| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | |
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| Coming up on Washington Journal this morning, along with your calls and comments live, we'll discuss President Trump's recent call to increase Defense Department spending to $1.5 trillion in 2027 with Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute. | ||
| Then Time magazine politics reporter Nick Popley previews the week ahead at the White House and news of the day. | ||
| Also, we'll look at new government data showing the extent of Trump administration cuts to the federal workforce in 2025 and what to expect in the year ahead with Max Deyer, President and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Monday, January 12th. | ||
| In today's program, we'll discuss the $1.5 trillion defense budget for fiscal year 2027 and then talk about the impact of Trump administration federal workforce cuts one year in. | ||
| But we begin with breaking news from last night. | ||
| The Federal Reserve announced that it has been served with subpoenas from the Department of Justice and threatened with criminal indictment over Chairman Powell's testimony about the Fed's building renovations. | ||
| Chairman Powell released a video statement in response that we'll show you shortly. | ||
| But you can call, text, or post your reaction to that news during this first segment of the program. | ||
| Here's how to reach us. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can also send a text to 202-748-8003. | ||
| Include your first name in your city-state. | ||
| And we're on social media, facebook.com slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Well, welcome to today's program. | ||
| We'll start with the Wall Street Journal, and this is on the cover of this morning's paper, DOJ Probes Powell Over Fed Building. | ||
| Central Bank Chief says investigation is pretext for Trump's bid to cut rates. | ||
| Here is Chairman Powell yesterday on a video that he put out. | ||
| Good evening. | ||
| On Friday, the Department of Justice served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas, threatening a criminal indictment related to my testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last June. | ||
| That testimony concerned, in part, a multi-year project to renovate historic Federal Reserve office buildings. | ||
| I have deep respect for the rule of law and for accountability in our democracy. | ||
| No one, certainly not the chair of the Federal Reserve, is above the law. | ||
| But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration's threats and ongoing pressure. | ||
| This new threat is not about my testimony last June or about the renovation of the Federal Reserve buildings. | ||
| It is not about Congress's oversight role. | ||
| The Fed, through testimony and other public disclosures, made every effort to keep Congress informed about the renovation project. | ||
| Those are pretexts. | ||
| The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president. | ||
| This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions, or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation. | ||
| I have served at the Federal Reserve under four administrations, Republicans and Democrats alike. | ||
| In every case, I have carried out my duties without political fear or favor, focused solely on our mandate of price stability and maximum employment. | ||
| Public service sometimes requires standing firm in the face of threats. | ||
| I will continue to do the job the Senate confirmed me to do with integrity and a commitment to serving the American people. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Chairman Powell, and this is Punch Bowl News this morning, the fight for the Fed's future. | ||
| It says that the Trump administration's decision to open a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell has set off a political firestorm on Capitol Hill and across official Washington. | ||
| This is a long-feared and unwelcome chapter in the battle between President Donald Trump and, quote, independent federal agencies. | ||
| It continues. | ||
| Trump's legal push will force Republicans to choose between maintaining the independence of the Fed, a key tenant for both parties, and a president who argues that high interest rates are hampering the U.S. economy. | ||
| It says Trump's poll ratings on the economy have fallen dramatically, and the entire GOP is looking at a tough political environment heading into the midterms. | ||
| Trump has blamed Powell in part for that reality. | ||
| Retiring GOP Senator Tom Tillis of North Carolina, who sits on the Senate Banking Committee, quickly threatened to block any Trump nominee for the Fed, including the upcoming Fed chair vacancy, until this legal matter is fully resolved. | ||
| Powell's term as chair expires in May. | ||
| The Senate can't replace him. | ||
| Powell will remain chair. | ||
| The banking committee has 13 Republicans and 11 Democrats, giving Tillis the power to deadlock the committee over Fed nominees. | ||
| Wonder what you think about that. | ||
| This is Mike in California, a line for Republicans. | ||
| What do you think, Mike? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that the American people trust President Trump and don't trust the elite liberal media. | |
| That's what I think. | ||
| So the media or the Department of You're saying that they trust the Department of Justice, that this is a valid investigation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it's a valid investigation. | |
| I'm just saying that in general, the elite liberal media is the enemy of this country, and they prove it every day and how they just serve the American people and lie to them and miscontextualize and demonize all the conservative Republicans. | ||
| I mean, they hate President Trump. | ||
| They tell us that 24-7, but they're too arrogant to even tell us why. | ||
| It's just, I mean, the elite liberal media serves as the office of TCP. | ||
| So can you explain how that plays into this topic that we're talking about now, which is the investigation into Chairman Powell? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm just telling you, how they contextualize it. | |
| And how have you seen it contextualized on this topic? | ||
| Looks like he dropped the call. | ||
| Barney in Florida, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Barney. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Your last call is ridiculous. | |
| But anyway, anytime you elect a rapist and a pedophile, CongMan, what do we expect, America? | ||
| What do actually we expect? | ||
| This man is desperate to keep from going to prison. | ||
| He would actually burn the United States down to ashes. | ||
| He will burn the United States down to pure ashes to keep the Epstein files from coming out. | ||
| And so do you think that the Department of Justice is investigating just to keep people's attention away from other topics? | ||
| Is that what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
From the Epstein files, from the Epstein files. | |
| He invaded that country of Venezuela to keep the Epstein files from coming to light. | ||
| He would prosecute this Jerome Powell. | ||
| All that is a smoke screen. | ||
| All right, well, this is. | ||
| This is what President Trump actually said. | ||
| Here's NBC News. | ||
| Quote, I don't know anything about it. | ||
| Trump denies involvement in DOG's Fed subpoenas. | ||
| It says Trump's comments in a brief interview with NBC News came after Fed Chair Jerome Powell cited, quote, the administration's threats and ongoing pressure to lower interest rates. | ||
| That is from NBC News. | ||
| It said Powell said Sunday that the Department, the Justice Department, was threatening the Federal Reserve with possible criminal indictment related to his testimony before the Senate in June about the renovation of the agency's office buildings. | ||
| Well, here is, we got from our archives the visit of President Trump to the Federal Reserve to the building renovations. | ||
| This is from July, where President Trump brings up those renovations, the cost of the renovations, and Chairman Powell responds. | ||
| So the 2.7 is now 3.1. | ||
| I'm not aware of that. | ||
| Yeah, it just came out. | ||
| Yeah, and I haven't heard that from anybody at the Fed. | ||
| Yeah, just came back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The President is at about 3.1 as well. | |
| 3.1, 3.2. | ||
| Just came from us? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I don't know who does that. | ||
| You're including the Martin renovation. | ||
| Yeah, you just added in a third building, is what that is. | ||
| That's a third building. | ||
| It's a building that's being built. | ||
| No, it was built five years ago. | ||
| We finished Martin five years ago. | ||
| It's part of the overall work. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it's new. | |
| And here's some reaction from lawmakers. | ||
| Here's Republican Representative Ana Paulina Luna, who posted this. | ||
| It's good to see my criminal referral working in real time. | ||
| You cannot lie to Congress. | ||
| That is called perjury. | ||
| And Elizabeth Warren, senator, says Trump wants to nominate a new Fed chair and push Powell off the board for good to complete his corrupt takeover of our central bank. | ||
