of money. | ||
| All right, there, money. | ||
| Follow the money, you find the reason. | ||
| They want to privatize it and put it on Wall Street. | ||
| That's what I said. | ||
| They want to confuse it and destroy it and put it in the hands of the boys on Wall Street. | ||
| And the Republicans, from my point of view, have always been for the rich. | ||
| Like I told my brother, unless you've been living on a planet in another solar system, you've got to know that the Republicans are for the rich. | ||
| They are. | ||
| All right, Adrian, understand that point. | ||
| Let's ask our guest. | ||
| So, Bill Sweeney, when people talk about privatization, what does it mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, look, they've had this fight in Congress before. | |
| AARP was happy to lead that charge against privatizing Social Security way back in the early 2000s. | ||
| And if people want to bring that back up, we'll fight that fight again. | ||
| I haven't heard anyone in Congress have a serious conversation about that for a very long time. | ||
| But I think one of the questions that, and we talked about this a little bit earlier, one of the questions that's out there is whether you would want to bring in private staff to do the customer service at Social Security. | ||
| And again, the key thing is making sure that people can get the questions that they need answered, answered in the right way, easily and on time. | ||
| And again, Social Security is not, it's not a call center. | ||
| It's not something like other kinds of customer service. | ||
| It's really, really complicated. | ||
| As I call her earlier said, it was something that when she was deciding to retire, she really needed that help from really knowledgeable staff who could help walk her through the process. | ||
| Because once you make that decision to start collecting Social Security benefits, you can't change your mind. | ||
| You can't go back and say, oops, I made a mistake. | ||
| I want to wait. | ||
| I want a do-over. | ||
| You can't do it. | ||
| And so it's really, really important that the staff at Social Security be really top-notch trained and understand all the ins and outs of the Social Security program. | ||
| We'll go to Roy in Hawthorne, Florida, Democratic Caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| The way that we pay for Social Security is for the first $156,000, you pay 6.4%. | ||
| That's my understanding. | ||
| That means that your total annual payment is less than or right around $10,000 a year. | ||
| Elon Musk pays out of Social Security in the first hour of the year. | ||
| The rest of the year, he gets off scot-free. | ||
| If we do away with the cap completely, we could lower what we're paying, what everybody is paying into Social Security, probably by 50 to 60%. | ||
| That would help the people. | ||
| Social Security is a system that is paid for by the poor and collected by the poor. | ||
| And it's not only the old people, it's the handicapped, mentally retarded, orphaned children. | ||
| What does Elon Musk have against these people that he doesn't want to chip in his fair share, which would be 6% on his entire economy? | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wait for your answer. | |
| All right, Bill Sweeney. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'll be honest, it's even more than that because the money you pay is actually matched by your employer, and that's basically money that they would be paying you otherwise. | |
| And so it's a lot of money that comes out of people's paychecks. | ||
| And I got to tell you, everybody I ever met, their very first paycheck, they say, what the heck is a FICA and why is all this money coming out for a FICA, right? | ||
| And you pay that every single paycheck your entire working life. | ||
| And what's amazing to me, I didn't know this before I started working at ARP, I'll be honest, is that not only does that pay for the benefits you get, but it pays for the customer service you get at Social Security too. | ||
| So when you call Social Security and you talk to somebody, they're getting paid out of that trust fund that you paid those taxes into as well. | ||
| And so you don't just deserve your benefits. | ||
| You deserve top-class customer service because you've paid for it every single paycheck your entire working life. | ||
| And so I absolutely think that that's our position is, you know, you've worked for it, you've earned it, and you should be able to get good customer service every day, anytime. | ||
| Gary in Bellpree, Ohio, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Gary. | ||
| We're talking about the future of Social Security. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, hello, America. | |
| I was wondering if they're thinking about investigating a lot of these people that have disability claims that I know that are working under the table. | ||
| Some of them have been, they've been getting disabilities since they were out of high school. | ||
| It's like a lifestyle. | ||
| They get free rent, they get hospitalization, and so forth. | ||
| And then there's the lawyer in town who puts the big billboard up, Social Security disability. | ||
| And I just, I could name names, but I won't. | ||
| What can we do about stuff like that? | ||
| Bill Sweeney. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, look, there's a lot of different policies that go into disability claims. | |
| There's a pretty significant backlog of people who have claimed that they're disabled and are trying to get those benefits. | ||
| And it takes a really long time for Social Security to adjudicate all those cases, to get through all those claims. | ||
| There's a ton of paperwork you have to file. | ||
| But I'll make this point because it's come up a couple times. | ||
| Committing fraud against Social Security is a very serious crime. | ||
| And there's a department at Social Security called the Inspector General whose job it is to investigate those crimes, to prosecute those, bring those up to the Justice Department for prosecution. | ||
| And they absolutely should be cracking down on anybody who's committing fraud against Social Security. | ||
| It's a very serious matter, and there shouldn't be any fraud in the system. | ||
| And so it is really important they do this very important, a very rigorous process to evaluate disability claims and that there are procedures in place for that. | ||
| But, you know, again, if there are people committing fraud against the system, they should be held accountable. | ||
| James is in Hollywood, Florida. | ||
| Hi, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, this is Jim from Pembroke Plants. | |
| I'm a first-time caller. | ||
| Bill Sweeney, you hit the nail right on the head. | ||
| Dead people payouts, Muscle is getting credit for the 100-plus people, 150 euros. | ||
| He's getting credit for that, and there's no payout. | ||
| So I was worrying about that. | ||
| I've been trying the past three days to get into my account, Social Security account, and there's a part to it that says add driver's license, and it don't work. | ||
| I mean, it just freezes up. | ||
| It kicks you out of the system. | ||
| James, what are you trying to do that you're trying to add your driver's license? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's asking you for your driver's license to ID you. | |
| Ah, okay. | ||
| So, and it just freezes up, and it doesn't give you the front and back. | ||
| It says put the front and back in the two boxes you click and it just don't open up. | ||
| That's right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's frozen. | |
| Bill Sweeney, have you heard of this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, this is this new identity verification procedure that they're asking everybody to go through before April the 14th now. | |
| They extended it to April 14th. | ||
| And again, I just think this is, it's not ready for prime time. | ||
| This is a policy they rolled out about a week and a half ago and gave people two weeks' notice, and then they added another two weeks to comply with it. | ||
| It requires you to prove your identity to get benefits that you've earned and that you deserve. | ||
| That currently you can do these things over the phone, and now you have to go through this complicated process of uploading stuff on the app. | ||
| And it's just very complicated. | ||
| Or going to a field office to prove yourself. | ||
| And so we're really concerned about this. | ||
| We're urging Social Security to halt that process and really get back to focusing on the core things that they need to do, which is helping people with questions that they have. | ||
| And I got to say, I'm nervous about these new policy changes like this creates the kind of confusion that Jim is dealing with. | ||
| And he's having to probably pick up the phone at some point and call Social Security, which is just adding to the wait times, adding to the two and a half hour wait times that we've already gotten. | ||
| So, you know, all of these things rolling out, it just makes it that much confusion and chaos is creating this real crisis around customer service at Social Security right now. | ||
| Todd in Maryland and Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for C-SPAN. | ||
| I just had a question for you, which was, why do you think Republican lawmakers are so hell-bent on cutting Social Security for these people who definitely need it? | ||
| And my second question is, do you respect Howard Stern? | ||
| All right, we're going to go to Audrey in Maine, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Audrey. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Yes, I am a Social Security recipient. | ||
| I have been a Social Security recipient for, oh, I don't know, three decades. | ||
| I got disabled in 1991 when I was making $36,000 a year. | ||
| And then after long-term dissent, I got a neuroendocrine immune dysfunction. | ||
| I cannot work part-time to this day. | ||
| I can't even work from my house part-time because I'm taking all the time to take care of myself. | ||
| Anyway, the point is, I was making $36,000 a year after long-term disability dropped me down to $24,000 a year. | ||
| After the insurance company found out I was going to be sick for the rest of my life, they dropped me into Social Security poverty, pardon the expression, and then I was making $12,000 a year. | ||
| After all these years on Social Security, trying to get better, desperately trying to get back to work, I am still not able to work, and now I am not even making $23,000 a year. | ||
| I get $1,857 a month to live on, and that's it. | ||
| There's no other anything for anybody. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It's like you get $23 a month on food stamps. | ||
| LIHEAP was next to nothing. | ||
| And it's so difficult to get by on $1,857 a month. | ||
| My bills are not less because I'm disabled or older now. | ||
| I'm going to be 70 soon. | ||
| You know, there needs to be more money. | ||
| And then I hear these people in Congress, whatever, talking about makers and takers. | ||
| I'm sorry, I can't be a maker in your way, but I'm certainly not a taker. | ||
| I worked 18 years full-time, okay, paid into the, but now I can't go to work. | ||
