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June 4, 2025 01:35-02:20 - CSPAN

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Washington Journal John Hart

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mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Welcome back to Washington Journal.
		Joining us to talk about federal spending cuts and the future of Doge is John Hart.
		He is the CEO of Open the Books.
		John, welcome to the program.
unidentified		Mimi, thanks for having me.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		So tell us about Open Books and what your mission is.
unidentified		Yeah, Open the Books is a transparency organization.
		We've been around about 15 years, and it launched in part through legislation that I helped write when I was with Senator Tom Coburn.
		We teamed up with Barack Obama, who was then a senator back in 2006, and passed a bill called the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act to put all federal spending online for the first time.
		So Open the Books took that data and then expanded it way beyond federal to state and local.
		So we have 10 billion lines of code.
		It's the biggest database of government spending in history.
		And it's the Spending Genome Project.
		And we're trying to advance the founders' vision of transparency.
		Transparency is a foundational principle of freedom, of democracy.
		We can't have truth without transparency.
		And transparency was written into the Constitution.
		It's a requirement that precedes the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment itself.
		So transparency is like oxygen in the public square.
		We can't speak if we can't breathe.
		So we're trying to provide that information to keep people free.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Does your organization have an ideological point of view?
unidentified		I think we believe in transparency is the answer.
		So we're trying to create a reality-based conversation.
		So our politics today is profoundly polarized, and there's a lack of information that people can trust.
		So I'm very transparent and open about what I believe about the size and scope of government.
		I think Thomas Jefferson was right when he said the natural order of things is for liberty to diminish and for government to gain ground.
		So I think the founders' vision is what we ought to restore.
		And the founders had a very clear vision of transparency.
		I believe they would have insisted on real-time transparency if they had access to today's technology.
		And again, it's about giving the American people the tools and power they need to hold government accountable.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		You know, we're hearing a lot about waste, fraud, and abuse.
		Fraud obviously is against the law.
		It's breaking the law.
		But how would your organization determine what is waste and what's abuse?
		Because that seems very subjective.
unidentified		Sure.
		I think the standard is, I would go back to the social contract theory, okay?
		So the reason we have government is that we give up a little bit of our freedom to get more freedom in return.
		And when that contract is broken, that's what we're concerned about.
		So in other words, if you're spending $100 billion or a trillion dollars on defense, the expectation is you get more freedom in return.
		You get the safety, security, and knowledge that you can do commerce freely.
		You can pursue happiness on your terms.
		And that's really the measure, is that when government starts spending money that doesn't lead to a net gain of freedom, then we're concerned about it.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Elon Musk ended his formal role in government just this last Friday.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		What would you say was his impact on the federal government?
unidentified		Well, it remains to be seen.
		And maybe I come at this from the perspective of not just a person in a think tank or an outside group or an activist group, but I worked on the Hill for 15 years, and I worked for a senator who successfully cut spending by over a trillion dollars.
		So we didn't just talk about cutting spending, we did it.
		So during the Tea Party, I worked in the Senate for 2004 to 2014, but was in the House before that for a number of years.
		And what Coburn and the Tea Party era was able to accomplish was we cut spending for the first time year to year since the end of the Korean War in 2011 to 2012.
		We cut spending by about $150 billion.
		And this was when there was a Democrat in the White House, Barack Obama.
		We also got rid of earmarks for a decade.
		That's $140 billion.
		We required the Government Accountability Office to do an annual duplication report that, according to GAO, has saved $725 billion.
		So that's over a trillion dollars in savings.
		So I believe there is a lot of waste, or I would, again, spending that doesn't advance freedom within the federal government.
		And Elon and Doge have taken away from the US.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		You can really define spending that leads to freedom.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		That seems very up to interpretation.
unidentified		Well, it's up to interpretation of every taxpayer.
		And we believe that if you give people information, they get to make that decision on their own.
		So we're not, I have a perspective.
		I'm not hiding my perspective.
		But I think we have to give people access to data and information so they can make that decision.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		You said that it remains to be seen Elon Musk's impact.
		You're quoted as saying this, quote, Doge and Elon Musk have done the country an incredible service by identifying savings targets.