| He is abusing the law like a wannabe dictator, so the Fed serves him and his billionaire friends. | ||
| The Senate must not move any Trump Fed nominee. | ||
| Jim, Republican in Owego, New York, you're on the air, Jim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I don't know what's so hard to come to conclusion. | ||
| He lied multiple times. | ||
| So what possibly is the complaint? | ||
| I mean, you know, people need to be held accountable. | ||
| And I'm a little frustrated with your programming and your producer because things, you guys tend to go and the stories that you bring in every day are trying to put a negative light toward Donald Trump. | ||
| And I don't understand it. | ||
| Do you feel, Jim, wait, let me ask you this. | ||
| Do you feel that this story makes President Trump look bad, like brings a negative light, as you say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's what you're trying to do. | |
| It's really common. | ||
| You're hardly spending any time on the Somali fraud in Minnesota. | ||
| So I, it's just, that's not true. | ||
| The Somali fraud in Minnesota, we have covered that. | ||
| There's nothing new happening. | ||
| That investigation is ongoing. | ||
| We did actually have a segment about that, and then we're going to have another segment, but the guest canceled last minute. | ||
| But thanks for your input. | ||
| William in Monticello, Kentucky, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, William. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I would like to say this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Donald Trump is an elected president that has a felony against him and would have had another felony against him if Donald Trump hadn't been put in office by six members of our Supreme Court that let a convicted felon be president of America. | |
| And look what this man has done. | ||
| He is destroying our nation while the Republicans sit on their behinds and rely a thing and goodbye. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Tom, Purcellville, Virginia, Independent Line. | ||
| What do you think, Tom? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think you can tell just from that last or even the prior calls that people are definitely spun up in all directions here. | |
| And I think, you know, where there's no, it says, my book says where there's no vision, the people perish. | ||
| And I think people are kind of finally waking up on a lot of this. | ||
| I will say that I'm extremely grateful to C-SPAN for decades. | ||
| I've been listening to you and living in the Washington, D.C. area, I put it on my AM FM radio, and I get a lot of static from people. | ||
| It's like, you listen to C-SPAN, and I'm like, well, it's the whole world's going on there. | ||
| But I think it would be a good time for the people that are in the heads of churches and universities and people of science and others to step forward and start explaining. | ||
| I think there's a lot of confusion from people that I don't know if it's a reflection of like education or whatever, but it just seems like we've got a lot of people out there talking about things they have no idea about. | ||
| And it's not helping that there's people in both parties not stepping up and saying, these are the facts and presenting them in a normal case. | ||
| It's all like what's the latest click. | ||
| Give us specifics on this specific topic of the DOJ investigation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, Nixon had an enemies list, and clearly there's one over in the White House now, I think. | |
| And I think this guy, you know, there's a guy that lives out by me that when they went to when they went to do the rebuild the Fed, which people should be reminded, I think the building was like 100 years old, if not more. | ||
| And they wanted to, that whole area down by the White House, they're trying to redo it. | ||
| So it's, you know, they did it with the Department of Interior. | ||
| They did it with state. | ||
| They've redone all a lot of these buildings. | ||
| And there's a guy that lives out here that has a portable wood mill. | ||
| And what they did was they took a giant oak tree that was pushing into that building because the oak tree was like over 100 years. | ||
| This is the Fed building. | ||
| And it was pushing into the building. | ||
| And they had that taken out. | ||
| And then they had the wood, instead of just throwing it in a landfill, they had it milled by a guy out here who's got a mill. | ||
| And they took the wood back to the building and they're using it for countertops and desks and whatever they can do with it because they had a whole plan that had been laid out for like more. | ||
| I think they worked on this for 20 years. | ||
| I would love to see somebody actually go down and look at this. | ||
| And instead of Trump acting like he's the greatest landlord in the world, maybe we could get some architects or builders that can look at this project and say, for what it is and what needed to be done, this was the right thing to do. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And let's talk to Diana, Democrat in San Antonio, Texas. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just want to say that this is so wrong. | |
| What the President is doing. | ||
| It's a threat to the central bank. | ||
| It's independence. | ||
| It's supposed to be free from political pressure. | ||
| And it's affecting the market stability. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't understand how he can arbitrarily go in and justify an investigation. | |
| But this is what you can expect from a 34. | ||
| So, Diana, the argument is that there's allegations of perjury, that he lied to Congress about the building renovations. | ||
| What do you make of that? | ||
| I mean, as Chairman Powell said, nobody's above the law. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nobody is above the law, but have a trial. | |
| See what comes out at trial. | ||
| But I believe the Fed chair more than I believe the convicted criminal who's sitting in the White House. | ||
| It's just a travesty what's going on. | ||
| And here's Roy, a Republican in California. | ||
| Hi, Roy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you today? | |
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I don't know why we keep putting up with this. | |
| We say we don't want a king, but we keep accepting this. | ||
| I think we should really look at Iran, the citizens in the street. | ||
| We're too comfortable. | ||
| We take our freedom for granted, and we see it eroding day by day, minute by minute. | ||
| There is a German priest or pastor, I don't remember what he was, but pretty much he wrote a book or a poem that pretty much went like this. | ||
| First they came for the unions. | ||
| Oh, I wasn't in the union. | ||
| I didn't mind. | ||
| And then they came for the Christians. | ||
| Oh, well, I wasn't a Christian, so I didn't mind. | ||
| And then they came for the Jews. | ||
| Well, I wasn't a Jew, so I didn't say anything until they came for me, and there was no one to speak for me because everybody else was gone. | ||
| And we are watching this happen on our streets and our communities on a daily basis. | ||
| And regarding, yeah, regarding Chairman Powell, Roy, bringing us back to that topic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's the same thing. | |
| It's whatever Donald Trump says. | ||
| And whatever he says, this guy is doing wrong. | ||
| You know, he knows more than generals. | ||
| Donald Trump knows more than economists. | ||
| He knows more than mathematicians. | ||
| He even told you to put bleach in your body, and they believed it, and they believe every stupid thing he says. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| All right, go along with it. | ||
| Let's talk to Ken in Independent in Durham, North Carolina. | ||
| Go ahead, Ken. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, everyone. | |
| I have nothing against Mr. Trump. | ||
| I don't want to say anything negative about him, but just the fact that Mr. Powell is being independent. | ||
| He's not trying to represent Democrats or he's not trying to represent Republicans. | ||
| He's trying to serve the country. | ||
| And now you're going to turn around and try to throw the man in jail? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, it's scary, folks. | |
| Now, some of the Republicans, have you noticed lately, Margaret Taylor Greene said her life has been threatened. | ||
| Indiana Republican senators or state senators said their lives have been threatened. | ||
| This is very scary. | ||
| It's no longer just talking about Mr. Trump as a good guy or a bad guy, or we just talk bringing up stuff. | ||
| You're talking about some dangerous stuff here. | ||
| Now, you can't control the Epstein file. | ||
| I mean, you bomb boats. | ||
| No releasing of the video. | ||
| All right, let's talk to Shea in Florida, line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Shay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Well, we're in a bad place. | ||
| I'm going to stick with Mr. Powell here. | ||
| That guy has served all kinds of administrations. | ||
| And you saw there when the clip you just played about what President Trump, if you want to call him that, what he was trying to throw in a building that has been built five years ago. | ||
| He was throwing those numbers in there that saying that Powell lying. | ||