| So now I'm in poverty and I'm stuck, and I need a raise. | ||
| I keep calling Congress, my Congresspeople, to ask them to give me a raise, and nobody's listening because, oh, well, you know, we can't do that now. | ||
| So, you know, what about people like me who've been disabled and can't get better and are desperately clinging to every dime of Social Security? | ||
| That's all I have. | ||
| All right, Andre. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Two months. | |
| Bill Sweeney. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Gosh. | |
| Well, first of all, I'm so sorry. | ||
| And it is, this is what Social Security is there for. | ||
| This is why we have Social Security, so that someone who works, who's doing everything that they're being asked to do, who's playing by the rules, if you get hurt, if you get disabled, If something like that happens to you, that you're able to have some kind of a safety net to get by and that you're not living in poverty. | ||
| And it's terrible that we have a situation where people do really struggle to make ends meet like this. | ||
| And this is the reason we fight so hard to protect Social Security every single day for people just like you who need it to pay their bills and just to get ahead. | ||
| And I think, you know, we hear a lot of things in Washington all the time, but I think it's stories like yours that keep everybody honest and make sure that we understand what it is that we're here to do. | ||
| Callie in St. Petersburg, Florida, Republican. | ||
| Callie? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Mr. Sweeney, you know, I hear you loud and clear, and you're obviously an advocate for Social Security. | ||
| But the way you come across most often for all of us who are listeners is you create such an air of fear that the whole system's going to collapse. | ||
| Or cases like the young lady who was just on the phone who said she needed more, but yet I have never heard you say that the fraud and other things that are being detected might release or make more funds available. | ||
| And then you had someone like Musk publicly on TV with a bit of his panel sitting there say there is no attempt or interest in cutting Social Security. | ||
| But yet you did not put a push pin on that and make that a possible positive for all of us in the future. | ||
| I'll add one thing. | ||
| I'm in my 70s and when I started working in my teens, everybody said there'll never be Social Security when you get older. | ||
| It'll never be there. | ||
| And it was said to my father and his father, well, guess what? | ||
| It's there. | ||
| And because now we're reevaluating how it's funded, the computer systems that run it, maybe they're going to tweak it and make it a little bit better. | ||
| Why don't I hear you ever say, as you're smiling, that that may be a good thing, and we need to support that and look to the future? | ||
| And I'd like your comments. | ||
| All right, Callie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, look, I appreciate that. | |
| And we've been working for years at Social Security to try to improve their customer service, to improve their systems, to make sure that they are upgrading. | ||
| Again, I mentioned last year, after years and years and years of us begging them and advocating, they finally upgraded their phone system to something that was made in this century and so that people can actually get those callbacks now that you can get. | ||
| And so I think this is absolutely something that we're all working on. | ||
| And we all want to see improvements at Social Security. | ||
| We all want to see it become more efficient. | ||
| And we want to make sure that people can get the benefits they've earned. | ||
| And I want to just say for a minute, I call this thing the big lie, that we tell young people that Social Security won't be there for them when they retire. | ||
| It's something that my parents heard when they were young, you heard when you were young, that I heard when I was young. | ||
| And as I'm getting older now, I know that it better be there for me when I retire. | ||
| And we at ARP are going to make sure that it's there for everybody when they retire. | ||
| It's been around for 90 years. | ||
| I think it's going to be around for 90 more at least and for forever in this country. | ||
| This is something that we need to keep going. | ||
| And so I think one of the worst things that we do to kids is tell them that Social Security won't be there for them. | ||
| It's not true. | ||
| It's something that we've been saying to people for a really long time. | ||
| It's never been true. | ||
| And I think you're absolutely right that we should stop that sort of fear-mongering that is happening because it erodes trust in this program that needs to be there for people when they need it. | ||
| We'll go to Lawrence, Massachusetts. | ||
| James, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for the permission to come aboard, Captain. | |
| You remember. | ||
| I'd like to ask Mr. Sweeney who AARP Financial is and how they make their money, how much is from the government, how much is it they lobbied and how much is from the insurance company and how much they make by licensing their name to insurance companies. | ||
| And one other quick thing, last week you had a gentleman on that said that Social Security hasn't missed a payment in 90 years and won't for another 75. | ||
| So I'd like to know why all this fearmongering, like the last gentleman that was on the line, said, like Slimy Schumer and everything out there, telling all the seniors that we're all going to lose our Social Security when it's not going to happen. | ||
| I've been hearing that for 40 years. | ||
| All right, James, I'm going to jump in and I'll have Bill Sweeney respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, look, we, again, for 90 years, Social Security has never missed a payment. | |
| We're going to make sure that Social Security doesn't miss a payment. | ||
| I'm proud to work for ARP, and we represent tens of millions of Americans who absolutely want to make sure that Social Security is there. | ||
| And we talked to Congress. | ||
| We sent over a million emails to Congress just this year, urging them to protect and strengthen Social Security for years to come, for generations to come. | ||
| That's our mission. | ||
| That's our focus, and that will never change. | ||
| Bill Sweeney is with AARP, and we appreciate the conversation this morning. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| We're going to take a break when we come back. | ||
| Erica York of the Tax Foundation discusses Republican plans to extend President Trump's 2017 tax cuts. | ||
| But first, we're going to be in an open forum. | ||
| So any public policy debate or political debate on your mind you want to share with us this morning? | ||
| Start dialing in. | ||
| we'll get to those thoughts in just a minute. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sunday on C-SPAN's Q&A, author and writer George Will, whose nationally syndicated column has been running since 1974, discusses his life and career in the opinion business. | |
| Mr. Will talks about the impact of his work on U.S. politics over the past 50 years, conservatism in the age of Donald Trump, his love of baseball, and other topics. | ||
| How opinion gets formed is mysterious. | ||
| It's slow. | ||
| It's kind of a kind of ongoing osmosis by which opinion is formed. | ||
| And I like it that way. | ||
| Who wants to live in a country that is blown about by gusts of opinion emitted by journalists? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author and writer George Will, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA. | |
| You can listen to Q&A wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| UCLA Law Professor Stuart Banner's book, The Most Powerful Court in the World, is a history of the United States Supreme Court from the founding era to the present. | ||
| In his introduction, Stuart Banner writes that today critics on the left accuse the justices of deciding cases on political rather than legal grounds. | ||
| This book shows, he continues, that the Supreme Court critics have always leveled criticism at decisions they did not like. | ||
| These attacks have usually come from the left because the court has usually been a conservative institution, unquote. | ||
| Author Banner has a law degree from Stanford and clerk for Sandra Dale, Connor in 1991. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author Stuart Banner with his book, The Most Powerful Court in the World, a history of the Supreme Court of the United States, on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | |
| BookNotes Plus is available on the free C-SPAN Now mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. | ||
| Democracy. | ||
| It isn't just an idea. | ||
| It's a process, a process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
| It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to the Washington Journal. | ||
| We are in open forum here for the next 30 minutes. | ||
| Any public policy or political issue on your mind, we want to hear from you this morning in open forum. | ||
| We'll begin with an update on the Signal group chat by the top intel leaders of the Trump administration. | ||
| The New York Times headline says, Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, suggests Signal Chat episode is unlikely to be criminally investigated. | ||
| Here's what she had to say at a news conference. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In terms of the Signals chat controversy that's going on, is DOJ involved at this point? | |
| If so, why? | ||
| If not, why not? | ||
| Well, first, it was sensitive information, not classified, and inadvertently released. | ||
| And what we should be talking about is it was a very successful mission. | ||
| Our world is now safer because of that mission. | ||
| We're not going to comment any further on that. | ||
| If you want to talk about classified information, talk about what was at Hillary Clinton's home that she was trying to bleach bit. | ||
| Talk about the classified documents in Joe Biden's garage that Hunter Biden had access to. | ||
| This was not classified information, and we are very pleased with the results of that operation and that the entire world is safer because of it. | ||
| Pam Bondi, on the conversation in a group chat about the U.S. strike in Yemen against the Houthis, the judge that was assigned the case on the deportation of Venezuelans, Judge Boseberg, has also randomly been assigned the case on this Signal group chat. | ||
| Washington Post headline, the judge saying the messages on the U.S. strike must be preserved. | ||
| In addition to that, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, that's Roger Wicker, a Republican of Mississippi, and Jack Reed, a Democrat of Rhode Island, have sent a letter to the Defense Department Inspector General requesting an inquiry and an assessment of the information exchange over the messaging app. | ||
| You can talk about this debate happening in Washington over this group chat or any other public policy issue. | ||
| We'll go to Pat in Hollywood, Florida, an Independent. | ||
| Pat, good morning to you. | ||
| We're in open forum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, good morning. | |