		What would you say were those savings targets?
unidentified		Well, a good example is Elon and Doge did a masterful job of going in and looking at computer systems that needed to be upgraded.
		So there's a mountain called Iron Mountain in Pennsylvania where they do retirement by hand, pen and paper.
		And we blew the whistle on that 15 years ago with Coburn's office.
		But this is where you had the advantage of someone with celebrity to draw attention to a problem that needed to get fixed 25 years ago.
		So I give Elon and Doge a lot of credit for identifying those areas, those antiquated systems that need to be upgraded.
		And that's one thing they've done that I think is going to be very, very effective.
		And Doge is going to continue that now that Elon has moved on to his other ventures.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Let's take a look at a very brief portion of Elon Musk promising to cut $2 trillion from the debt.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		This is before the election.
unidentified		Right.
		What a great group of people.
		Sorry, I've only got one question for you, and then I'm getting out of here because this is your stage.
		But we set up Doge.
		Yes.
		How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted $6.5 trillion Harris Biden budget?
		Well, I think we can do at least $2 trillion.
		Yeah!
		Yes!
		$2 trillion!
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		What do you think of that?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Was that hubris from somebody outside the government having, because it essentially, he claims that it's $175 billion, which is a big difference from $2 trillion.
unidentified		Well, and it's not even $100.
		We'll get to whether it's really $175 billion, but maybe that number of $2 trillion, that really comes from President Reagan's Grace Commission.
		So 40 years ago, President Reagan put together a deficit commission.
		There was the Grace Commission in the 80s.
		There was the Simpson Bulls that I worked on, and now we have Doge.
		Those are the three big moments.
		The Grace Commission found that one out of every three tax dollars is wasted.
		That was their conclusion.
		If you extrapolate that to today's numbers, you get to more than $2 trillion.
		And I would argue that if you go back to the pre-COVID spending levels, it was about $4.5 trillion.
		It is not extreme at all to suggest that we ought to scale back the size and scope of government.
		So I wish Doge would go back to that $2 trillion plus number, which I think there's a basis for in previous studies of government.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that's possible?
unidentified		I absolutely think it's possible.
		Yeah, not just that it's possible, is that if we want to continue as a country, we have to get rid of our debt and deficits that are strangling future growth and opportunity.
		So a nation that spends more on interest payments on the national debt than we do on defense, a nation that does that does not stay great for very long.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		I want to talk about defense spending, but I'll just let people know that if you'd like to join our conversation with John Hart of Open the Books, you can do so.
		Our lines are Republicans 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002.
		We also have a line set aside for federal workers.
		So if you're currently working for the federal government or you have been recently laid off or took the package, you can call us on 202-748-8003.
		That's the same line for texting us as well.
		Let's talk about defense spending.
		Steve Moore was on our program recently.
		He was a former Trump Economic Advisor.
		And this is what he said about defense spending in Doge.
stephen moore ▲ ● ▼		The biggest agency of our budget is, of course, the Pentagon, our national security and our national defense.
unidentified		And you have to spend whatever you need to to keep your country safe.
		But my gosh, we're spending a trillion dollars a year on our military.
		And everyone knows that there's massive fraud and waste in the Pentagon.
steve moore ▲ ● ▼		I wish that if I have one complaint about what Elon Musk did when he was running Doge, and I think he did a great job of exposing all the incredible waste in our budget.
unidentified		But they should have started at the Pentagon.
		I mean, the Republicans want to spend another $150 billion a year on the Pentagon.
		Why not take that out of the waste in front?
		You have agency, you have people in the Pentagon.
		Nobody even knows what they do anymore.
		It's the biggest bureaucracy in the world.
		So I would like to see Republicans be very fair-minded about this.
		Let's get rid of the waste in every single government agency so that people aren't being ripped off.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		What do you think of that?
unidentified		I agree with Steve wholeheartedly.
		I've known Steve for a long time, and I think he's absolutely right.
		And one of the problems in the Pentagon, too, is we have this crazy rule called use it or lose it, where agencies throw money out the door at the end of the year.