| He did not. | ||
| But this is the way it is. | ||
| He runs saying he don't like it because his jobs numbers and all of this stuff hadn't been good because Mr. Powell works for the people. | ||
| He has no affiliation with no parties. | ||
| Thank God. | ||
| He works independent for the people, trying to do the best he can for us. | ||
| But President Trump can do, and what I wish, though, let me say this one thing and then I'll get off. | ||
| Please, Republicans, please, please, please, please quit going with party and do what's right. | ||
| You know, the guy, I call it lying like a drunken sailor. | ||
| He wished he could. | ||
| He can't. | ||
| I mean, if he could tell the truth, it would be a miracle. | ||
| R.H.A. Yep, we got that point. | ||
| And this is a statement from minority leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, who said this. | ||
| Donald Trump's assault on the Fed's independence continues, threatening the strength and stability of our economy. | ||
| This is the kind of bullying that we've all come to expect from Donald Trump and his cronies. | ||
| Anyone who is independent and doesn't just fall in line behind Trump gets investigated. | ||
| Jay Powell and the Fed aren't the reason Trump's economy and his poll numbers are in the toilet. | ||
| If he's looking for the person who caused that, he should look in the mirror. | ||
| That's from minority leader Chuck Schumer. | ||
| And this is from Senator Tom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina. | ||
| And he said this. | ||
| If there were any remaining doubt whether advisors within the Trump administration are actively pushing to end the independence of the Federal Reserve, there should now be none. | ||
| It is now the independence and credibility of the Department of Justice that are in question. | ||
| I will oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed, including the upcoming Fed chair, vacancy until this legal matter is fully resolved. | ||
| That is Senator Tom Tillis, a Republican. | ||
| And this is Glenn, a Republican in Texas. | ||
| Hi, Glenn. | ||
| Good morning, Ernim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's been a while since I've talked to you. | |
| Well, I'm going to tell you, everybody that doesn't know that, but Trump is a businessman. | ||
| He has a businessman. | ||
| That's getting money to pay for his remodeling of a building. | ||
| He's getting money from where, Glenn? | ||
|
unidentified
|
From the American people. | |
| He's getting interest rates, and that's funding his remodeling of the building. | ||
| Trump has already showed him the paperwork. | ||
| I have it on TV right now. | ||
| Trump showed me how much money that Powell is wasting on that building. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, Glenn is wanting to drop the residence rate for the public. | |
| Yeah, sorry, that part that we showed on the exchange between President Trump and Chairman Powell, Powell pushed back on those numbers and said you're including numbers of a building that was completed five years ago. | ||
| So, what do you think? | ||
| Do you think this is about interest rates? | ||
| That this is a way to pressure Chairman Powell, or this is a legitimate. | ||
| Powell's been there first term Trump, Biden, and now Trump's second term. | ||
| He is time to retire him because Trump is trying to get the interest rate for people to buy homes, buy cars, trucks, and whatever. | ||
| There's where the interest rate needs to be lowered so people out here on the country can afford to buy homes and stuff. | ||
| Interest rates are too high for buying a home. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| And just a reminder: Chairman Powell's term ends in May. | ||
| This is Debbie in Dall, South Carolina, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi there. | |
| I just have a couple of questions. | ||
| The first one is: how can Donald Trump use a building that was built five years ago as part of his claim that Chairman Powell spent so much money? | ||
| Yeah, and we have not seen the Department of Justice make any statement about what they're looking at specifically, so we don't know if that's what they're going to be investigating. | ||
| We don't know at this point. | ||
| We're looking to see if the Department of Justice puts out any information or any statements. | ||
| Okay, my next question is: how does this compare to the construction on the East Wing, which is way over budget? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So the indictment, sorry, there's not an indictment, but the investigation is related to testimony to Congress from last June, not necessarily what's happening with the renovations. | ||
| Does that answer you? | ||
| So it's not about renovations per se, it's about the testimony about the renovations. | ||
| So if I understand correctly, Donald Trump wants to remove Chairman Powell and put in somebody that will answer to him? | ||
| So Chairman Powell's term ends in May, and then the president will be able to nominate who he's looking, somebody that he would want to have in that position. | ||
| Now, he was the one that nominated Chairman Powell in his first term. | ||
| So Chairman Powell's term started in 2018 during President Trump's first term. | ||
| Here's Beverly in California, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Beverly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, good morning. | |
| I was just calling to say referencing to what one of your earlier callers said about the difference. | ||
| What's the difference between the renovation for the federal reserve building versus the president destroying American history by tearing down the east wing? | ||
| Who's paying for that 90,000 square foot ballroom? | ||
| What American people are going to dance in that ballroom? | ||
| And who's paying for that? | ||
| So the president says that that is that that's coming in from private donations. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't believe anything he says. | |
| Okay. | ||
| He distracts, everything he says, he distracts people from all the undercutting and dirty things that he's actually doing. | ||
| He doesn't act like someone who loves and cares about America. | ||
| To me, he cares about one thing himself. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| And Todd, a Republican in Burton, Michigan, you're on the air, Todd. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Well, I have a statement. | ||
| First of all, I'm tired of everyone in the media just bashing on Donald Trump. | ||
| And I have a question. | ||
| Why do the media not cover all of the good things that our president is doing? | ||
| The American people voted for him. | ||
| We put him into office to do what he is doing. | ||
| Why won't you guys cover the good things that he is doing? | ||
| Like what, Todd? | ||
| Go ahead and talk about some of those good things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like changing our economy, turning it from tax base to a tariff base where the American people don't have to pay for all of this crap. | |
| You know, and all the health things that he's doing, changing our food pyramid. | ||
| I mean, just everything that he's doing, you guys should be, you know, covering that. | ||
| But you're not. | ||
| It's obvious that you're against Donald Trump. | ||
| You allowed Democrats to come on here and just trash him. | ||
| Like he's not a person. | ||
| Like he's not trying to trash. | ||
| Todd, you know we allowed to protect our country. | ||
| Todd, you know we allowed Republicans to trash former President Biden when he was in office. | ||
| Do you remember that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jim? | |
| No, I don't. | ||
| I don't remember. | ||
| Okay, go back to the archives. | ||
| Everything's online at c-span.org. | ||
| Brian in Massachusetts Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Brian. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| My first response will be to the man that called in that we elected Trump to be because he's a businessman. | ||
| But you have to remind people, he lost over $3 billion. | ||
| He lost more than any person in business. | ||
| And when he loses money, he dupes his investors and the people that subcontracted for him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But he walks away with money. | |
| And now we're going to let him run the country and run the Fed. | ||
| And it amazes me how people can be so blind to Donald Trump. | ||
| And I don't know if it's because of white nationalism or why they're in the middle of the state. | ||
| And so what was your reaction to this DOJ investigation? | ||
| Well, it's definitely because Trump wants to set the rate. | ||
| And I believe they did that in Cyprus, and it's 86%. | ||
| What's going to happen when Donald Trump determines what the rate is? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go to zero? | |
| And again, same thing when he did the tariffs. | ||
| People have to realize a tariff is a tax, which is basically paid by the bottom half of the consumers, because we need that stuff to live. | ||
| So, if we're having tariffs pay for the government to pay for the big, beautiful bill for all the tax cuts for the billionaires, that means the American citizens are paying that money because the tariff is paid by the person that buys it, not by the city that sends it. | ||