| My issue is on privatization of Social Security, and I wish I could have had a chance to speak to the gentleman that you just had on for AARP. | ||
| I have two points. | ||
| Number one, regarding privatization, tying this to Wall Street, I think would be very chaotic. | ||
| Look how the markets have behaved. | ||
| Look how low they are, and they seem like they're going to be even tanking more in the near future. | ||
| Number two, again, privatizing Social Security. | ||
| Listen to this scenario. | ||
| You have companies that are set up by, in quote marks, the boys. | ||
| They go, they fire employees in Social Security. | ||
| Then these private companies that they themselves have created are going to rehire ex-government employees because they're the one with the knowledge and these people also need a job. | ||
| Who is it that is reaping the profits from all this privatization? | ||
| We had a previous call again earlier that said follow the money. | ||
| And he was very correct. | ||
| Follow the money. | ||
| You will see that all these things they're doing is leading to their pocket. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Pat there in Hollywood, Florida. | ||
| She says privatizing Social Security would be a mistake, tying it to the performance of Wall Street, citing Wall Street's numbers recently and her prediction that it will continue to fall. | ||
| Here's the business and finance section of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Stocks did fall yesterday on the announcement by President Trump of new auto tariffs. | ||
| Related to that story in the newspapers this morning is this opinion piece written by Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, why I'm forcing a vote on Trump's Canada tariffs. | ||
| Fortunately, the National Emergencies Act of 1976 included a provision allowing any senator to force a vote to block emergency powers being abused by the president. | ||
| I will be pulling that procedural lever to challenge Trump's Canada tariffs early next week. | ||
| He said he's leading this effort alongside Senators Amy Klobuchar, Mark Warner, also joined by Chris Van Holland of Maryland, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Angus King of Maine, Democrats and Independents, Chris Kuhn, also a Democrat of Delaware, and then Ram Paul, a Republican of Kentucky. | ||
| All 100 members of the chamber, including the 52 other Republicans, will have to make a public choice about whether to side with American families, businesses, and farmers, or with President Trump. | ||
| Republicans will be judged based on their actions, too. | ||
| When the Senate votes on the resolution, the American people will be watching to see whether they walk the plank for Trump's economically ruinous taxes or stand up for American families. | ||
| Tune into C-SPAN 2 for our gabble-de-gavel coverage next week when Senator Tim Kaine offers this resolution, forcing a vote on the president's Canada tariffs. | ||
| Let's go to actually let me one more article on this front page of the Wall Street Journal because they're the only ones with the story. | ||
| Josh Dossi and Ryan Felton report that President Trump in a phone call to auto executives earlier this month told the executives that the White House would look unfavorably on increasing the cost of cars in reaction to or in response to his tariffs, leaving some of them rattled and worried they would face punishment if they raised prices. | ||
| That's the front page of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| You can talk about that. | ||
| Issue tariffs and trade with Mexico and Canada and these tariffs are put in place by President Trump. | ||
| Ava and Columbia, Mississippi, Republican. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ava in Columbia, Mississippi. | |
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, we can. | ||
| Hi, Ava. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm fine. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| I've tried several times to get on when someone from Social Security is up there and it's been impossible. | ||
| One thing nobody never discusses, and they just dropped the subject, was the notchers in Social Security that Jimmy Carter put into effect. | ||
| I am blind. | ||
| I draw Social Security from my deceased husband who was born in 1921. | ||
| He fell in the notches. | ||
| We never got any of that money back. | ||
| They should pay it back with interest. | ||
| But I want somebody to discuss that one day. | ||
| I want you to bring somebody on that knows about Social Security notchers because I can't be the only person that's affected. | ||
| It must be hundreds in this country that are owed money through that program that was put into place. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay, Ava. | ||
| All right, David in Cincinnati, Ohio, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| The guys who think they can correct Social Security, I'm talking about Trump and Elon Musk. | ||
| These are Nepo babies. | ||
| They never will collect from Social Security. | ||
| They've never filled out a W-2 form. | ||
| So how in the world do they think they can fix a system that they never will benefit from? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The only thing they ever benefit from is they've been sucking on the government pit for most of their businesses. | |
| They've been rich off government for most of their life. | ||
| All right, David's thoughts there. | ||
| Steve in Cincinnati, Ohio, Independent. | ||
| Steve? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| I just, I don't have a political comment. | ||
| I just want to mention something about those of us who would like to support C-SPAN but don't have a computer. | ||
| I wish C-SPAN would put up an address so that if we wanted to send a check in the regular mail, we could do it. | ||
| I'm sure there are a lot of retired people that watch C-SPAN that don't have computers and would like to support C-SPAN, but you don't have any address that we could actually mail a check to. | ||
| All right, Steve, thank you so much for that suggestion. | ||
| It's much appreciated, and I'll follow up on that. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Ed in Huntington, New York, Republican. | ||
| Ed? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| So I just wanted to comment a little bit about Elon Musk. | ||
| I watched the full interview last night. | ||
| And one of the things they said was that 40% of the phone calls that they get for people who are trying to change a direct deposit from one account to another, 40% of it's fraud, that people have their Social Security norms and they're stealing it. | ||
| That's one of the big things they want to address. | ||
| The other thing I wanted to say was about the critical systems. | ||
| According to Elon Musk, it costs $100 billion a year to the IT, to the government. | ||
| And these systems don't talk to each other. | ||
| They gave an example of people who are collecting Social Security disability and on unemployment. | ||
| Those systems don't talk to each other. | ||
| Yeah, Ed, let's listen to what Elon Musk and the Doge team had to say about their achievements so far. | ||
| Our goal is to reduce the deficit by $1 trillion. | ||
| So from a nominal deficit of $2 trillion to try to cut the deficit in half to $1 trillion. | ||
| Or looked at it in total federal spending to drop the federal spending from $7 trillion to $6 trillion. | ||
| We want to reduce the spending by eliminating waste and fraud, reduce the spending by 15%, which seems really quite achievable. | ||
| The government is not efficient, and there's a lot of waste and fraud. | ||
| So we feel confident that a 15% reduction can be done without affecting any of the critical government services. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm going to talk to all of you guys. | |
| Making it better. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And talk to all the guys here about the specifics. | |
| But for you, what's the most astonishing thing you've found out in this process? | ||
| The sheer amount of waste and fraud in the government. | ||
| It is astonishing. | ||
| It's mind-blowing. | ||
| Just we routinely encounter wastes of a billion dollars or more, casually. | ||
| You know, for example, like the simple survey that was literally a 10-question survey that you could do with SurveyMonkey cost you about $10,000, The government was being charged almost a billion dollars for that. | ||
| For just a survey. | ||
| A billion dollars for a simple online survey. | ||
| Do you like the national park? | ||
| And then there appeared to be no feedback loop for what would be done with that survey. | ||
| So the survey would just go to nothing. | ||
| It was like a good thing. | ||
| You technically are a special government employee, and you're supposed to be 130 days. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are you going to continue past that? | |
| Or do you think that's what you're going to do? | ||
| Well, I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within that timeframe. | ||
| So we're in that timeframe, 130 days. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And the process is a report at some point, 100 days? | |
| Not really a report. | ||
| We are cutting the waste and fraud in real time. | ||
| So every day that passes. | ||
| Our goal is to reduce the waste and fraud by $4 billion a day, every day, seven days a week. | ||
| And so far we are succeeding. | ||
| Elon Musk, in his interview with Fox News and the Doge team sitting next to him last night, Washington Post's front page this morning has an exclusive about the next phase of plans for cuts for the federal government. | ||
| Federal officials are preparing for agencies to cut between 8 and 50 percent of their employees as part of a Trump administration push to shrink the federal government. | ||
| The Washington Post notes that this is the plans remain fluid. | ||
| No final decisions have been made, but they note in the story that the amount of cuts could be seen across several different agencies. | ||
| Front page of the Washington Post, if you'd like to read more this morning. | ||
| Chris in Louisville, Kentucky, Democratic caller. | ||
| Chris, we're an open forum. | ||
| What's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have a lot, but I know we have limited time. | ||
| First, I want to say I'm a devout C-SPAN listener, have been since they've been on, but I'm turning sour on C-SPAN because too much is going on in our country and the media is brushing right past it. | ||
| The main thing I'm talking about is Elon Musk. | ||
| If you look at that picture y'all just showed of Elon Musk, that was a perfect depiction of the white state in South Africa, Irania. | ||
| There were no minorities, no females, just young white blonde-haired men who could have been Aryans, all of them. | ||
| And that's my issue with Elon Musk. | ||
| My issue with C-SPAN is that they're regurgitating the same thing. | ||
| And before you cut me off, would you please look up what I saw on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman, the PayPal Mafia. | ||