		And the Pentagon spent billions of dollars at the end of last year on things like ribeye steaks and lobster tail and new furniture within the Pentagon because they didn't want to create the perception that they weren't spending all the money they got.
		So Steve is absolutely right.
		I think there's a lot of areas where we could have started.
		The Pentagon is one because you have such a massive amount of spending.
		And when I work for Coburn, we did a lot of oversight on the Pentagon as well.
		We call it the Department of Everything, where the department is doing things that have nothing to do with the core mission of defending the American people.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Now, here is the Doge website saying an estimated savings of $175 billion.
		And then they divide that out per taxpayer as savings of a little bit over $1,000 per taxpayer.
		What do you think of that number?
		And how do we know that that is actually being saved in the government?
unidentified		The way I sort of measure what a quote real cut is, is is it durable?
		It's not so much is it true or false?
		It's is the cut durable.
		And durable means if you get it passed by the Congress, if you get it signed by the president and the president is likely to not veto it, and if the courts will uphold it, then you could call it a durable cut.
		You know, back to the cuts I mentioned before, Coburn helped cut a trillion dollars.
		A big portion of that, what I would describe as durable cuts.
		They went through all three branches of government.
		Now, of that number that Doge has put out, we did our own, we tried to kind of retrace their steps and found that about 42% of the contract savings seemed to be verifiable, 27% of the grants.
		So I think a generous take on Doge's cuts would be maybe $20 or $30 billion because most of it has not gone through the Congress or been approved by the legislature.
		So again, I think I hope I want to see them succeed.
		I want to see them go way beyond what they've described.
		And I think there's more than enough change to find within the federal government.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk about the cuts to the federal workforce.
		CNN estimates at about 121,000 federal workers laid off or targeted for layoffs in the first three months of the Trump term.
		And that doesn't account for the people that took buyouts and things like that.
		Do you think that those cuts were made sensibly?
unidentified		Well, here's what I would have done is you have to look at the real problem.
		You have to fix the real problem.
		So we went through and looked at all federal agency spending over the past 25 years.
		We have 441 agencies.
		I would prefer we reduced that number by 98 to 99 percent.
		So we have four or five that are described in the Constitution, defense, treasury, state, justice, maybe interstate commerce.
		So I'm in favor of dramatically downsizing.
		But if you look at what the numbers actually tell us, is that personnel has been relatively flat over the past 25 years, but spending has gone like this.
		There's been a 300% increase overall.
		And in agencies like the Department of Education, we've had a 750% increase in spending.
		So they should have focused on the spending side and less on the personnel.
		And the way to be successful over the long term, to really downsize government, you have to pick your targets very wisely.
		You have to pick the right quote poster child, as we put it.
		That's why 20 years on, we're still talking about the bridge to nowhere.
		And that helped galvanize the movement that was successful 15, 20 years ago.
		We focused on things like Social Security disability fraud, where there was someone who role-played as an adult baby who was an able-bodied adult getting Social Security disability benefits.
		We chose those targets because we wanted to illustrate the broader point.
		So when you fire federal employees, even though I'm in favor of downsizing, you create a political problem that can derail future efforts to cut spending.
		So I think some of it was targeted well, a lot of it was not.
		You want to pull the weeds and not mow the flower bed.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Has there been any transparency into the cost of Doge?
		In other words, when they lay off the wrong people and they have to bring them back, or when people take the package and they're being paid until September.
		Those kind of costs, is there any transparency into that?
unidentified		Yeah, there will be.
		I wish there was more.
		And this is the kind of question that I think we exist to help answer.
		So yeah, I think it's hard to get at a lot of what they've done because Doge has gained, one of the great achievements of Doge is they've gained access to what's called the Treasury Payment System.
		That is the administrative state's holy of holies, where only the high priest of government can go and enter and see the exchange of funds.
		USA spending that we helped create with Obama, there's a delay.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And that's a website.
unidentified		That's a website.
		USAspending.gov was created through the legislation that enabled open the books and just a whole ecosystem of groups.
		That was the vision.
		We would crowdsource oversight.
		That succeeded.
		Does the capacity to work with Congress to create a much more real-time system of transparency?
