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Frankly Hiding Government Damage00:14:20
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agencies and state governors.
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President Trump has responded to reports that Hamas has reacted favorably to a peace proposal for Gaza.
He posted this.
Based on the statement just issued by Hamas, I believe they are ready for a lasting peace.
Israel must immediately stop the bombing of Gaza so that we can get the hostages out safely and quickly.
Right now, it's far too dangerous to do that.
We are already in discussions on details to be worked out.
This is not about Gaza alone.
This is about long-sought peace in the Middle East.
Well, I think we're watching this right now.
And wherever the president has discretion or perceived discretion, he has shown no restraint to use that to try to change our government structure to further his own personal aims again.
And typically, those are not actually well aligned to the public's interest.
So the concern that I was outlining there is the one I just described, which is there is discretion for a president to decide what functions keep going when appropriated dollars are no longer there.
It's a small slice, but an important slice of governmental function.
And I was concerned, as I outlined in that article, that this president would misuse that authority.
And we're watching that happen right now.
So it is particularly problematic because this is on top of eight months of deadly and damaging hammer blows to the capacity of our government to serve public needs.
So you're adding chaos on top of chaos.
You're watching the core governmental processes unravel.
Keeping the doors open, as I mentioned, are fundamental.
The spending power belongs to Congress.
Their Article 1 in our Constitution, it's very clear.
And this president, even without a shutdown, has seized that power without real pushback from Congress and now is doing even more to grab a hold of something that does not belong to him.
So then would it be your recommendation, Max, to have the Democrats sign on to a clean CR and reopen the government?
unidentified
My recommendation is that the leadership of both the Democratic and Republican parties figure out a way to do their job and keep our government open.
I am not in the business of making the political calculus of what deal they should make, but I think it's incumbent upon all of us to hold them to their burden of responsibility here.
It really is the most basic burden.
We've seen prior proposals for legislation that would say Congress doesn't get paid.
Congress can't have publicly funded trips back to their districts.
The administration should not be paid.
I mean, the reality is it's the leadership failing that is what is happening here.
And you have federal employees that are now both first responders and victim.
And the American public is getting hurt too.
So I'm not going to tell the Democrats or Republicans what exactly they should do in terms of a deal, but I am saying that it is their responsibility to get one done.
On the partnership's website, you have something called the Federal Harms Tracker, the cost to your government.
You have workforce reductions by month.
It's an animation that can go through each month and talk about the reductions.
What are you seeing as the biggest harm to the American public?
unidentified
So the most important harm is that we're watching our core asset, the people of our government, being thrown away in a non-strategic and thoughtless and often dehumanizing way.
You know, this is fire, fire, fire, not ready, aim, fire.
There are lots of things we could do to actually improve our government.
It's important to know that that workforce is the same size or used to be the same size as it was in the 1960s.
So our government has grown.
There are a lot of choices that we are making as a society that have long-term impact.
Your prior speaker was tremendous in describing some of the challenges that we face and what we really need to do about them.
But indiscriminately firing federal workers is not the way to get there.
You asked what harms are there, and the reason why we did a tracker is they're countless in every respect, whether you're a veteran, whether you're someone who's older, who relies on Social Security, whether you're a farmer.
I mean, on and on and on, all of these communities are getting hurt unnecessarily because of wasteful and frankly damaging management of the public infrastructure of our country.
A president is temporary help.
They don't own the government.
They're there for a period of time and their duty is to be a steward of the public good.
We're watching that model get blown up.
So those harms are both near-term and they're going to be devastating long-term as well.
And our guest is Max Deyer of the Partnership for Public Service.
He is the president and CEO there.
If you'd like to talk to him, you can start calling us now.
The lines are by party.
Republicans are on 202-748-8001.
Democrats 202748-8000.
And Independents 202-748-8002.
We also have a line for federal employees.
So federal workers, please call us on 202-748-8003.
And this number, Max, on your website of total reductions of just over 200,000 employees, does that number include layoffs, voluntary retirements, early retirements?
What does that number encompass?
unidentified
Yes, so the attempt here, and I think this is very important, we have an administration that I think is doing a lot of damage to our government and then frankly hiding the information.
So our intent is to try to provide as much transparency about what is happening as possible.
Later this month, we'll actually be putting phase two out, which will look at the harms by community, by congressional district, that I think will be quite useful.
That 200,000, 200,201 encompasses all the information we can gather about who has been either effectively fired or constructively fired.
And the largest group then is those that took the deferred resignation program.
They, frankly, in our view, were pushed out of our government.
And we've tried to do that by agency and, as you note, by time as well.
And then not just offer the data, but provide some information about the impact that is occurring.
And as I said, we'll be able to do that by community later on.
It is unprecedented.