| All of them were born and raised in South Africa, immigrated to America, and Elon Musk, as they're picking up all these immigrants who have overstayed their visa. | ||
| What happened to investigative journalism where people like Elon Musk, he's still here, but he came on a student visa and overstayed his visa. | ||
| If I robbed a bank 10 years ago, I'm still liable. | ||
| But Elon Musk, he's here on a student visa. | ||
| But I guess if you give enough money to the orange-haired bigoted white guy, you can do whatever you want to. | ||
| But I'm really disappointed in C-SPAN, and I think I'm going to stop listening. | ||
| Okay, Chris in Kentucky. | ||
| Madeleine in Manassas, Virginia, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm not afraid of losing my Social Security under this president. | |
| 50% of Americans don't pay tax or Social Security. | ||
| And I am 80 years old. | ||
| I'm retired. | ||
| I drove a school bus 36 years. | ||
| I find that most people don't get over $14,000 or $15,000 in their Social Security check. | ||
| My biggest stress right now, among all this other stuff that's going on, there is not one pill for diabetics that now we can afford as of January 1st. | ||
| I have gone to the drugstore three times to get my prescription and can't afford to buy it because it's from $435 for 30 pills or $590 for 90 pills. | ||
| My other question is, my son had a stroke. | ||
| He was told he had to wait eight months to get in Social Security, which means he's going to lose everything he has. | ||
| Here it is, six months already. | ||
| Everything's been approved. | ||
| He is totally disabled from having the stroke. | ||
| He's 57 years old and he can't get his Social Security that he's paid into. | ||
| I took him down to the bus station the day he turned 18 and he went into the Army and he can't even get his Social Security. | ||
| Madeline, there's my Virginia. | ||
| We'll go to Steve, who's in California, Democratic caller. | ||
| Steve, we're an open forum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hello. | |
| I'm very sorry to hear about that last caller from Virginia and all her problems health-wise and her son. | ||
| That's very sad. | ||
| I'm sorry to hear that. | ||
| I'm on the opposite side of the political spectrum, actually, a Democrat line, as you know. | ||
| But I just think that what's going on with Elon Musk being in charge of the Doge program is ridiculous because he just came in with a chainsaw and says he was going to hack the whole program up. | ||
| I mean, I've been an HR manager for 20 years, and we've laid off people, hundreds of people during my career. | ||
| And each time we do it, we talk to the department managers, figure out who's qualified for what, who we need to do the remaining work. | ||
| And there's a careful study and analysis done. | ||
| And the whole senior management team meets before we agree on who we're going to lay off. | ||
| We don't just come in and chop and hack away at whole departments or divisions or anything like that. | ||
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| I mean, I've been in business for over 25 years, you know, corporate companies, major corporate companies, following Northrop, what have you. | ||
| And it's just ridiculous to see him come in and say he's going to slash off, you know, a trillion here or a trillion there or whatever it is. | ||
| And it just doesn't make any sense letting him do that. | ||
| I don't understand what's going on. | ||
| All right, Steve's guess there in California this morning. | ||
| Other news to share with you in case you missed it. | ||
| The world woke up this morning to news of a 7.7 magnitude earthquake hitting Myanmar and Thailand. | ||
| The shock of it was also felt in the city of Thailand, the capital city of Thailand, Bangkok, and a high-rising, a high-rise there just crumbling to the ground. | ||
| Michael in Austin, Texas, Republican. | ||
| Michael, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| What's on your mind, Michael? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first, I do want to thank C-SPAN. | |
| I saw, you know, PBS, NPR, all of them, you know, getting grilled. | ||
| I think, if anything, C-SPAN right now is the most non-biased way to consuming and get news. | ||
| So I do thank C-SPAN for what they're providing America. | ||
| And Michael, I'll just jump in to make sure people understand the difference. | ||
| PBS NPR gets government funding. | ||
| They were up there testifying on Capitol Hill before the Doge subcommittee about their content and perceived bias. | ||
| We covered that hearing. | ||
| The difference between those two entities in C-SPAN is we do not get government funding. | ||
| That we were created by the cable industry and we are offered when you get cable, we are offered as a public service. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| Yes, ma'am. | ||
| I'm aware of that. | ||
| So I wanted to touch on Social Security real quick. | ||
| It is very frustrating because we are obligated to pay a little over 6% each check, yet we don't have any say as to how that money grows. | ||
| It effectively doesn't grow. | ||
| I have a county job, so I put my money in PCBRS, and my money grows 6% annually, no matter what. | ||
| And there is no stock right now that is guaranteed to do that. | ||
| And on top of that, the county is going to match me 250% after 20 years. | ||
| Social Security has a lot of downfalls in regards to, for one, the funds being held in Treasury bonds having very limited growth. | ||
| We don't have that security to know as to whether we're even going to be able to get it because it's dependent upon political decisions, pouts, retirement ages being raised, or different formulas that we don't understand. | ||
| As wealth is redistributed, higher earners may not get what they contributed back. | ||
| There's quite a few issues with Social Security as it stands today. | ||
| Also, it creates short-term downfall as it's paid out immediately. | ||
| I do understand that, but I do wish that Americans had more say in free agency as it related to the money that we're putting in in terms of potential growth. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In some cases, it's almost if there's that least amount of security in there, it's almost better if we just kept that 6% and invested it in the ways we wanted to to ensure that that money is going to be growing or that we have some security in it. | |
| So I'm not a, you know, a pro in knowing all this stuff. | ||
| I'm not an expert, but it just seems like there would be better ways to increase our retirement fund as we got older. | ||
| And that's really all I wanted to say about that. | ||
| All right, Michael. | ||
| David, Vancouver, Washington, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I'm frustrated with the way the government is wasting our money. | ||
| They collect your taxes all your life. | ||
| And they don't know how to manage it. | ||
| They don't know how to. | ||
| We have plenty of money for other countries except our own people. | ||
| It's sad to hear $1,500 to live on $1,500. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| $2,500 a month. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| Look how much money we spend on Israel since 1948. | ||
| This money should go to our states here, to the people who need it. | ||
| That's all I got. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| David, there in Washington State Independent. | ||
| We told you earlier about Representative Elise Stefanik. | ||
| Her nomination has been withdrawn to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. | ||
| President Trump saying that he needed her to stay in Congress because of the thin margins in order to pass his agenda. | ||
| He did not want to take the risk that her seat is taken over by a Democrat. | ||
| Here's what Representative Elise Stefanik had to say when she was asked about this on Fox News. | ||
| What was the timeline of this? | ||
| Was this a quick decision or one that was long and thought out? | ||
| Well, as you know, Kaylee, I have been, I had my hearing the day after the inauguration. | ||
| The hearing went incredibly smoothly. | ||
| It passed by voice, and there's been universal praise for the nomination. | ||
| The reality is, as Democrats, as we see in New York State, it is totally corrupt. | ||
| Kathy Hochl started threatening to move the ball on the election date. | ||
| You see a highly, highly politicized radical left trying to do everything they can to defeat the president. | ||
| And this is about stepping up as a team. | ||
| And I am doing that as a leader to ensure that we can take hold of this mandate and deliver these historic results that we can pass this reconciliation bill, which will have tax cuts. | ||
| It will have border security, American energy independence. | ||
| And importantly, I look forward to continuing to hold higher education accountable for their failures, as well as all of my work on the House Armed Services Committee and in the national security space that I have been known for at the highest levels in Congress. | ||
| So it really came to a culmination today, but it was a combination of the New York corruption that we're seeing under Kathy Hochul, special elections, and the House margin. | ||
| And look, I've been in the House. | ||
| It's tough to count these votes every day, and we are going to continue to defy the political prognosticators and deliver victory on behalf of President Trump and, importantly, the voters across this country. | ||
| Representative Elise Stefanik on Fox News on the withdrawal of her nomination to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. | ||
| Hakeem Jeffery, who's the leader for Democrats in the House, responded with this on X. House Republicans are running scared. | ||
| Donald Trump won the Elise Stefanik district by 21 points in November 2024. | ||
| He withdrew the nomination to be the UN ambassador because the extremists are afraid they will lose the special election to replace her. | ||
| The Republican agenda is extremely unpopular, he claims. | ||
| They are crashing the economy in real time, and House Republicans are running scared. | ||
| What happened to their so-called mandate? | ||
| Connie and Chicago, Illinois, Democratic caller Connie were an open forum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Excuse me. | |
| Thank you, Gratim. | ||
| I'm particularly calling, I'm sorry, regarding these overpayments and repayments. | ||
| I'd like to know, and I haven't seen it spoken about or written about, what are the criteria that they're using to specify recipients of Social Security being overpaid. | ||
| And another thing, this person, Elon Doge or Musk or whatever his name is, what legal standing does he have to come into our country and just go through all of our agencies? | ||
| Well, he's been designated as a special government employee, authorizing him to work for, I think he said 130 days out of 365. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, shouldn't that be a confirmation by Congress? | |
| Why isn't Congress doing what they're supposed to do with regard to nominations and confirmations? | ||
| All right, Connie's thoughts there in Chicago. | ||
| We'll leave it there when we come back. | ||
| After a short break, we'll talk with Erica York of the Tax Foundation. | ||