		And I call that America's Checkbook.
		That just as you and I have the right to go on and look at our personal account, we should have the right to see what the government is doing because it's our money.
		It's not the government's money.
		And the technology exists to do that today.
		And there are ways to solve the problems of protecting national security data, personal data.
		So Congress and the administration, it's in their interest, especially anyone that believes in downsizing government.
		And frankly, it's shocking to me that Democrats have not picked up on this idea.
		They did.
		Obviously, Coburn and Obama did it together.
		But today's Democrats are so blinded by animosity towards Musk, they're not working with Republicans on obvious ways to improve transparency.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right, let's talk to callers, and we'll start with Dale in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Republican, good morning.
unidentified		Hello, thank you for taking my call.
		I have a question for your guest there, John Hart.
		How do you determine what is fraud in the federal government?
		And I'm speaking about, especially with the military.
		You know, our military isn't just for defense nowadays.
		We use them for weather emergencies, any kind of emergency that comes up.
		We use the military.
		Is that factored into this?
		What is fraud?
		Do they consider that fraud or do they even consider that part of national defense?
		I'd just like to know what you consider fraud, especially after the last Doge meeting with that Social Security is being paid out to people that are over 140 years old.
		I think that's an outright lie.
		And millions of people, I think Social Security is doing the best job they can.
		And I agree with you.
		Cutting staff is not the answer to eliminating fraud.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right, Dale.
		Let's get a response.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Well, I think I would go back to what I said earlier, is that it's really, I'm more interested in giving him, giving the caller the information he needs to decide what he thinks is fraud.
		And that's why transparency is so vital.
		So I would just, you know, I think fraud is where there is no public benefit or the public benefit does not justify the expense and the loss of freedom that comes from giving tax money to that.
		So there's mission creep in the military.
		Obviously, that's a question of who's going to deal with disasters, whether it's FEMA, whether it's the National Guard, whether it's the military.
		But when you have the Pentagon spending millions of dollars on ribeye steaks and lobster tail, I think that's clear fraud.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		For who?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		For their own staff?
unidentified		For parties, yeah, just for end-of-the-year parties to spend money that's in their budget.
unidentified		Yeah.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Here's Tim, Rockville, Maryland, Democrat.
		Hi, Tim.
unidentified		Hey, good morning, and thank you for what you do, Mr. Hart.
		I worked for Senator Benson and was around a lot of the Texas Democrats in the old days, and they were conservatives.
		I think you would have a lot more credibility if you came out strong on defense cuts, come out with a top 20, you know, top 20 list of cuts you would make and why.
		So I'll leave it with that.
		Okay.
		Well, thank you.
		I'll take you up on the challenge.
		We'll do a report on that.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Here's Samantha, who is in New York on the line for independence.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Good morning.
		So I have a a complicated question.
		So we're talking about fraud and abuse.
		How come we're not talking about where the money's going sideways to pay for the super funds that big pharma and the corporations have left?
		That's number one.
		Number two, I'd like to know why nobody's talking about the Harris Biden bill that was made on March 24th, March 18th, 2024, banning crystallite.
		which is taking a really big chunk on our whole product line.
		And how come we're not the people in the federal government, the state governments, are not being transparent about how much money is going sideways to pay for the litigation and to repair the super funds, because we're just going to cap it in that, the super funds, the big problem that the men's delioma cases are creating.
		But Doge isn't talking about that.
		Mr. Musk.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And Samantha, what was your first question?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		I didn't catch the first question.
unidentified		Well, the question is, how come they're not being transparent where all the money is going sideways to pay for these bailouts for pharma and corporations to the super funds that they're making?
unidentified		Okay.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		We'll get your response.
unidentified		Well, I'm not quite sure I follow the question or understand what fund she's referring to.
		But I think, again, there's room, as I've described, for much more transparency than what we have currently.
		And I'm convinced that if our founders who wrote transparency into the Constitution had access to today's technology, they would insist on what we're calling for, which is a real-time transparency so the caller can see funds going to those entities that she's concerned about, and she could then make an informed decision as a voter as to whether to support more or less of that.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		We've got a text for you from Shelly in Ambler, Pennsylvania, who says this, you say Musk has done a great job, and it's all about transparency and freedom.