| All right, Brian. | ||
| And we will start to bring in other topics that might be on your mind in this next segment of the program. | ||
| You can start calling in now about other topics that you might want to talk about. | ||
| There's the protests against ICE around the country. | ||
| There's the protests happening in Iran and potential U.S. response to those protests in Iran. | ||
| This is Ed in Eastlandsing, Michigan Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| I'm calling in regards to the whole oversight of the expect the increase in costs as far as the renovation of the Federal Reserve buildings. | ||
| They were built in 1930 or the 30s, I should say. | ||
| So that's a lot of old materials, such as asbestos and lead, and all that sort of abatement. | ||
| And every once in a while, modifications have to be made through the years that don't necessarily match the plans that they have. | ||
| So cost overruns are a given. | ||
| With that being said, the administration or regime is using this to be critical. | ||
| I mean, this ballroom, the costs have gone up there too. | ||
| Whether the taxpayers or his friends are funding it, that's one thing. | ||
| But, anyways, to get back to the Fed, this cost overrun is a minor distraction. | ||
| The point is that Project 2025, which, if you remember, was the major motivator of the president's win, specifically wants to weaken the Fed and the impact that the Fed has. | ||
| Trump wants to lower interest rates to a point that's dangerous. | ||
| The Fed is using logic and science to increase their or to adjust their interest rates. | ||
| And basically, what Project 2025 wanted was to weaken the Fed and even potentially return us to a gold standard, which yep, we got that. | ||
| We got that point. | ||
| Here is M Crumbo in Charlotte, North Carolina, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, Mimi. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's good. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| I just think we'll have to say on the same topic about power. | ||
| I really want to talk about Parliament. | ||
| I don't really want to talk about power. | ||
| Can I change the topic of all? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| We're in open forum now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Yeah, I'm saying that the whole what's happening right now is that the elephant in the room is not being spoken about, you know, and it's just basically the same old white supremacy mixed up with like a football culture. | ||
| With the people who voted, I'm a bills fan myself personally because the people who voted for this guy, it's not like they're getting anything from this guy. | ||
| The same way who I chair for my team, when the Buffalo Bills win, I chair for them. | ||
| I hope, you know, it's the same kind of feeling. | ||
|
unidentified
|
These people who voted for Trump don't get nothing from it. | |
| They didn't vote for no policy. | ||
| They didn't vote for nothing to be changed within their life. | ||
| It's white supremacy. | ||
| And they voted for a feeling. | ||
| It's a feeling I'm going to get a feeling that I'm a part of something now. | ||
| And it's totally, but it's like it's falling on his face now. | ||
| Because here it is, you have a white ICE officers shooting a white lady in the face three times. | ||
| I mean, this, I mean, I want to understand what are these guys so mad about. | ||
| The guy called her a name after he shot her. | ||
| He calls her a dog, a female dog. | ||
| And I mean, these guys are getting paid $140,000 a year. | ||
| That's the base salary. | ||
| They're getting a $40,000 signing bonus. | ||
| I mean, if you, what are they so mad about? | ||
| What are they so angry about? | ||
| These guys, I mean, they're walking through the streets. | ||
| I mean, like the call is here earlier. | ||
| And then when they came for me, there was nobody to fight for me because everybody else was gone. | ||
| You have these guys in military outfits, military attire. | ||
| I mean, wearing a belt. | ||
| I mean, wearing a vest and a smoke bottle. | ||
| And you're talking about you doing all this stuff to get a person who's been. | ||
| We got your point. | ||
| Let's talk to Elaine, a Republican, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. | ||
| Hi, Elaine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, I'm telling I'm listening to some of this nonsense being spoken. | |
| Ask these people, how would they like to have Joe Biden back? | ||
| He didn't even know where he was. | ||
| At least our President Trump, to me, I'm 73. | ||
| He's the best president this country has ever seen. | ||
| And I guess that's why such a change. | ||
| People's been begging change, change. | ||
| And if they don't watch out, all of them Democrats was wanting to do is take the guns away. | ||
| They'll end up like Iran. | ||
| Those people have no guns. | ||
| And now over 2,000 of them is dead. | ||
| So have a nice day. | ||
| And thank you for that segue, Elaine. | ||
| This is the front page of the Washington Times about Iran. | ||
| It says hundreds killed in Iranian strife. | ||
| Regime threatens U.S. Israel as Trump weighs military action. | ||
| There's a picture here on the front page of the Washington Times of those protests. | ||
| And the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, was asked about that on CNN's State of the Union yesterday. | ||
| Here's what he said: Are you hearing anything? | ||
| You're the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. | ||
| Do you think it's likely that the administration will move forward with any military action? | ||
| And should they? | ||
| Well, Jake, first of all, the Iranian people want to get rid of this awful regime. | ||
| We stand with their courage. | ||
| We don't have great visibility into Iran, and Iran has shut off the internet over the last few days. | ||
| But if we step back for a moment, Jake, let's look at this. | ||
| This president, in less than one year in office, has used the American military to launch strikes in six different countries: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Nigeria, Venezuela. | ||
| He's got 20% of the American fleet off the coast of Venezuela blockading that country. | ||
| He wants to increase the military budget by 50% to a trillion and a half dollars. | ||
| How does that affect anybody's cost of living? | ||
| How does that, what does that say to young people around the country, which may mean American troops could be deployed all over the world? | ||
| And this was the president who was supposed to take us out of a lot of foreign wars. | ||
| I don't get it. | ||
| I don't understand what his overarching policy is other than don't piss off Donald Trump. | ||
| That was Senator Mark Warner yesterday. | ||
| And this is Monte in Baltimore, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call. | |
| This is only my second time on C-SPAN. | ||
| I've been listening for over a year now. | ||
| And, you know, the state of our union is pretty divided. | ||
| I just want to say it's repulsive, you know, how much of the Epstein stuff has come out. | ||
| And politicians are still being protected. | ||
| Powerful people are being protected. | ||
| And I don't think that's right. | ||
| You know, we thought we could agree on the children were sacred, but that isn't even obvious for any political party. | ||
| That's repulsive. | ||
| And also follow the money. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| It's Dr. Al in Zambroda, Minnesota. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Oh, I'm just going to want people to use their imagination this morning. | ||
| When there's a next administration that's Democratic, it might be a good idea that that administration send the DEA and alcohol, tobacco, and firearms throughout Appalachia and down in Texas and Florida, the Bible Belt. | ||
| Round up all the meth addicts and moonshiners. | ||
| I think that would be good. | ||
| Mostly in those towns that are under 50,000, they're just rampant with meth addicts and moonshiners. | ||
| That's all I got to say. | ||
| Doris in Ohio, Republican. | ||
| You're on the air, Doris. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, I'm McCullumbout, Minnesota. | |
| How many children have been raped by illegal immigrants? | ||
| I've heard quite a few. | ||
| There was a 12-year-old girl playing in her backyard, grabbed by a Somalian and raped. | ||
| What they do with these people? | ||
| They talk about only two gun crimes. | ||
| Well, what about child rapes? | ||
| And that Mayor Fry, he wouldn't have been mayor if that Somalian hadn't stepped out of the race because he was sitting on some committee or something, and his wife was going to be nominated for some kind of government job. | ||
| They didn't know she was his wife, and he stepped down. | ||
| All right, Doris. | ||
| And the Borders are Tom Homan was on Meet the Press yesterday, and he was asked about protests against ICE. | ||
| Here he is. | ||
| There have been nine ICE-involved shootings since September. | ||
| By one count, ICE has detained 170 U.S. citizens. | ||
| People across this country, as you have seen, Mr. Homan, are out protesting ICE's actions. | ||
| How do you justify an enforcement strategy that is making so many people feel less safe? | ||