| She'll join us to break down the economic effects of extending the expiring 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. | ||
| Stay with us. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
American History TV, Saturdays on C-SPAN 2, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | |
| This weekend, at 6 p.m. Eastern, Calvin University art history professor Henry Ludekaisen talks about political cartoonists with a particular focus on Pat Oliphant and his depiction of presidents. | ||
| Then at 7 p.m. Eastern, watch American History TV series First 100 Days as we look at the start of presidential terms. | ||
| This week, we focus on the early months of President Ronald Reagan's first term in 1981, including the release of American hostages in Iran and the assassination attempt on the president by John Hinckley Jr. on March 30th. | ||
| At 8 p.m. Eastern on Lectures and History, Santa Clara University art history professor Andrea Pappas on the mid-19th century American landscape painting movement known as the Hudson River School. | ||
| And at 9:30 p.m. Eastern on the presidency, Port of Oakland retired CEO Walter Abernathy recounted the storied history of the USS Potomac. | ||
| Franklin Roosevelt used the yacht throughout his presidency, including to arrange a clandestine meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. | ||
| After FDR's death, the Potomac had a colorful history and is now a National Historic Landmark docked in Oakland, California. | ||
| Exploring the American story, watch American History TV Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org/slash history. | ||
| UCLA law professor Stuart Banner's book, The Most Powerful Court in the World, is a history of the United States Supreme Court from the founding era to the present. | ||
| In his introduction, Stuart Banner writes that today critics on the left accuse the justices of deciding cases on political rather than legal grounds. | ||
| This book shows, he continues, that the Supreme Court critics have always leveled criticism at decisions they did not like. | ||
| These attacks have usually come from the left because the court has usually been a conservative institution. | ||
| Unquote. | ||
| Author Banner has a law degree from Stanford and clerk for Sandra Dale Connor in 1991. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author Stuart Banner with his book, The Most Powerful Court in the World, a history of the Supreme Court of the United States, on this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | |
| Book Notes Plus is available on the free C-SPAN Now mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. | ||
| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
| Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are still at our core a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Washington Journal continues. | |
| Erica York is the federal tax policy vice president at the Tax Foundation here this morning to talk about the 2017 tax cut under the first Trump administration. | ||
| Erica York, remind our viewers of the key provisions of that 2017 tax cut and jobs act. | ||
| The 2017 tax law made some permanent and some temporary changes to the tax code. | ||
| The temporary changes were individual income tax cuts, including lower rates, wider brackets, a larger child tax credit, a larger standard deduction, and many other changes to itemized deductions, the alternative minimum tax. | ||
| It also made some temporary changes to the business tax code. | ||
| It created a deduction for pass-through businesses like S-corporations and partnerships. | ||
| It implemented expensing for business investment in the United States, so purchases of machinery and equipment. | ||
| Also made some changes to interest deductions, to research and development expenses. | ||
| And lawmakers are considering changing or extending all of those because the sunsets are scheduled to occur at the end of this year. | ||
| And without any congressional action, most of those tax cuts I mentioned would expire, leaving about 62% of taxpayers paying a higher individual tax bill in 2026 than they would if those tax cuts were extended. | ||
| As you go through the list of those that were temporary and need to be extended, Republicans argue, and some Democrats are in support of extending some of these. | ||
| What impact did they have on the economy and on our government? | ||
| So a couple of different channels you can think about. | ||
| The business tax provisions, we've got lots of academic research saying that especially that expensing provision that improves the deductibility of machinery and equipment investment led to higher investment in the United States than we otherwise would have. | ||
| The individual income tax cuts, they reduced tax rates on average for people across the income spectrum. | ||
| They have less of a growth benefit though, because people tend to be less responsive. | ||
| You know, if you have a full-time job, you have a full-time job. | ||
| You don't really work anymore when you get a tax cut. | ||
| You just get to keep more of that money. | ||
| And overall, they did reduce revenue. | ||
| You know, there are lots of lawmakers and others who will say it looks like they paid for themselves. | ||
| They didn't. | ||
| They reduced how much revenue the federal government brought in. | ||
| At the same time, they did boost some investment and some growth, though not as much as the proponents who signed them, who passed that legislation may have promised. | ||
| Do we know how much lost tax revenue there was? | ||
| Unfortunately, no. | ||
| Revenue estimation is really tricky. | ||
| You have a forecast out for the next 10 years of what you think the government will raise. | ||
| You estimate, okay, what will the government raise now that we cut taxes? | ||
| But then over those years, a lot changes. | ||
| So since the 2017 law was passed, we had a trade war in 2018 and 2019. | ||
| We, of course, had the COVID pandemic. | ||
| We had a lot of tax relief or pandemic support go through the tax code. | ||
| Then we came out of the pandemic and had really fast economic growth and really fast inflation. | ||
| So so many things changed that it's hard to pinpoint exactly what was the effect of the law that was signed in 2017 versus what was the effect of all of these other things. | ||
| A lot of analysis, including from the Congressional Budget Office, has tried to look at this, you know, and answer what is that amount. | ||
| Effectively, there's no like pinpoint estimate, but tax revenues were higher than expected. | ||
| A lot of that was from inflation, though. | ||
| A lot of that was from the tariffs that were bringing in revenue. | ||
| Some of it, a smaller share, was from economic growth. | ||
| So I think it's safe to say the tax cuts definitely reduced revenue, though maybe by not as much as was expected because there was a little bit of economic growth that occurred from them. | ||
| Do we know which one of the provisions, the 2017 provisions, had the largest impact on revenue gains and losses? | ||
| The largest impact on growth comes from two key provisions that the reform made. | ||
| The first was the reduction of the corporate income tax rate. | ||
| So at the time that TCJA was enacted, the United States had the highest corporate income tax rate in the developed world. | ||
| The 2017 law brought us right around the worldwide average. | ||
| So that improved incentives for investment in the United States, reduced incentives to shift profits out of the United States. | ||
| So a lot of academic research has found that boosted investment and boosted growth. | ||
| And similarly, another important provision there were the deductions for investment, speeding up those deductions, which reduces the tax burden that falls on investment. | ||
| So those were the key when it comes to what was the most pro-growth and what was the most beneficial for boosting domestic investment. | ||
| And who saw the most relief from taxes? | ||
| Which groups in this country? | ||
| So the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provided tax cuts on average across all income groups. | ||
| As a percentage of income, the size of those tax cuts increased with income. | ||
| So higher income taxpayers saw a larger percentage reduction in their taxes than lower income taxpayers. | ||
| Part of that is a reflection of the starting point of our tax code. | ||
| We have a very progressive individual income tax code where about the bottom 30%, maybe a little bit more, don't actually pay any taxes in. | ||
| They receive payments back from the government through refundable tax credits, while at the top, you see very high average tax rates. | ||
| So when you provide a tax cut on a progressive tax structure, you tend to see that pattern. | ||
| But that's why provisions were included, like increasing the child tax credit, increasing the refundability of the child tax credit to still provide benefits to those lower income taxpayers who don't actually have tax liability. | ||
| We're talking about the debate here in Washington over making permanent the 2017 tax cut provisions that were put in place as temporary provisions back during the first Trump administration. | ||
| And Erica York, many of the provisions for businesses were permanent, while many of the provisions for individuals were temporary. | ||
| Why was that? | ||
| One of the main reasons was because the biggest problem that the tax reform was trying to solve was that our corporate tax system in particular had fallen out of step with the rest of the world. | ||
| So while the U.S. maintained a 35% federal tax rate and a worldwide tax system, the rest of the world had lowered their corporate tax rates in the 25 to 20% range, moved more towards territorial taxation. | ||
| And that had created some problems for the U.S. If you look back at newspaper headlines back in the period leading up to tax reform, you would see a lot about corporate inversions, corporations changing where they were headquartered to avoid that very high corporate tax rate we had. | ||
| So the problem that needed solved was our out-of-step corporate tax system, and that needed to be done permanently. | ||
| Because when you are trying to induce corporations to change their supply chains and their structure, they won't do that in response to something that's temporary. | ||
| They need to have that certainty in order to respond to those better incentives. | ||
| And if you look at, again, at the period leading up to tax reform, there were bipartisan tax hearings dating all the way back to 2014 and earlier about the issues of the international tax system and bipartisan support for fixing it. | ||
| So I think a lot of the provisions that ultimately were enacted were bipartisan, but then given that Republicans ended up with full control, they also added additional things to it. | ||
| So rather than it being a revenue neutral tax reform that addressed our out-of-step corporate tax system, they also added major deficit increasing tax cuts for individuals. | ||
| They used a budget process called reconciliation, which requires anything that's done permanently to be paid for. | ||
| So while we hear a lot about the corporate rate cut was permanent, it also had to be paid for. | ||