		How is scraping all of our data, including IRS, religious affiliations, social media footprint, et cetera, in the biggest data scrape in history, making us free?
		How is making the U.S. a surveillance state against its own people considered freedom?
		Please address the Doge data scrape and palantir.
unidentified		Yeah, well, I don't, I believe that we are in an information arms race between the forces of authoritarianism and freedom.
		So I think there's a lot that Doge is doing and has done to help computer systems communicate with each other.
		And that has been unfairly described as authoritarian.
		Now, what I do think is that there is very good reason to be concerned that when the government has a higher level of access to transparency than we do, that's something that you should be concerned about.
		And the founders' vision of transparency is that it is not a two-way street.
		We have the right to inspect the government's checkbook.
		The government does not have the right to inspect our checkbook.
		So I am trying to work with anyone of good faith who wants to create more transparency so that the problem that this person described never happens, so that the individuals and free people always have the upper hand.
		And that takes a lot of work and vigilance to make sure that the center of gravity and authority in a free society remains with the electorate.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And this is what Shelly was talking about with Palantir.
		This is the Economic Times saying MAGABASE erupts as Trump administration's Palantir-powered national citizen database sparks outrage and distrust.
		You can find that at the Economic Times if you'd like to find out more about that.
		Well, this Sunday on CBS, Elon Musk was expressing concerns about that one big beautiful bill that's going through Congress right now.
		Here's what he said.
unidentified		So, you know, I was like disappointed to see the massive spending bow, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, but not just decrease it.
		And our reminds the work that the Doge team is doing.
		I actually thought that when this Big Beautiful bill came along, I mean, like, everything he's done on Doge gets wiped out in the first year.
		I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful.
		But I don't know if it could be both.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		What do you think of that?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Is that budget reconciliation bill undermining the work of Doge?
unidentified		Well, I think it remains to be seen.
		I think there is absolutely, in my view, a need to make sure we extend the tax cuts.
		That not passing that bill, I'm sympathetic to the argument that not passing it would effectively mean a tax increase.
		And when you raise taxes, that you're taking money out of people's pockets and making inflation worse, a lot of other economic problems worse.
		And this is not the only sort of bite at the apple, so to speak.
		And it takes a long time to win these budget battles.
		You know, back in the Tea Party era, it took us 12 years to get the earmark moratorium done.
		So what I would like to see is not just one rescissions package, but multiple or even better, an agency reorganization effort where you take a really careful, thoughtful approach and downsize the administrative state.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And explain rescissions and how that would work and how it would get through Congress.
unidentified		Yeah, a rescissions, and there's going to be a bill sent to Congress.
		A rescissions package means you're essentially the administration is sending a list of cuts that they want Congress to codify and enact.
		And the package that's going to be sent is dealing mostly with USAID and foreign aid.
		And there's not enough in the budget to really deal with the deficit by tackling that issue.
		But I think we need to reform it.
		But I would do it in a different way.
		But I think we ought to sequence it and have other items that have more of a budget deficit impact down the road.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Here's Susan in Revere, Massachusetts, Independent.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Susan.
unidentified		Yeah, hi.
		Well, thank you for being on today.
		I appreciate your organization's work, like the Peterson Foundation and many others in the past.
		I want to just add to the chorus of people that are just so disgusted by the fact that the Pentagon and the Best Military Industrial Complex has never undergone a full audit.
		I think it's disgraceful that your organization and others will not pressure the Congress to end the use-or-lose spending, end-of-year spending.
		You know, also, I think because I do have come from a military family, I know that there are many programs that are perpetuated way past their viability, technology-wise, security-relevance-wise.
		It's just, it's a boondoggle.
		And their procurement system is so backward, so unsophisticated.
		And it never, there's just no emphasis on cost savings.
		I actually get apoplectic when I talk about the Pentagon.
		So I really hope that that becomes a major focus of your organization.
		I think in the big, beautiful bill, they're getting, what, over $300 billion or maybe even $70 billion?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		$150 billion extra, yes.
unidentified		$150 billion, sorry.