| Because of the false media reports, because members of Congress want to compare ICE to terrorists. | ||
| No, but these are protesters. | ||
| They're not saying this, but these are protesters saying this. | ||
| I'm asking you to respond to the protesters who say they feel less safe, who say they're concerned for their neighbors. | ||
| Because they're looking at media reports and saying ICE are terrorists. | ||
| They're racist. | ||
| They're the Nazis. | ||
| They're listening to people saying that, you know, using the term disappearing people. | ||
| ICE is doing the same thing they've done for 40 years. | ||
| ICE is an enforced law. | ||
| If you don't like what ICE is doing, go protest Congress. | ||
| ICE is enforcing laws enacted by Congress for any member of Congress to say that ICE is a Nazi or racist or secret police. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Because they're enforcing laws you enacted. | ||
| If they're a racist for enforced law, what's that make you? | ||
| You rolled the law. | ||
| And let's remember the true data, the true data, 70%, approximately, goes anywhere from 60 to 70, of people they're arresting are criminals. | ||
| Bottom line. | ||
| But some of the media says, no, that's not true, because they think DUI isn't a crime. | ||
| DUI kills 13,000 people a year. | ||
| I think it's a huge public safety issue. | ||
| It's because of the rhetoric, the hateful rhetoric. | ||
| So that small population out there that's already half nuts, they hear this rhetoric that ICE is racist and the Nazis and they're disappearing people. | ||
| That empowers them to do stupid things. | ||
| So White House Boarders are Tom Homan, and this is Rachel in Independent in Glenmont, Maryland. | ||
| Good morning, Rachel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Sorry, it's Glenn Elg, Maryland. | ||
| Glenn Oak? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was Glenn Elg. | |
| Glenn Elg. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Palindrome, same forwards and backwards. | |
| Okay. | ||
| I was calling also about ICE. | ||
| I was speaking to somebody who is a part collector at a big box store, and he pointed out that he has had cars coming much more quickly at him in a small area, and he managed to not shoot anyone. | ||
| So I just was hoping that our highly trained federal agents might have as much self-control. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Ed, Meridian, Mississippi, Democrat. | ||
| Ed, are you there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm here. | |
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, go ahead. | ||
| Well, first thing is we've got to quit calling people illegal aliens. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're human beings. | |
| Everybody we're talking about, they're human beings. | ||
| If this lady in Minnesota would have been, and I hate to say it, but if she would have been black, it would have been a lot more outrage because the white folks are not even united anymore about anything. | ||
| They're justifying what happened in some pathetic way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I don't understand it. | |
| If you get out in your community and I see black people every day, I see Latino people wait on me, treat me with dignity and respect, and I've never been more ashamed to be an American, a white American in my life. | ||
|
unidentified
|
These people are human beings. | |
| We need to remember that. | ||
| And we're the human being judging human beings based on what they look like. | ||
| We ought to be ashamed. | ||
| And I tell you, it won't be very much longer. | ||
| They'll shut this line down because Trump's not going to have it out there. | ||
| He's not going to have anybody saying anything about him. | ||
| And I see my redneck friends out here think they got something. | ||
| He doesn't care about them people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're down here. | |
| Oh, sorry. | ||
| Al in Watertown, Tennessee, Independent, you're on the air. | ||
| Yeah, thanks for the call. | ||
| At the last segment, there was a guy that basically was talking about how C-SPAN was blind to their bias. | ||
| I want to give two examples of that. | ||
| For instance, this morning we're talking about the Federal Reserve. | ||
| And let's say the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates as an example. | ||
| That can be good or bad, depending on what you're doing. | ||
| If you're buying a home, it's good. | ||
| If you're a senior citizen with CDs, it's bad. | ||
| So you spread out the New York Times, Washington Post, those kinds of papers. | ||
| And how are they going to frame that story? | ||
| Well, they're going to frame it that the senior citizens have been robbed with their CDs. | ||
| And that's how you frame the topic of the morning. | ||
| That's one example. | ||
| Another example, you talk about going to the- Wait, wait, wait, wait, how- How did I frame it in the morning about senior citizens? | ||
| I didn't mention that. | ||
| It's the concept. | ||
| So my point is that a story like interest rates being lowered can either be positive or negative depending on what you're doing. | ||
| And if it's a negative toward Trump, that will be on the front page of the New York Times. | ||
| And that's what C-SPAN uses for their topics. | ||
| Let me get to my second example. | ||
| You say go to the archives. | ||
| Well, I can go to the archives in middle of 2020 when I had a copy and millions of people had copies of Hunter Biden's laptop. | ||
| Now, the newspapers refused to cover that story because, remember, they called that Russian disinformation. | ||
| So there was no newspaper to spread on your desk to talk about it. | ||
| And when I would try to talk about it, the C-SPAN moderator say, you don't have any evidence of that. | ||
| It's not in the newspapers. | ||
| And now we found out that the FBI had agents at Twitter to control that story. | ||
| So my point is, when you're framing stories, framing your conversations based on liberal media newspapers and Twitter and Google, that's one very good reason. | ||
| And it seems like the moderators always push back from people like me. | ||
| Yep, go ahead. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, no. | ||
| I just wanted to say, here's what we put on the desk. | ||
| This is the copies. | ||
| We've got the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, The Washington Times, The Washington Post, USA Today. | ||
| That's the hard copy that we get every morning. | ||
| But we also have a lot that we bring in electronically. | ||
| We do bring in other publications. | ||
| I don't defend the publications. | ||
| I'm offering those. | ||
| I'm reading those. | ||
| You're certainly free to call in and give your opinion and let us know what you think. | ||
| But we appreciate your feedback, Al. | ||
| Let's talk to David in Plano, Texas. | ||
| Line for Republicans. | ||
| Hi, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Hello. | ||
| Thanks for having me on. | ||
| Just want to say that many of my fellow Republicans do things based on an emotional or tidbits that they hear on the news without really researching the facts. | ||
| I think that the Fed should be independent. | ||
| I think that we've seen the tariffs have a negative impact on the public in general. | ||
| And we have too much power resident in one individual through bullying and things of that nature. | ||
| So I would like to see the Republicans actually go back, my fellow Republicans go back and start looking at facts and not just go off emotional things because of some fictitious America that they believe that existed at one point in time. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And this is CBS News with this headline. | ||
| There's a very real possibility. | ||
| That's in quotations. | ||
| American businesses take a financial stake in Venezuelan oil, according to the Energy Secretary. | ||
| Let's listen to the Energy Secretary. | ||
| This is Chris Wright. | ||
| He was asked about how long it might take for the U.S. to stabilize Venezuela's oil industry. | ||
| Secretary Rubio said there's a three-point plan, stabilize, rehabilitate, transition. | ||
| This sounds indefinite. | ||
| Even when you heard some of those oil executives, Chevron's leadership, they're already in Venezuela, we should say, said it'll take 18 to 24 months to even increase oil production by 50%. | ||
| So how long is this American involvement? | ||
| Because he's saying there, it's at least a year and a half, two years. | ||
| They've been there for 100 years, and likely Chevron's going to be there 50 years from now. | ||
| But the United States government, how long does that role continue? | ||
| You heard the third part of Rubio's question, which is transition. | ||
| We want to bring a representative government to the people of Venezuela. | ||
| I think then you'll see the full sovereignty back to the government of Venezuela. | ||
| We don't have a legitimate government of Venezuela today. | ||
| We'd like to move and get there. | ||
| But America's there as 25 years this country's gone in decline. | ||
| President Trump out-of-the-box creative intervention has allowed us to change the game. | ||
| But yeah, I don't know the timeline of that. | ||
| It's not weeks. | ||
| It's more months. | ||
| Could be a year or two. | ||
| It could be more. | ||