| So there were a lot of base broadeners, which effectively increased taxes on corporations that were permanent as well. | ||
| And that's what paid for the long run or the permanent corporate tax cut, while the individual provisions weren't paid for. | ||
| They were deficit increasing. | ||
| They were net tax cuts. | ||
| And so because of budget reconciliation rules, those were done temporarily. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Erica York, here to take your questions and your comments about tax cuts. | ||
| Roger in Milwaukee, Independent. | ||
| Let's hear from you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Well. | ||
| Let me ask you the first question because I have three. | ||
| But based on the tax credit, is there any reason why we're actually giving tax credits when we have such a ridiculous national debt that we can't pay and we're coming up with tax credits? | ||
| That's one question I'd like to hear you respond to. | ||
| Just so do you think we should be giving tax credit at all right now? | ||
| All right. | ||
| We'll take that question. | ||
| Yeah, I think lawmakers really need to think about fiscal responsibility when they're asking what do we do going forward. | ||
| We had a deficit finance tax cut from 2017. | ||
| I think lawmakers should look closer at how do we pay for this so we don't worsen the fiscal trajectory. | ||
| What is your organization's estimate of how much making these temporary tax cut provisions permanent? | ||
| What is the cost? | ||
| We've estimated that across the individual, the estate, and the business tax provisions that are expiring or phasing out, making those permanent across the 10-year budget window would reduce revenue by about $4.5 trillion. | ||
| So significantly increase deficits over the period, add to interest costs. | ||
| And that's a factor that needs to be weighed when lawmakers are thinking about what do we do next. | ||
| Because given that we're already close to running $2 trillion deficits each year, adding to that is probably not the best idea right now. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And work is underway in Washington to prepare this budget reconciliation vehicle for action on the floor in the Senate as early as next week. | ||
| House Republicans and Senate Republicans want to move quickly on including in the budget reconciliation proposal these tax cuts. | ||
| Jack in Washington, Pennsylvania, Republican, your turn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm in favor of renewing the tax cuts. | |
| Actually, it's been shown, though, that the tax cuts or tax raises really don't change what's going to determine the deficit in the government. | ||
| Back in the late 50s and early 60s, we had 20-some tax brackets. | ||
| The highest rate was 91%. | ||
| And we still ran deficits in some of those years. | ||
| The last fiscal year of 2024, government spending was 23% of the GDP. | ||
| And it's been shown historically that the way to balance the budget is to get government spending down to about 17 to 18th percent of GDP. | ||
| So until that happens, it doesn't make any difference whether you raise taxes or lower taxes. | ||
| You can't control what people are going to spend on the things they want and the things they need, which is what determines the GDP. | ||
| All right, Jack, let's get a response from Erica York. | ||
| On the line, Jack? | ||
| Yeah, so if we look at like 50-year historical averages, spending is significantly above its 50-year average. | ||
| Revenues are slightly below their 50-year average. | ||
| And, you know, it's kind of like a pair of scissors. | ||
| Both sides matter. | ||
| If we and lawmakers want spending to stay at about 23 to 24 percent of GDP, they need to find a way to finance that. | ||
| Historically, though, we have seen American taxpayers not really be in favor of taxes going too much above 18 or 19 percent of GDP. | ||
| So it really comes down to tough trade-offs. | ||
| Are we going to continue spending this high? | ||
| If so, how are we going to pay for it? | ||
| Or are we willing to bring spending back down and get it in line with where tax revenues are now? | ||
| It's a math problem and it's a tough one because it either means people see benefit cuts if spending goes down or people see tax increases if spending goes up. | ||
| And both of those are tough pills to swallow. | ||
| Brian in Georgia, independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you, Greta and Erica. | |
| Greta, great job with moderation today. | ||
| Erica, what I picked up in my one tax class in law school was to avoid this entire area of practice. | ||
| So would you mind sharing what your personal opinions, or maybe if the tax foundation itself has a position on the tax policies and whether or not to extend the 2017 tax policies to amend them in some way to reject the 2017 tax cut tax policies entirely because you're doing an excellent job of explaining this from, I believe, a very nonpartisan position. | ||
| But I would also kind of like to hear an informed, maybe partisan position so that I can take a stance, I guess. | ||
| But kudos to both of you. | ||
| Thank you very much, ladies, and I'll hang up and listen. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| So Tax Foundation is a 501c3 nonprofit. | ||
| So we don't take positions on specific legislation. | ||
| We're also nonpartisan. | ||
| We try to approach things from an objective viewpoint. | ||
| But we do have some principles that we analyze tax policy through. | ||
| We think the tax code should be simple, neutral, transparent, and stable. | ||
| And so as lawmakers are deciding, you know, what should the structure of the tax code be going forward, really two things should be prioritized. | ||
| They should look at what is pro-growth and they should look at what is fiscally responsible. | ||
| Of course, a deficit-financed extension of the tax cuts would boost growth, but it wouldn't be fiscally responsible. | ||
| So whether it's through expansions in the tax base, an earlier caller asked, you know, should we have all of these tax credits when deficits and debt are so high? | ||
| There are a lot of ways to clean up the structure of the tax code that would raise revenue while still maintaining lower tax rates, which generally improves the incentives people face. | ||
| There's also a lot of spending that could be cleaned up. | ||
| I think it takes a little bit of both, some cleaning up of the tax code, some cleaning up of spending to get to a fiscally responsible place. | ||
| But if we look at the pro-growth question, as I mentioned earlier, the most pro-growth element that is under consideration right now is that expensing provision for machinery and equipment investment, as well as expensing for research and development. | ||
| Making both of those permanent will boost investment incentives. | ||
| So that is one of the more fiscally responsible tax cuts Congress could consider. | ||
| But ultimately, looking at what's simple, what enhances the neutrality so it doesn't provide special favors to certain taxpayers above others, and what is fiscally responsible should guide lawmakers as they're deciding what to do. | ||
| Let's go to Rob in Richmond, Virginia, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| My question is for Erica is that if you explain kind of, I mean, I know you explained that, you know, like 30 or percent of people, because of the progressive tax policy, they don't pay taxes or they get money back. | ||
| But isn't it true that, you know, most people in those brackets, they put more money into the economy, which in essence raises, you know, revenue because you're paying, you know, sales tax and all these other taxes with that. | ||
| And secondly, the What is your opinion on the tariffs? | ||
| Because it seems to me that the tariffs are just another way of consumers paying a backdoor tax to pay for the wealthy tax cuts. | ||
| So if I can get your opinion on that, if you think that's accurate, let me know. | ||
| I appreciate your. | ||
| All right, Rob. | ||
| When we analyze, you know, what's the effect of tax policy on the economy, there's really two questions we look at. | ||
| What are the incentives for work, whether that's, you know, participating in work at all or whether it's increasing how much you work? | ||
| And then what are the incentives for investing? | ||
| And so those are the key considerations when we're thinking about how does a tax policy change impact the economy. | ||
| Does it grow it? | ||
| Does it shrink it? | ||
| Does it have minimal effect? | ||
| When we look at things like refundable tax credits, those tend to have some positive effect on the economy, particularly if you think of like the earned income tax credit. | ||
| That really creates an incentive for participating in the labor market. | ||
| And then along the phase-in of that credit, it reduces the marginal tax rate you face on work. | ||
| So you work an additional hour, you earn an additional dollar of income, it gets matched with tax credit. | ||
| So there's an incentive to increase your work up to a point. | ||
| So that's how I would think about, you know, what effect are those tax credits having on the economy. | ||
| When it comes to tariffs, they are harmful to the U.S. economy. | ||
| Tariffs are a tax. | ||
| They're a tax on the domestic consumption or the domestic purchase of foreign goods. | ||
| So they increase the tax burden in the U.S. economy. | ||
| They reduce incentives for work and for investment in the U.S. You can think of, you know, about half of what we import are either intermediate inputs that businesses use or capital equipment that businesses use. | ||
| So when you place a tax on that, you're directly increasing the cost of making investments in the U.S. | ||
| So any tariffs that the administration enacts will drag down economic growth and will offset many of the expected benefits of the tax package that Congress is considering right now. | ||
| Why would it offset the tax benefits? | ||
| So if you think of it, it can offset in two ways. | ||
| First, the economic impact. | ||
| If we expect, you know, we've estimated that making the individual expirations permanent would boost U.S. economic output by about 0.4%. | ||
| We've also estimated that the tariffs that Trump has scheduled to fully take effect on Canada and Mexico, the tariffs on China, the tariffs on steel and aluminum will shrink U.S. economic output by 0.4%. | ||
| So essentially, it's a wash. | ||
| You're gaining on one hand with the tax cuts Congress might consider, but the trade war is shrinking the economy. | ||
| So you're not coming out ahead. | ||
| And if we get foreign retaliation, those negative effects of tariffs would be even higher. | ||
| We can also think of the distributional burden. | ||
| Tariffs tend to be flatter or even regressive types of taxes. | ||
| They place a higher burden on lower and middle income households than they do on higher income households, while the individual expirations of the TCJ have a reverse pattern. | ||
| They provide larger tax cuts to higher income households than they do lower and middle. | ||
| So we could end up in a spot where lower and middle income households are worse off because the increased tax burden from tariffs offsets any tax cuts they get on the individual income tax side. | ||