		And then they recently sent an extraordinary amount to Israel.
		And of course, we know that they're using that, many of us believe, for pretty nefarious purposes.
		So all right, Susan.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Well, go ahead, John.
unidentified		No, I mean, I think we've led the way.
		We've been talking about user-loser for years.
		And so there's a lot of, the Pentagon is a target-rich environment for budget savings.
		And so I take the caller's point.
		I think there are some things we're doing with our allies that I think are critical for national security.
		So it's not all waste and fraud.
		But again, our mission is to give people the information to let them.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		What do you think about entitlement reform?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Because entitlements, I'm talking about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, are a big part of the budget.
unidentified		Right.
		That is the big question.
		And I think there is a bipartisan collusion to avoid that topic.
		And if you really want to get at $2 trillion and more of savings, you have to deal with this question of safety net programs.
		And if you want to have an intellectually honest look at it, when you go back to Social Security, Social Security was set up to be a universal entitlement.
		And the argument at the founding of it in the 1930s was a program for poor people will be a poor program.
		And I don't know that that's true anymore.
		I think you have, if you think of the two words, social and security, you have very little security in the system now, but you still have the socialized component.
		And I think we need to shift it more for security and provide income security for people who are low-income.
		But you can't do that unless you're willing to be flexible on this ideological vision of universal entitlement.
		And that's really, that's the conversation that I think people of good faith on all sides are ready to have, and that politicians in Washington are terrified of it because they're going to be demagogued by the other side.
		And so I would really challenge people on my friends on the left that if you really care about the future of freedom and the future of security for low-income people, be honest that our entitlement programs are going bankrupt and stop demagoguing people who are calling for good faith reform.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Richard in Sparta, New Jersey has a question about U.S. aid, foreign aid.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		He says, are you going to include the approximately 300,000 people who have died since USAID has been suspended in your transparency reports?
unidentified		Yeah, so I think that quote, there was a fascinating interview or discussion with Joe Rogan and Bono.
		And just some context is my boss, Tom Coburn, who was the most effective budget cutter, I would argue, in the modern era, he supported PEPFAR, which is the president's emergency relief for AIDS in Africa.
		And it saved 26 million lives, prevented, I think, 8 million kids from having HIV transmitted.
		And Coburn started with that problem in the U.S. of parent-to-child HIV transmission.
		So I think there is a role for that in the federal government.
		And I would question that number, but I would add the caveat that if Bono is 99% wrong, that's a 9-11-scale loss of life.
		If Bill Gates is 99% wrong, he guessed the number was 2 million.
		That's a 9-11 every day for a week.
		So it is incumbent upon, I think, Secretary Rubio to make sure that as we reform foreign aid, we make sure we do not create a bigger crisis for ourselves by not providing vital humanitarian assistance.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		So I was just going to go back to our original conversation about waste being defined as something that doesn't advance freedom for Americans.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		So how does foreign aid advance freedom for Americans?
unidentified		Well, I think it doesn't always.
		It can.
		So a good example is the Marshall Plan.
		My great uncle flew in something called the Berlin Airlift.
		And back after World War II, we made a decision as a country, and the public largely supported it, that we didn't want to see World War II happen again.
		So we made sure that the countries that had been defeated had an opportunity to be viable, vibrant countries.
		And we actually made a decision to reduce our relative power in the world to gain more freedom in the long term.
		And that was a magnificent achievement of foreign engagement and foreign policy.
		And that's the vision behind PEPFAR.
		And that's a conversation that people can disagree on whether we should do any of that at all.
		We don't want to spend too much doing that, but to say that we're not going to have any soft power projection can be more expensive than not doing that, than not doing any of it.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk to Henry Bethesda, Maryland, Democrat.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Henry.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'd like to know what the speaker thinks about raising the cap on Social Security income above $174,000 so it can be collected no matter how much income you make for your life.
		And then I'd also like to know why we don't have tiered taxes higher for people making income over, say, $400,000, up to millions of dollars a year as in our celebrities, our CEOs averaging $17 million.
		I think we have two sides of a budget, one side of revenue that is not being addressed because they're afraid to tax.