| Here's Danny, Democrat, Annapolis, Maryland. | ||
| Good morning, Danny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for having me on. | ||
| I just wanted to call and make a point that our police in this country have done a lot of work. | ||
| We've done a lot of improving our policing. | ||
| We've trying to keep people safer, but the ICE mob that are attacking Americans is just basically putting our own police officers who are highly trained at a higher risk because these ICE agents are acting in a way that shows they have no training whatsoever. | ||
| It should be defend, it should be protect. | ||
| We have them killing American citizens on the streets. | ||
| I just think that it's time that ICE is decreased and the Congress gets a hold of this administration and lets Americans be safe again. | ||
| I think also the Fed, the Federal Reserve Chair, I think, you know, we wouldn't need to lower the interest rates if the economy wasn't already tanked. | ||
| So I think we need to re-look at the way Trump's doing business. | ||
| Obviously, starting any more home improvement projects at the White House is a bad idea. | ||
| And this is John, an independent in California. | ||
| Hi, John. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| How are you today? | ||
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call. | |
| So I've been listening to a few of your callers, and the problem with America is that people are still being manipulated and divided. | ||
| What's going on in this country and what people need to focus on is that the banking industry is changing right now from underneath our feet. | ||
| So instead of like worrying about the Karen in Minnesota that used her car to block a law enforcement officer or obstruct justice, maybe they should focus on retaining wealth. | ||
| The tax cuts that were extended in the big beautiful bill from 2017, and I'll repeat that, extended from 2017. | ||
| Yeah, people, Joe Biden extended Trump's tax cuts. | ||
| So you're welcome. | ||
| So stop paying attention to the hype, the hysteria about ICE. | ||
| Let the law enforcement do their job, okay? | ||
| Wait, worry about your finances and take care of your home. | ||
| No, I just wanted to ask you: when you said that Joe Biden extended President Trump's tax cuts, the 2017 tax cuts, they didn't expire until this past year. | ||
| Yeah, so they were in that was law. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| But we got your other point as well. | ||
| Kathy and Georgia, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Kathy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Hi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That was one of the topics I was going to talk about that positive subjects on President Trump. | |
| You do talk negative of him all the time. | ||
| One of the things was I was going to say is the tax cuts. | ||
| They were Democrats wanted to have it expire, so that would have been a tax hike. | ||
| That's how you could have presented it. | ||
| Why don't you present things negative that Democrats would be doing that? | ||
| They wanted a tax hike, but President Trump made it permanent, so we did not get a tax hike. | ||
| People should be happy about that. | ||
| During the shutdown, there were events going on, and you showed them. | ||
| And you all had that little box up there saying, well, how many days was the shutdown? | ||
| And when President Trump and Netanyahu, who were having their, I can't remember what event it was. | ||
| I think maybe the hostages released or but you left that box up. | ||
| You and CNN were the only ones, and once in a while, MSNBC did it. | ||
| And you're all Democrat networks. | ||
| The other thing. | ||
| It's the box saying how long the government has been shut down. | ||
| That's what's bothering you, Kathy? | ||
| Is that what you were saying? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because let me finish. | |
| When Mayor Zohan, is that his name, Zohan? | ||
| Mamdani, yep. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Zohani Mamdani, when he had his inauguration speech, or not inauguration speech, but when he was on for some event, you took it down. | |
| You did not have it up when, so you took it down for pres for Democrat items, but not for Republican. | ||
| And then the other thing is you're talking about your first subject, talking about Chairman Powell. | ||
| Yep. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Chairman Powell. | |
| You did not have subjects where you could call in about Eric Trump and his family being investigated, or General Flynn and Trump, or who was that, Paul Navarro? | ||
| Peter Navarro. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| What was his name? | ||
| Peter Navarro. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, Peter Navarro. | |
| You know, you never, you don't do subjects on them. | ||
| You bring it up and just brush it off. | ||
| And then you don't mention Jocelyn Nungery or Rachel Morin or Lake and Riley, all these people who were raped and murdered by illegal immigrants. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And that'll be it for this segment coming up later this morning on the Washington Journal. | ||
| 2025 saw substantial cuts to the federal workforce under the Trump administration. | ||
| We'll talk about what to watch in the year ahead with Max Deyer of the Partnership for Public Service. | ||
| But first, after the break, the president is asking Congress for $1.5 trillion to fund the Pentagon in next year's budget. | ||
| We'll dig into those numbers with Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
C-SPAN invites you on a powerful journey through the stories that define a nation. | |
| From the halls of our nation's most iconic libraries and institutions comes America's Book Club, a bold, original series where ideas, history, and democracy meet. | ||
| Hosted by renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein, each week features in-depth conversations with the thinkers shaping our national story. | ||
| Among this season's remarkable guests, John Grisham, master storyteller of the American justice system. | ||
| Justice Amy Coney Barrett, exploring the Constitution, the court, and the role of law in American life. | ||
| Famed chef and global relief entrepreneur Jose Andres, reimagining food. | ||
| Rita Dove, Hulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate. | ||
| The books, the voices, the places that preserve our past and spark the ideas that will shape our future. | ||
| America's Book Club, Sundays at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN is as unbiased as you can get. | ||
| You are so fair. | ||
| I don't know how anybody can say otherwise. | ||
| You guys do the most important work for everyone in this country. | ||
| I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices. | ||
| You bring these divergent viewpoints and you present both sides of an issue and you allow people to make up their own minds. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I absolutely love C-SPAN. | |
| I love to hear both sides. | ||
| I've watch C-SPAN every morning and it is unbiased. | ||
| And you bring in factual information for the callers to understand where they are in their comments. | ||
| It's probably the only place that we can hear honest opinion of Americans across the country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You guys at C-SPAN are doing such a wonderful job of allowing free exchange of ideas without a lot of interruptions. | |
| Thank you, C-SPAN, for being a light in the dark. | ||
| Now, to talk about the $1.5 trillion budget for fiscal 2027 is Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute. | ||
| He's a senior fellow there. | ||
| Todd, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thanks for having me. | |
| In talking about this defense budget at $1.5 trillion, what was your initial reaction to that number? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Honestly, my initial reaction was: you know, I'll believe it when I see it. | |
| Show me the documents that actually add up to this amount of money because it's a bit hard to believe. | ||
| We have never seen an increase of this magnitude, of this percentage in the defense budget, you know, absent, you know, an event like World War II. | ||
| So, you know, I am curious to see, you know, how are they going to be allocating this money? | ||
| Is it a real increase in just one year, or is there some other catch to it? | ||
| And when you say that you've never seen a percentage this high, we're at about 50% increase from last year. | ||
| What's a typical increase from year to year? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, in President Trump's previous defense budget request, they only requested a flat budget. | |
| So it was a 0% increase. | ||
| And then, you know, they relied on Congress to appropriate some additional money outside the regular budget through this reconciliation process. | ||
| And so that bumped up the defense budget by about $150 billion. | ||
| But the administration itself was planning a flat defense budget, so 0%. | ||
| I mean, a typical increase that we see in the defense budget would be either at the rate of inflation, 2% or 3% typically, or maybe a couple of percentage points above inflation. | ||
| But that's more typical. | ||
| Well, let me show you what President Trump posted on Truth Social about this. | ||