| All right, we'll go to JD, who's an Oklahoma City independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I must be just a simple person because I don't understand how you can reduce the amount of money you're bringing in and still pay or spend $4 trillion a year and reduce the taxes that you're paying into and reduce the deficit. | |
| And you're still paying $1 trillion a year on the interest of the deficit and you're increasing it every year. | ||
| So I guess I just must be simple how a tax cut helps the deficit. | ||
| All right, Erica York? | ||
| A tax code would increase the deficit. | ||
| We've estimated that if Congress extends all of these expiring tax cuts without any other offsets, so no spending changes, no other tax changes, deficits over the next decade would increase by $4.5 trillion. | ||
| You know, on a dynamic basis, if you factor in, well, the economy will grow a little bit, that offsets a little bit of the deficit impact, but it nowhere comes close to paying for it. | ||
| So I think you're right. | ||
| If we just increase taxes, or if we extend tax cuts and don't do anything else, the deficit gets worse, not better. | ||
| What is the impact of not making these tax cuts permanent? | ||
| Well, you leave the potential of economic growth on the table. | ||
| So you're not improving those incentives. | ||
| Incentives for work and investment in the United States get a little bit worse at the margin, but you also don't increase the deficit by $4.5 trillion. | ||
| Now, that doesn't fix the deficit trajectory. | ||
| That also leaves us with a much more complicated tax code. | ||
| Things like the alternative minimum tax, the PEAS limitation on itemized deductions, those snap back into place, which add a lot of compliance costs for taxpayers. | ||
| So there are trade-offs with either approach. | ||
| And that's why I think the best approach is not just wholesale extension and not just wholesale expiration, but really looking provision by provision, what in the 2017 tax law helped, what improved the simplicity and the neutrality of the tax code, what creates incentives for growth and investment, and then how do we offset the cost of that? | ||
| How do we do a fiscally responsible tax reform rather than a deficit financed tax reform or just an expiration and let the tax code revert back to what it was in 2016 and 2017? | ||
| Erica York, did the Tax Foundation and you do that work about which of these provisions had a positive impact and why? | ||
| We published a paper last year that looked at just two options Congress could consider that would take the provisions that the TCGA did really well, like the larger standard deduction, the limitations on itemized deductions, clawing back the alternative minimum tax, building on those, and then again, looking at the, I guess you could call them like true loopholes in the tax code, | ||
| income that should be taxed but goes untaxed for whatever reason, and offsetting the cost of those improvements to the structure of the tax code with those. | ||
| So we identified two options for revenue neutral tax reforms that still looked at the provisions that the TCGAA did, like the child tax credit, the standard deduction, lower rates, wider brackets to build on those. | ||
| We've also looked at what you could call more fundamental reform of the tax code, particularly if you look at the country of Estonia. | ||
| They rank at the top of Tax Foundation's International Tax Competitiveness Index. | ||
| For more than a decade, they've ranked number one. | ||
| Taxpayers, there it takes on average less than five minutes to file your taxes. | ||
| They have a very simple individual tax system. | ||
| They have a very simple business tax system. | ||
| So we've also simulated what would it look like if the U.S. just got rid of this system and completely adopted the system of another country that's been proven to work really well. | ||
| It can raise more revenue than our tax system does now, do so with much fewer compliance costs, and it actually has better economic incentives. | ||
| But it entails a lot of trade-offs of getting rid of provisions that people like to have in the tax code now. | ||
| So there's no easy answers, but there are options available to help taxpayers to simplify the system and to still raise sufficient revenue for the federal government. | ||
| We'll go to Eric, North Palm Beach, Florida, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| I think am I on okay? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Thank you, Greta. | ||
| And you've got quite a wonderful expert on Erica York. | ||
| I'm pleased to be tuned in today. | ||
| Well, I organized, I think, two straightforward questions. | ||
| Let me try to throw them out there very distinctly, Erica. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| First one is: in the tax, is there anything with the SALT, the state and local income taxes? | ||
| I understand it's like $10,000 cap. | ||
| Is that going to remain the same, or am I inaccurate on that? | ||
| The second question is: I kind of have a pet peeve with one political party that says millionaires and billionaires should pay their quote-unquote fair share without ever saying what the fair share is. | ||
| So, with that question, if the upper bracket say was increased by 5%, would the revenue gained by doing that be significant enough to close the budget deficit gap? | ||
| I just wonder, you know, they don't say what the fair share is, and that bothers me. | ||
| Do you deal with that, or would you comment and discuss that in addition to the SALT local tax thing? | ||
| Okay, Eric. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much. | |
| Erica York. | ||
| Part of the changes in the 2017 tax law were to place a $10,000 limitation on the itemized deduction for state and local taxes paid. | ||
| A lot of people think that that was a brand new limitation, but it was really making transparent a limitation that had always existed through the alternative minimum tax. | ||
| So many middle and high-income taxpayers who itemize also got caught up in this parallel tax system called the alternative minimum tax, which clawed back state and local tax deductions. | ||
| Part of the changes of the TCJA were to almost get rid of the alternative minimum tax and then introduced transparent limits on itemized deductions. | ||
| And so that was that limitation on SALT was one of the big pay fors of the tax cuts. | ||
| So that broadened the base and provided some revenue to offset the lower rates and other tax cuts. | ||
| That provision is scheduled to expire. | ||
| I think we've heard several lawmakers, we even heard Trump during the campaign talk about increasing the SALT deduction. | ||
| So I don't think an extension of TCJA will keep the $10,000 limit. | ||
| It's probably going to increase it somewhat, maybe $20,000, maybe a little bit higher. | ||
| But I do think a limitation will be part of it. | ||
| If you look at the distribution of the limitation, it primarily affects upper, middle, and higher-income taxpayers, because that's who itemizes. | ||
| And of course, they have much larger state and local income tax bills than lower and middle-income taxpayers do. | ||
| And I think that goes hand in hand with the next question, which is: you know, what is the tax burden on high-income households? | ||
| Should it be higher? | ||
| Should it be lower? | ||
| If you look at, you know, some of the same lawmakers who say we need to increase the tax burden on the wealthy are some of the same lawmakers who say we need to get rid of the limitation on state and local tax deductions. | ||
| If you got rid of that limitation, of course, it would be a tax cut for primarily the top 5% of taxpayers. | ||
| So there are some contradictions in people saying they want to increase taxes on the wealthy and then actually following through and doing that. | ||
| But if we look at the distribution of the individual income tax, the top 1% of taxpayers pay an average tax rate of about 26%. | ||
| The bottom 50% of taxpayers pay an average tax rate of under 4%. | ||
| So that top 1% is paying a seven times larger tax rate than the bottom half of taxpayers. | ||
| Top 1% is also paying about 40% of individual income taxes. | ||
| So we are at a highly progressive tax system now. | ||
| And it's important to know that starting point before we think about how we should change the tax system going forward. | ||
| Ericsson, North Palm Beach, Florida, Republican? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thank you for that answer. | |
| I very, very much appreciate it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| We'll go to Matthew. | ||
| Dear Bourne, Michigan, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| We have the Commission on Government Fraud and Abuse. | ||
| What about if we had a Commission on Tax Fraud and Abuse? | ||
| How much money do you think we could claw back in revenue if we had something like that? | ||
| Erica York. | ||
| Yeah, the average tax gap is about 15%. | ||
| So that's the IRS estimate of what are the taxes due and how much of those get paid on time. | ||
| And about 85% of taxes do get paid on time. | ||
| If you compare the United States to other countries, we aren't that bad. | ||
| A 15% tax gap isn't the best, but it's also not the worst. | ||
| And I think a couple things go hand in hand if you want to improve tax compliance. | ||
| That is complemented by improving the simplicity of the tax code and improving the structure of the tax code. | ||
| If you look at the areas where the tax gap is the largest, it tends to be the areas where the tax code is the most complicated. | ||
| So think, you know, partnerships, closely held businesses, how they pay taxes. | ||
| So if we simplified how that is in statute, that would give the IRS an easier time to enforce and administer the tax code. | ||
| Of course, people should always pay the taxes they owe. | ||
| And reducing the tax gap is a good way to increase tax revenue, but it has limits because the tax gap is at 15%. | ||
| So it's not a significant new source of revenue. | ||
| It wouldn't close the budget deficit, anything like that. | ||
| But again, that simplicity goes hand in hand with increasing compliance. | ||
| Paul's in Indianapolis, an independent. | ||
| Paul, question or comment on the tax cuts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you. | |
| I understand that the Biden's plan was no increases on people making less than $400,000. | ||
| Now, when Obama kept the Bush tax cuts on people making less than $250,000, Pew said that that cost about 80% of the total tax cut. | ||
| What's the percentage of this tax cut that is due to the people under $400,000? | ||
| Erica York? | ||
| I'm going to have Erica York respond to that. | ||
| It's most of the cut. | ||
| Estimates have varied, but it's a significant portion. | ||
| I think some estimates say it's at least $2.5 trillion of the roughly $3.5 trillion that comes from the individual tax cuts alone. | ||
| So, yeah, you could say that because of that pledge, because of what was in the Biden administration presidential budget requests to Congress, that there's bipartisan support for continuing the bulk of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. | ||