		Yeah, I think generally I would say there's a couple of parts of that question.
		I think I'm skeptical of the notion that we're going to solve our budget deficit by taxing rich people more and that making rich people poorer generally does not make poor people richer.
		But if you look at the issue that I referenced earlier on entitlements, is that the reason entitlements are not secure is that we have allowed ourselves to operate within a 1930s framework that they must be universal.
		There must be universal entitlement.
		And so part of the solution there is to do things like means testing.
		And we actually made progress on this with Coburn and Joe Lieberman, who is Al Gore's running mate.
		Joe Lieberman said, we cannot keep Medicare as we know it.
		We can only keep Medicare as we know it if we change it.
		So there are people in Congress that know that we cannot continue on the course we're on and that we have to have an honest conversation with the public about changing the structure of how we do entitlements.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Here's Jennifer in Oak Hill, Ohio, Independent Line.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Jennifer.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I have a couple of questions.
		One is I don't understand why there were several years back that the Pentagon donated $50,000 to Pelosi's campaign.
		I don't think these agencies should be donating, and I think if they are, then they have too much money.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Where did you hear, Jennifer, that the Pentagon was giving money to a political campaign?
unidentified		Oh, it's been several years ago when Pelosi was running that the Pentagon donated $50,000 to her campaign.
unidentified		I'm happy to look at that, but I have not seen that.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we haven't seen that, Jennifer.
		I wanted to show you a poll that was done recently.
		This would have been in April, third week of April, about Elon Musk's job approval.
		So we'll put it up on the screen.
		This is a Washington Post, a EBC poll, and 57% disapprove of his, Sorry, not that one, the other one.
		If we can put that on the screen, 57% disapprove, 35% approve of the job that Elon Musk did.
		There it is on the screen for you.
		Why such a big difference?
unidentified		Well, I would go back and look at polls that were done when Doge was starting.
		And polls consistently show that there's a lot of support for a Doge-style type effort, 75% of the country.
		And that, again, that was true.
		We proved that back in the Tea Party era is we won elections by focusing on these issues.
		And so, obviously, it shows that there was a gap in more people like the concept of Doge than like the way he managed Doge.
		And so there are lessons to be taken from that that we ought to absorb and listen to.
		If it was up to me, I would have put someone like Mike Rowe in charge of the effort who does the dirty jobs.
		Because to be really effective at cutting spending, you have to have a dirty jobs mentality and be willing to do very tedious, difficult, painstaking work to get a result.
		And I think of it as like as like, again, pulling the weeds, not mowing the flowerbed.
		Or think of it as power washing.
		You can take a hose and just spray a hose at a problem, and you don't have much impact.
		But if you take the time to really focus and do a painstaking power wash, then you could have a lot of impact.
		And so I think that's more about the way it was done than him personally.
		And again, I'm happy that Elon Musk gave of his time and talent, and there's a lot that's going to be gained from his insights.
		And I think it's unfair to hold him responsible when he was part of an administration in a much bigger effort to tackle this problem.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Now, part of, you know, this is a kind of a Silicon Valley concept, which is move fast and break things.
unidentified		Right.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		It didn't seem like that worked very well for the U.S. government.
		I mean, maybe it works very well in Silicon Valley for a startup or for a technology company.
		But when things break in the U.S. government, sometimes they can't be put back together.
unidentified		Well, yeah, right.
		Look, I agree with that.
		And I think, particularly when you look at the issue of foreign aid and PEPFAR, is that you can't turn a child back on if they've lost access to their drugs that were keeping them alive.
		That's a huge problem.
		That's the poster child you do not want to create if you want to have long-term budget savings.
		And so I think that approach did not translate well within the federal government.
		And I think the approach we used was much more effective.
		And that's an approach that anyone in the future can look at and learn from and apply.
		You have to make smart cuts that gain political capital and that have an economic benefit that's good for the country.
		There are agencies like the EPA and Department of Energy.
		Chris Wright is a phenomenal human being.
		He's the Secretary of Energy.
		They can do a lot at energy to make energy more affordable.