And as I said earlier, there's lots of good reasons or good approaches to making our government work better.
This is not it.
And instead, we're watching colossal waste that's unnecessary and that is ultimately going to hurt our safety and the appropriate and proper use of taxpayer dollars.
And it is here on your website the numbers by agency with Department of Defense, of course, being the largest agency having the largest reductions.
That's at ourpublicservice.org.
If you'd like to look at all those agencies.
unidentified
Amy, can I make one quick point on that one, too, which you highlighted nicely?
And that is you heard from the president this notion of Democrat agencies.
You just highlighted the fact that the agency that has actually seen the most people pushed out is the Defense Department.
You're seeing harm done to the intelligence community, to the FBI, to the Department of Justice.
There is really no agency that has not experienced substantial harm.
I don't really know what the president is referring to as far as Democrat or Republican agencies, but I will tell you that the entire government is being mismanaged and huge amounts of waste created and huge amount of risk being put on the shoulders of the American people.
We'll start with Linda, Democrat, Guysville, Ohio.
Good morning, Linda.
unidentified
Hi.
I ask basically two questions.
One is when the continuing resolution was passed in March and why negotiations weren't taking place then, my feeling is probably there were very few calls to negotiate with the Democrats.
I kind of heard back then that they really were refusing to meet with them, the Republicans.
I also had a question about, I live in Ohio's breadbasket area, but I wonder why Trump gave $18 billion to help the economy of a dictatorship in Argentina who turned on us and ended up selling all the soybeans to China they could, and now our soybean sales are down 0%.
I just don't quite understand that.
And of course, I am for people having health care.
And I do believe that right now the times are going to be and are as poor as during the pandemic, really, economy-wise.
And I know people are going to need this help continued.
So if you could give me some answers on those two questions.
So it's so important that you keep a sense of history here.
Unfortunately, shutdowns and the threats are not new.
The last time we had this was in March.
They did ultimately agree on a continuing resolution.
Continuing resolutions, I should say, are not actually good management either.
They're only good in reference to shutdowns.
It's sort of a lesser of two evils rather than really effective management.
The reason why they're not good is that they just kick the can and they limit effective management of government.
They're not permitted to close down things that actually should be closed down or to have new starts.
So, you know, it was better than a shutdown, but it was not actually their job, which is to thoughtfully pass appropriations bills.
Your point is important because they've had lots of opportunity to figure this out, and they haven't.
And we have to go back all the way to 1996, frankly, to find a year in which Congress has done its job and actually put all of the appropriations bills through on time.
That's just not acceptable.
And frankly, Congress should be held to account for that.
And we should have processes that make them bear at least some part of the burden rather than the public and the federal workforce.
As to your point about the support of Argentina, look, I don't want to stray outside of my lane of good management.
I think it's important to see that we do have a president that frankly is not listening to or hearing from the expertise of his own government.
Part of the reason why we have a nonpartisan expert civil service is to get good information to the political leaders so that they can make better choices.
And one of the things that I worry about the most is that we're in the midst of an administration that thinks it can do it on its own and is always right and doesn't need that expertise.
And that's just not right.
We live in a complex, difficult world.
They get to make the choices, but they should listen to the information.
One last point on this.
9-11 started off our century in a scary way.
It told us we were at risk from foreign threat.
And the 9-11 Commission, in examining why 9-11 happened, highlighted the fact that we didn't connect the dots.
We had all the information there, and we didn't put together to understand that this threat of a terrorist attack was coming our way.
We're in a worse situation than we were then because we have an administration that's not only not connecting the dots, it doesn't want to know about the dots.
And it's crushing the parts of our government that provide the dots and teaching them the lesson not to provide information that they think that the leadership is uninterested in hearing.
So I just wanted to bring this up politico article from yesterday, Trump making plans to send billions in cash bailouts to farmers with taxpayer money.
It says the president has also said he wants to use direct tariff revenue for the payments, but that could trigger a major fight in Congress.
And here is Kay in Coppel, Texas, Republican.
Good morning, Kay.
unidentified
Hi, how are you doing?
I love your show.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, I'm on Obamacare, and I'm really worried about the subsidies going away because I'm tattooed diabetic.
I'm also a breast cancer survivor.
I'm a Gen X.
And I remember when Obamacare came out about 15 years ago, I was working for a small law firm.
And the cheapest bonds plan, the monthly premium was about $200 more than my monthly rent.
And it didn't cover anything.
And I think back in those times, it didn't even cover prescriptions.
But I was perfectly healthy, so I didn't worry about it.
But now it's 15 years later, you know, I'm in my 50s.
And I worry about that because if something happens to that, I mean, I could not afford the $900 or $1,000 a month.
I mean, when I've had jobs since the job that I had 15 years ago, I never paid more than like $174 a month, and that was with prescriptions, vision, and dental.