| Brock, Newark, New Jersey, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, everyone. | |
| And God bless our troops home and abroad. | ||
| I just had a quick question, Erica. | ||
| I do like what you were saying about how it was like contradictory. | ||
| I do feel like a lot of these politicians are playing in our face. | ||
| And I also believe that China is playing the long game, you know, for whatever we did to them in the past. | ||
| Because I'm trying to understand we're a consumer economy. | ||
| And so I'm not really sure how that was supposed to produce revenue. | ||
| But my biggest question was, if we didn't pay China whatever we owe them because of what they did to us with COVID, what would be our deficit then? | ||
| Like if we just didn't pay China? | ||
| What do you mean by paying them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like, I figured, I thought that we owe China so much money. | |
| Like, we just don't pay them. | ||
| Because of our debt? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, there was. | |
| Yeah, like we had an economic crisis because of COVID. | ||
| All right. | ||
| I got the point, Brock. | ||
| Erica York? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So in response to COVID, the federal government passed several relief packages. | ||
| They were deficit financed. | ||
| You know, we had the CARES Act. | ||
| We had follow-ups on that. | ||
| We had the American Rescue Plan. | ||
| So if you look at charts of deficits of federal debt, they spiked during the pandemic. | ||
| I think you would expect that to happen, though, because if the federal government had not responded, when the economy shut down, the idea of this relief was to provide people a bridge to get through the public health crisis. | ||
| So I think it was a necessary response, though we could go back and say, you know, maybe it was too much in certain areas. | ||
| In hindsight, there are programs we could have structured much better to reduce fraud and abuse of those programs. | ||
| But I think they were necessary given that we were in a public health crisis. | ||
| They were deficit financed. | ||
| They were debt financed. | ||
| What that means now, though, is that we need to get debt on a better trajectory. | ||
| We need our deficits to shrink because we're no longer in a public health crisis or an economic crisis. | ||
| And so in the better times is when you want to get your budget under control so that you are prepared if something like that happens again. | ||
| With respect to China, that kind of gets outside of the tax policy and the budgeting questions. | ||
| I think this is also related to something we hear on the trade and tariff front and not just with China, but that somehow trade deficits mean we are subsidizing or paying other countries. | ||
| I think that that's also misguided. | ||
| All of this comes back to questions that the federal government makes, faces about what are we going to do with our tax revenues and what are we going to do with our spending. | ||
| That's where the deficits that are within the control of the government come from. | ||
| And it either requires higher tax revenues or lower spending. | ||
| Charles, Blackwood, New Jersey, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, Erica. | |
| My question is very simple. | ||
| Why? | ||
| And please correct me if I'm wrong. | ||
| Why is New Jersey one of the few states where a home equity line of credit is interest on that line of credit is no longer deductible on your federal income taxes? | ||
| So the policy, you're correct on that, but it's not just a state-specific policy. | ||
| Again, one of the changes the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made was placing limitations on itemized deductions. | ||
| Prior to the TCJA, about three in 10 taxpayers itemized after the tax law went into effect. | ||
| Only about one in 10 taxpayers itemized. | ||
| Instead, most, 90% of taxpayers roughly take the standard deduction. | ||
| And so one of the limitations on the home mortgage interest deduction was reducing the principal amount, also placing limitations saying, you know, you're only able to deduct the interest paid on the mortgage associated with your first home up to $750,000 in principal. | ||
| So it limited that for taxpayers across the board. | ||
| It is more binding for higher income taxpayers and again, then in higher income tax or higher tax states because it also interacts with the limitation on state and local tax deductions. | ||
| So if you're facing that limitation, you're facing the home mortgage interest deduction limitation. | ||
| You're much more likely to take the standard deduction than you were before. | ||
| We'll go to Don in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Independent. | ||
| Don, what's your question or comment on the tax cuts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My comment is this. | |
| First of all, your organization is a right-wing, corporate-friendly organization. | ||
| And just as a general background, from 1981 to 2021, $51 trillion went from the bottom 90% to the top 10%. | ||
| And the bottom 50% of people in this country own about 2.8% to 3.8% of the wealth in this country. | ||
| So when you say that the top 20% pay an average of 26%, I think what you're doing is average is carrying a lot of weight in that particular evaluations. | ||
| The top one-tenth of 1% own somewhere between 33% to 37% of the worth of this country. | ||
| And the bottom and the remaining 9%, another 33%. | ||
| So we have all this wealth saturated at the top. | ||
| To give you an example, how this works. | ||
| Don, I'm going to jump in because we've got other people waiting. | ||
| So Erica, York, do you want to respond? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Yeah, when we think about inequality, we have lots of ways to measure it. | ||
| We can think about wealth inequality, we can think about income inequality, or we can think about consumption inequality. | ||
| And when we're thinking about, you know, what matters most for people's day-to-day lives, it tends to be either income or consumption, because that tells you how well off are you today? | ||
| What can you afford? | ||
| What can't you? | ||
| The Congressional Budget Office has a really great report that looks at the distribution of household income before taxes and transfers and then after taxes and transfers. | ||
| And what you see is that I think the report starts in around the 70s. | ||
| The entire fiscal system in the United States, so looking at both what the tax code does and then what spending programs do, redistributes a significant amount of money from top income earners to lower income earners and reduces that inequality quite a bit. | ||
| So if you look at income inequality and then you adjust that for what is the tax system doing through refundable tax credits and through the highly progressive structure where, you know, the top 1%, you can even break it down to the 0.1, 0.01%, pay significantly higher tax rates while lower income households receive money back from the tax system. | ||
| You look at the structure of transfers, those are also progressive. | ||
| So lower income households receive significantly more in government transfer programs than higher income households. | ||
| The fiscal system does a lot to redistribute income away from the top and toward the bottom. | ||
| Ken in Scotts Valley, California, Democratic College. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how's it going? | |
| I'm really happy to talk to you, Erica. | ||
| Could you tell me about the stock buybacks that went on after the TCJA passed in 2017? | ||
| It was something like a trillion dollars was bought back by companies of their own stocks at a time when it was profitable to do that. | ||
| So they didn't really invest in jobs and in growth. | ||
| They just bought back their own stuff. | ||
| Yeah, so a stock buyback is one way a company has to return money to its shareholders. | ||
| You know, there are regular dividend payments and then there are stock buybacks. | ||
| And what happened after the TCJA, as far as investment incentives go, was a couple of things. | ||
| I mentioned that the corporate tax rate was brought down from 35% to 21%. | ||
| Congress also implemented full and immediate expensing for certain types of investment. | ||
| Those are forward-looking measures. | ||
| So they reduce the tax rate on new investment going forward. | ||
| The corporate tax reduction also provided higher profits on investments that had been made in the past. | ||
| So, you know, a corporation invested, it engaged in some type of business activity. | ||
| It was expecting to earn profits from that, and it was expecting those to be taxed at 35%. | ||
| Instead, they were taxed at 21% because the corporate rate came down. | ||
| So it provided a tax cut on existing investment too. | ||
| That kind of results in more money than you expected to have. | ||
| And it makes sense that you would return that to shareholders. | ||
| It doesn't make sense to do that through a dividend payment, though, because when you increase dividends, you create an expectation that dividends are going to be higher going forward, essentially forever. | ||
| Dividend cuts are very rare and they signal that a corporation is in trouble. | ||
| Instead, you do that through a stock buyback, which is what you do when you have a one-time surplus of cash. | ||
| Then you have to ask, what happens next? | ||
| Where is this money going? | ||
| It's not just disappearing. | ||
| And there's a lot of research that looks into stock buybacks and finds that that money tends to be moving from existing old firms and reinvested into new firms. | ||
| So you may not see it right away directly, but that money does get reinvested into the economy. | ||
| It reallocates where capital is flowing from and to, often in a more productive way. | ||
| And then the investments going forward, like I mentioned earlier, we do have research saying that, you know, that corporate rate reduction on new investment and those deductions for machinery and equipment investment did boost incentives, did lead to an increase in the capital stock. | ||
| So I think there was a lot of confusion about stock buybacks and what they meant, but they generally should have been expected and they're not a bad thing either. | ||
| The research shows they're not coming at the expense of investment. | ||
| It's coming from companies that have fulfilled the investment opportunities they face and they're returning that cash to their shareholders who then tend to redeploy it into new and growing businesses. | ||
| Erica York is the federal tax policy vice president at the Tax Foundation. | ||
| Thank you for the conversation this morning. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And thanks all of you for watching and participating this morning as well. | ||
| We'll be back tomorrow morning, 7 a.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| Right now, we want to take you over to a conversation happening in Washington this morning about the Trump administration's efforts to boost semiconductor manufacturing in the country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is live at the Hudson Institute. | |
| As well. |