		And when you make energy more affordable, you lower inflation, you make the cost of everything go down.
		So there's a lot to really pivot.
		This is not the end of the Doge story.
		This is one chapter.
		There's going to be a second act.
		Politics is full of second acts and third acts and fourth acts.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And just for completion, here is the rest of that poll.
		Ask the question: how concerned are you that Trump or Doge will reduce government too much?
		And very and somewhat concerned was at 59%.
		Not so concerned or not concerned was at 51%.
		Take another call for you.
		And Al, Silver Spring, Maryland, Republican.
		Good morning, Al.
unidentified		Hi, I want to follow up on the raising the social security for across the income line.
		You really didn't answer that question.
		Okay, why are you opposed to that?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Raising the cap on Social Security from $174,000, the income cap.
unidentified		No, I think that's one of the things that should be on the table.
		Absolutely.
		Yeah, I thought I did answer that.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Anything else, Al?
unidentified		Yeah, I also wanted to, one of the things that we don't address as a social problem is our incarceration rate.
		You know, we incarcerate more people than even China.
		Currently, there are about 2.2 million people incarcerated.
		And, you know, especially for black people, the incarceration rate is more than what Stalin used to incarcerate people.
		You know?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		It's, yeah, Al, that's not really our topic, unless it relates to the US.
unidentified		No, I think, yeah, well, the incarceration rate does have a budget impact.
unidentified		And I would, President Trump actually did a good job in his first term on criminal justice reform to get at the very problem that the caller's asking about of not overly incarcerating people for profenses.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Here's Ron Bradenton, Florida, Democrat.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Ron.
unidentified		Yes, sir.
unidentified		If you spent 10 years looking at waste, fraud, and abuse when you were in aid, why did we need Elon Musk to take and start Doge?
john in unknown ▲ ● ▼		And my other question is, I can see so much waste, fraud, and abuse just with our Congress.
unidentified		When I work, I work a 40-hour week all the time.
		I don't get these holidays and time off.
		You know, I'd like to see them work all the time.
		They waste more money with their little luncheons and meetings and going here and raising money there on my dime.
		They're working for me.
jim in michigan ▲ ● ▼		If you want to talk about my waste, fraud, and abuse, I see it every day when I watch C-SPAN and watch my money go down the drain.
unidentified		They can't even sit there in their committees and do their jobs.
		They walk away and don't even listen to the people on the panels.
		And you were there, so explain to me how it is that my money's going down the drain with these congressmen and these senators.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right, Ron.
unidentified		Yeah.
		Well, I would defend my late boss.
		And he was one that worked far more than 40 hours, I can assure you.
		He would come back from, he delivered, he actually maintained his medical practice, would deliver babies on the weekend, would come back with annotated spending bills and had read bills that even the committee staffers who supposedly wrote the bill hadn't read.
		But I think to his point is there is a concern that I have is that the biggest problem in Washington is not executive overreach.
		It's legislative underreach, is that Congress has not been jealous about its authority and has not asserted itself as aggressively as the founders wanted it to.
		And so, and look, we already have, you know, there's all this talk about Doge and commissions.
		We already have a deficit commission.
		It's called Congress.
		We have members who have the constitutional authority today to do an agency reorganization to solve all of these problems.
		And we ought to have, you know, 535 different versions of a solution and then have a very rigorous open debate about whose idea is the best and let that idea prevail.
		And so I take the caller's point and I agree with it.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		It's John Hart.
		He is CEO of Open the Books.
		You can find out more at openthebooks.com.
		Thanks so much for joining us today.
unidentified		Thank you.
		Appreciate it, Amy.
		C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington and across the country.
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		As Mike said before, I happened to listen to him.
		He was on C-SPAN 1.
		That's a big upgrade, right?
		But I've read about it in the history books.
		I've seen the C-SPAN footage.
		If it's a really good idea, present it in public view on C-SPAN.
rachel maddow ▲ ● ▼		Every single time I tuned in on TikTok or C-SPAN or YouTube or anything, there were tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people watching.
unidentified		I went home after the speech and I turned on C-SPAN.
		I was on C-SPAN just this week.
		to the American people.

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