And I'm worried about that because, I mean, God bless Obamacare.
I've been a lifelong Republican.
I was secretary of the Young Republicans Club in college.
And I'm worried about that because, you know, if that happens to me, I mean, I don't own any real estate, never been married, you know, not by choice, don't have any kids.
So, I mean, and I've been out of work for three years due to I'm a licensed edge scrub officer in the state of Texas, TVI licensed edge score officer.
Yeah, so look, I think the issues you're identifying are true for so many Americans.
Again, the numbers are over 20 million Americans depend upon the healthcare subsidies.
I would just take a step back for a second and ask the question: you know, why can't we see our political leaders negotiate before we wind up in a situation where the consequences of failure getting things done means that our government shuts down?
Project 2025: Radical Reforms Needed00:15:14
unidentified
And I think we have to demand better.
We've accepted, as I noted earlier, a Congress that hasn't gotten the job done since the last century.
And that's no good.
So these are fundamental issues for you, for so many Americans.
And we need political leaders that are able to work them out without tearing things down during that process.
And that is what we're watching right now.
And with the current administration, we are also seeing, you know, using this process to cause further damage.
One of the biggest distinctions between prior shutdowns and this one is in the past, we've seen administrations try to minimize the harm to the public, minimize the harm to our government.
They should never have been in the position of having a shutdown.
Here we have an administration, this is the point of the piece that I wrote, that's actively using the shutdown to cause more harm.
All right, Prica, let's get Max's opinion on that.
unidentified
Well, first of all, thank you.
My mom turns 86 in a couple of days here.
And I hope these are good days for you.
I'm trying to make sure they're good days for my mom.
And I will say this, which is, Your question is a profoundly important one.
And someone I respect a great deal told me once, hopelessness is the enemy of justice.
And my mom always taught me to look for ways to make a difference.
And my strong advice to you and to everybody else who's listening is to say, we can't know what the future is, but what we can know is that we as Americans have an opportunity to influence it and that we all have a lot at stake to find ways to create a society that brings people together rather than pushes them apart.
And I believe, you know, next year will be our 250th anniversary as a country.
We have a lot to celebrate and we have a lot of strength to draw upon.
But I do think that there are a lot of challenges that we face.
And I believe that fundamentally we need to hold on to this idea that our public institutions are there for the public good.
And it is then not returned to the world of the 19th century where, you know, to the victor went the spoils.
And it's the world in which this administration is pushing us back towards.
I am an optimist about our ability to survive this.
I think it ultimately depends on the American public understanding what is happening, understanding that they are getting hurt by what is happening, holding the folks who are in charge right now to account, and knowing that there is a better path because we can and should be doing better.
So I believe that that's the work that I'm trying to push on.
I think all of us have a role in doing this.
And if we do, we will see continued greatness from this country.
So thank you for raising this issue.
I hope that you will hold on to optimism because it is fundamental.
And I believe that if we all do, we will get through this and use this as an opportunity to learn and have a public that cares about our government in a way that it hasn't for a very long time and works towards reforms that will actually make it better.
My comment is about what you said in the beginning of Mr. Trump's true social post about meeting with Project 2025, Brest Blight, I think he said his name was.
During the election, he disavowed anything about Project 25, knowing anything that it was about.
And it was pretty unpopular with the American public.
The whole thing, it basically takes us down to a place in government where the government has very little to do with helping the American people and whether it's Social Security or health care.
So I would think that this would speak to people that now during this shutdown that the Republicans went home on, they didn't stay around to try to negotiate anything, would alarm some people that he was talking to this man.
And then I want to speak on your earlier guest, who also mentioned that our system was built on forced compromise.
And neither it's not a parliamentary system where the winner takes off.
And if I could, the last question I have is, does your guest believe that gerrymandering plays a role in how divided our country is and that we're not getting proper representation, especially in the House of Representatives?
Thank you, and I appreciate your answer.
Lots of good, good, good, good questions there.
And I do think you're right to highlight that the president hid the ball.
He did disavow Project 2025.
And it is remarkable that now that he's embracing it, choosing Russ Vode as his OMB director was obviously the more direct way of doing that.
I do think it was unpopular then and it's unpopular now because it's actually really bad for our country.
One thing that I would just underscore here is I don't generally see this as a partisan battle.
I think what we're watching is two very different models of governance, one of which, as I stated earlier, is the notion that our government is there for the public good.
And the second is that 19th century notion of the spoils system.
And I think we have an administration that is using partisan clothes to push this idea that we should be in a country where the victor gets the spoils, even though every country that has gone down that road, including our own, has found it to be a bad one with incompetence and corruption.