| This is from January 7th. | ||
| He says this: After long and difficult negotiations with senators, congressmen, secretaries, and other political representatives, I have determined that for the good of our country, especially in these very troubled and dangerous times, our military budget for the year 2027 should not be $1 trillion, but rather $1.5 trillion. | ||
| This will allow us to build the, quote, dream military that we have long been entitled to, and more importantly, that will keep us safe and secure regardless of foe. | ||
| Do we have any understanding, Todd, about what is the definition of a dream military and what that would include? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We don't, not precisely. | |
| I think we do have some indications, though, from what the president, his advisors, and some members of Congress that he's listening to on defense issues, what they've said publicly about what they want for defense. | ||
| You know, it likely includes a large increase in funding for missiles and munitions to build up our stockpiles, our inventories of key munitions that we might need in case we got into a protracted conflict with a major adversary like Russia or China. | ||
| It probably is going to mean more money for shipbuilding to build up the Navy. | ||
| The President has talked about the Golden Fleet, he calls it, building out lots of new types of ships, but many more ships and increasing the overall size of the Navy. | ||
| It probably would include funding for Golden Dome, the President's signature initiative for developing a homeland missile defense system, which will be quite expensive to actually realize the vision he has outlined for that. | ||
| So I think there are a lot of different things that could be part of it. | ||
| But again, the devil's in the details and it doesn't happen in one year, right? | ||
| These things take time. | ||
| So you could increase the budget by 50% in one year, but if you don't hold it at that level, if you don't sustain that increase for 5, 10, 15 years, you don't actually build up that military that you're aiming for. | ||
| Now, speaking of sustaining that funding, the president has said that he's going to be using tariff revenue to make up that difference. | ||
| Estimates are that tariff revenue are much less than that 500 billion difference. | ||
| What do you think of using tariffs as a funding source for the U.S. military expansion? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, you know, in reality, the defense budget is paid out of the general revenues of the Treasury. | |
| So money comes in from a lot of sources, from tariffs, from income taxes, from corporate taxes. | ||
| You know, that money comes in, and then the money goes out to defense and non-defense programs. | ||
| And so it doesn't really matter where the money is coming from. | ||
| It's all fungible in the overall federal budget. | ||
| The idea, though, that this increase could be offset by an increase in revenue, specifically from tariffs, that just hasn't borne out yet. | ||
| Tariff revenue is not that high, not yet. | ||
| And that tariff revenue, the president has promised it for other things as well. | ||
| He's promised, you know, rebate checks for U.S. taxpayers. | ||
| He's promised payments to farmers to offset money they've lost because of business. | ||
| They can't export their crops. | ||
| Prices have fallen. | ||
| So I think that there's, you know, I don't know, a lot of confusion about how much tariff revenue and how much could it actually offset an increase in the defense budget. | ||
| I'm more interested in how does he get the money appropriated for this defense budget? | ||
| How does he get it through Congress? | ||
| And is it in a way that leads to a sustainable, stable level of funding? | ||
| Or is this kind of a one-time sugar high, an influx in defense funding for one year that then gets pulled away the following year? | ||
| Well, let's talk about that because the Committee for Responsible Fiscal Budget says that their estimate is that this would add to the budget deficit $6 trillion in debt over 10 years. | ||
| So how does one get that through Congress given the budget hawks who are saying our deficit, our national debt is already over $36 trillion at this point? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, well, you know, that projection, of course, assumes that the funding increase of about half a trillion a year is sustained over 10 years. | |
| And then you add in interest costs because ultimately this does result in more borrowing. | ||
| And so, yeah, I would pump the brakes there and say I'm not so sure that's what the president's actually proposing. | ||
| He said the budget for 27 will go up to 1.5 trillion. | ||
| I actually suspect that what they're envisioning doing is kind of like they did last year and using this reconciliation budget process in Congress, which is just a one-year increase in funding. | ||
| And they may play some budget games, use some gimmicks to count some of the reconciliation money from last year that they counted towards this year's budget. | ||
| They may count that money again towards 27. | ||
| That's not new money. | ||
| That's just an accounting shell game. | ||
| But that could add $100 billion to what they claim for 27 and then maybe add another $400 billion in assumed reconciliation funding they think Congress will pass this coming year. | ||
| That's just a one-time increase. | ||
| So when they're, you know, when the Congressional Budget Office is doing the scoring, which is kind of the tab keeping of, okay, how much are you adding to the deficit? | ||
| Since that's a reconciliation and it's one time, they're only going to count that as a $400 billion increase total over 10 years because it's not intended to be sustained. | ||
| And so in that case, then, yeah, they just need to find something they could probably claim, you know, a relatively small amount of tariff revenue per year over 10 years and use that to pay for a one-year, one-time increase in defense funding, and then claim that it's budget neutral. | ||
| But, you know, all of this is really just shell games of moving money around on paper. | ||
| And if you have a sudden increase in the defense budget that's not followed by a sustained level of funding, you could end up making some pretty foolish investments. | ||
| You could start programs that you then have to cancel. | ||
| You could, you know, increase the size of your force and then have to immediately decrease it. | ||
| So, you know, which would be very inefficient with that funding. | ||
| Would it not? | ||
|
unidentified
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It's very inefficient if that's what ends up happening. | |
| So, you know, again, the devil is in the details. | ||
| I'm curious to see what plan they actually come out with. | ||
| And, you know, specifically, what is their five-year and 10-year plan for this funding? | ||
| Well, I'll invite our viewers to join our conversation with Todd Harrison of AEI. | ||
| We're talking about the defense budget. | ||
| If you'd like to join the conversation, give us a call right now. | ||
| Democrats are on 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| We have a line set aside for active and former military members. | ||
| That's 202-748-8003. | ||
| That's the same number you can use to text us. | ||
| I want to ask you about President Trump's recent executive order targeting defense contractors and executive compensation, also stock buybacks. | ||
| Can you explain what that executive order does and what you think could be the impact? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, the intent of the order appears to be to get defense companies to use more of their own internal profits to reinvest in their companies, to expand production lines, and to invest in developing new and innovative technologies that would benefit the military. | |
| And, you know, typically that has been something that defense companies, like any other business, you know, in their free market economy, they decide for themselves and their shareholders and their board of directors decide how much of profits do they reinvest in the company to ensure future growth versus how much do they pay out in dividends or in stock buybacks and things like that. | ||
| So what this executive order does is it's basically going in and putting restrictions on defense companies if they're not performing, if they meet certain criteria, which are not fully defined yet. | ||
| More will come on that. | ||
| But if they're poor performing, if they're deemed to be poor performing on their contracts, then the government is saying, we're going to come in and we are going to limit what you can do in terms of executive compensation, how much you can pay your CEO and other senior executives. | ||
| And we're going to limit what you can do in terms of managing your own finances and your own business to force you to spend more of the money on things that are of interest to DOD. | ||
| I think this is born from a deep and long-simmering frustration with some defense companies, not all, that they've not been investing enough in new technologies and expanded capacity that DOD might need in a wartime situation. | ||
| But, you know, this is a very, you know, hard-nosed way of forcing that to happen. | ||
| It's not really creating incentives. | ||