So I think the more we think about this as more of a cult of personality, then partisanship is more true to what is occurring and will be helpful in us moving away and moving beyond this.
I mean, some of them, I know who they are, but they're very, very conservative, just like you have, they're sort of the opposite of the radical left, okay?
unidentified
You have the radical left and you have the radical right, and they come up with this project.
I don't know what the hell it is.
It's Project 25.
He's involved in Project.
And then they read some of the things and they are extreme.
All right, then we'll go to Daniel, Great Falls, Virginia, Republican line.
Good morning, Daniel.
unidentified
Hey, good morning, C-SPAN.
Thanks for taking my call.
Hey, just a couple points, and I got a couple questions.
So the first thing I would say is if you're scared of Project 2025, I would go in and look at what they stand for.
They want to restore the family as the centerpiece of American life, dismantle the administrative state, secure our border, and return our God-given individual natural rights.
Contrast that with the agenda of the Democrat Socialists of America.
Go in and do your own research, people, and look at the two of them side by side.
And Daniel, with regard to our conversation right now, as far as dismantling the administrative state, what do you feel that that means?
unidentified
So here's the thing.
The administrative state, as you mentioned, is 2 million employees.
They apparently have a special, they're apparently a special class of people.
If you look across the nation, or any other nation, right, there's always going to be times when companies have to lay people off.
But apparently that is not allowed among a special class of federal employee.
I don't know why.
It may have been Reagan who said there's nothing more permanent than a temporary government program.
And we see this with the administrative state.
We also see it with these subsidies that they're talking about trying to extend, these Unaffordable Care Act subsidies, which were put in during COVID for emergencies.
The Democrats want to make those permanent now.
They were put in as an emergency subsidy and they want to make them permanent.
This is a thing.
And I want to ask your guest.
He mentioned that the bureaucracy, the federal bureaucracy, the 2 million employees, it's the people's bureaucracy.
Well, I want to ask him, I am a person, the 75 million people who voted for Donald Trump, do we count as the people?
Do we get a say in this?
And what is it with those four things I mentioned with the Project 2025 that you have a contention with?
So first, Daniel, I love your point, and that is go look at the document.
I think that's very, very important.
I think looking at Project 2025 makes a lot of sense.
You did just hear a clip from our president calling it the radical right agenda.
So that I think tells us something in and of itself.
But yes, definitely look at the document.
You also suggested looking at the Democratic Socialist agenda, and I'm not quite sure what the relevance there would be.
It's not representative of, I think, pretty much any of the political leadership in our country today.
So I think looking at an original research is something that is absolutely fundamental.
When you talk about the 2 million people being a special class of people, they are a special class of people in that they're there to serve the American public, and they take on a responsibility that is extraordinary and brings with it a lot of challenge as we're experiencing right now.
It is worth noting that a lot of people, and I think you referenced this, think of them as not being subject to being fired.
There actually are lots of federal employees that are fired or resigned because they're going to be fired, like you would see in any other company.
You're right.
The government, just like any other organization, should be subject to thoughtful, periodic review to see what is it that you want to remove, what people are doing better or worse.
That happens, maybe not as much as it should.
And as I said earlier, there are definite reforms that could take place.
But what we've seen right now is not that careful pruning.
What we've seen instead is the chainsaw.
And I don't know any company that would benefit from a chainsaw coming after it.
I don't know any company leadership that walks in that says they want to, in effect, terrorize the workforce and believe that they're going to get better outcomes from it.
We're not watching the careful stewardship, the careful management that you, I think, would so strongly want to see in any context, but certainly, as I've noted before and as you repeated, in our own public organizations, the institutions that are there for our own good.
70% of that workforce is there for national security reasons.
A third of those workers are veterans.
85% of them live outside of DC.
The entire number is the same as it was in the 1960s, despite the fact that our country has grown enormously and the various responsibilities of government have increased.
I think it's the political leaders that have not done their job.
It's not the civil servants.
We need political leaders to keep our government open.
We need them to actually manage the government more effectively.
We need to make good choices about what we can afford to do.
So I think that the caller is exactly right that we should understand that federal employees are in every community.
They're there because they're providing services in those communities, whether they work at a veterans hospital or staff a Social Security Administration office or are firefighters or food safety inspectors.
I mean, the list goes on and on and on.
It is important, I think, to understand that it is bad for the federal worker, but it's even worse for the American public that is losing services and losing them again without any strategy or thoughtfulness being done to ensure that the cuts are smart and that the cost-benefit analysis has actually been done.
So that's the reason why we do the harms tracker.
We're trying to shine a light on what is occurring here.
I do believe that ultimately it's all up to the American public.
They need to understand what is happening.
And when they do, and if they do, because we need to get information to them, they'll say this is not the right way to be treated for us or for the people who are serving us.