| It is forcing the companies and limiting what they can do in the free market. | ||
| And Todd, do you think that that's, would it help with improving production and reducing cost overruns? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, I think it has a strong chance that it may backfire, that you may see other defense companies or commercially oriented companies that are thinking about working with the military and thinking about getting into defense. | |
| I think you'll see them refuse to sign contracts that have these terms in them and may turn away from the defense industry because they don't want these restrictions put on their company. | ||
| I think for a lot of the big prime companies, like Lockheed, like Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, those companies, they don't have much of a choice because virtually all of their business comes from the U.S. government. | ||
| And so I think it's going to be a real struggle for these companies to manage in this environment where the government is kind of micromanaging how they run their own business. | ||
| I fully understand the sentiment and the desire to get defense companies performing better and investing more in the success of their customer, the U.S. military. | ||
| I don't know that this is the right way to do it, though. | ||
| Let's talk to callers. | ||
| We'll start with Greg in Florida, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Greg. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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I wanted to call in and Amini and Todd, thank you for taking my call. | |
| The nine countries that spend the most money other than us, I'm told their budgets, if you add all of them together, is about the same as what the United States currently spends. | ||
| So I'm trying to understand why President Trump thinks he needs another $400 to $500 billion of artillery. | ||
| And is there a way that they can cut plans? | ||
| For instance, they just recently signed for the S-47 planes. | ||
| Why they can't cut other things that they're currently doing that are no longer efficient. | ||
| Yeah, I think you raised some great points there. | ||
| I would say in comparing the U.S. defense budget to other countries' defense budgets, I would offer two cautions. | ||
| One, it is very difficult to compare them because other countries are not nearly as transparent as the United States in reporting their true defense costs, and in particular, China. | ||
| And the estimates on China actually vary considerably. | ||
| I've seen some analysis from my colleague at AAI, McKenzie Eaglin, where it suggests that China's defense spending actually is coming pretty close to U.S. defense spending when you actually match it up apples to apples. | ||
| And so a lot of uncertainty there. | ||
| So it's not necessarily true that the next nine countries spend less than the U.S. military, even all combined. | ||
| That was true years ago, but that is becoming less true and much more uncertain of a proposition. | ||
| The other thing is that the U.S. has traditionally, since end of World II, World War II, been the provider of global security and the rules-based international order that benefits us as a nation economically, but also in terms of national security. | ||
| And that requires a strategy where the U.S. is forward deployed, virtually all regions of the world that we are out there active operating in the world so that conflict does not come to us, right? | ||
| We inherently play an away game, whereas a lot of the other countries you're comparing us to, they only want to play a home game. | ||
| They only really operate militarily in their region, in their immediate vicinity. | ||
| They're not trying to preserve the international order. | ||
| They're not trying to protect the flow of commerce around the world. | ||
| So it costs a lot less, right? | ||
| Their strategy is much more limited than ours. | ||
| And so I think it's difficult to make a comparison when our strategy and our objectives are very different. | ||
| And are there allies in the Pacific that we could depend on, Todd, if it came to a conflict with China, that Japan, for instance, South Korea, Australia? | ||
|
unidentified
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Absolutely. | |
| Those are three of our main allies in the region. | ||
| They've all been increasing their defense spending. | ||
| They've also been doing a lot of things to invest in new and innovative capabilities to fight the future warfight. | ||
| They are absolutely the bedrock of our allies in that region. | ||
| But they also need us. | ||
| We are the key enabler that allows their forces to be able to fight. | ||
| I mean, for example, if South Korea gets into a major conflict with North Korea, South Korea has the ground forces. | ||
| They know the terrain. | ||
| They have the weapons that they need to operate. | ||
| But there are key enablers they need from us, like intelligence and surveillance to know where the adversary forces are, where to strike. | ||
| They also need from us nuclear deterrence. | ||
| They do not have nuclear weapons of their own. | ||
| North Korea does. | ||
| And so they rely on us to provide that threat of retaliation should North Korea do the unthinkable. | ||
| So, you know, I think it is, you know, we help them, but they also help us. | ||
| And they are the frontline defenders in the region. | ||
| And so it's important to remember that, you know, that's the nature of an alliance is that it's mutually beneficial. | ||
| And I think that's certainly true in the Indo-Pacific region. | ||
| Here's Peter, Independent, Upper Derby, Pennsylvania. | ||
| You're on the air, Peter. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, I agree with the Speaker. | |
| I think this Golden Dome is a waste of money. | ||
| I don't think it will ever come to fruition. | ||
| I used to work with DOD for 20 years, and it's going to be a whole bunch of programs that he's going to start, and then it's never going to come to fruition because the Democrats most likely will win in the midterms, and they're going to block some of these programs and all these wishful list of things. | ||
| I think the president is just acting like a rich, spoiled kid, playing with our money. | ||
| And, you know, I don't see these things coming to fruition. | ||
| So I do agree with the speaker. | ||
| Todd? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, well, you know, I don't actually think Golden Dome is a waste of money yet. | |
| I think it's too soon. | ||
| It's too soon to tell. | ||
| It's been almost a year now since the executive order came out, and we haven't seen an architecture from the administration. | ||
| So we don't know what it is. | ||
| You know, I think that there are many possibilities where they could invest in greater missile defense systems, especially some of the things that are already in development that would be beneficial regardless of whether you call it golden dome and regardless of whether you use it to defend the homeland. | ||
| You could actually use many of these systems to defend our U.S. forces that are deployed overseas and our allies and partners around the world. | ||
| So I think there could be a lot of utility depending on what they use the golden dome money to invest in. | ||
| So I would say the jury is still out on that. | ||
| But to your broader point, I think that there are a lot of things the administration has been proposing, programs that have been started that are really unfunded ambition right now, that they have not laid out a five, 10 year funding plan for how they're going to pay for things like the X-47 sixth generation fighter, this golden fleet that the president has talked about in some vague terms, like where's the funding that they're going to pay for that? | ||
| Because it's not something you buy, you know, just at once. | ||
| It's something you actually have to pay for year after year over a long period of time before you realize that capability. | ||
| And so that is my question is where is the sustained funding to see these things through fruition? | ||
| That's why I'm worried if this is just a one-time increase without a follow-on, that we may go down the path of starting lots of programs, ramping up production of things, and then not actually follow through and then not get anything out of it, which just creates more inefficiency in the system. | ||
| And Todd, can you talk a little bit more about the F-47 that you mentioned? | ||
| This is the advanced fighter and why that's a priority for the administration, given the F-35 and what kind of advantages that F-47 will give us over what we've got currently. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, so, you know, this is a sixth-generation fighter. | |
| The F-35 is a fifth-generation fighter. | ||
| It is something that the Air Force has been working on really since the first Trump administration that this program has been in development. | ||
| It was previously known as NGAD, the next generation air defense. | ||
| And so that program has moved through development, it's matured, and it got to the point at the end of the Biden administration that the Air Force had to make a decision. | ||
| Do we move forward with this program and figure out how to pay for it? | ||
| Or do we pause? | ||
| And the Biden administration decided to pause because they didn't think they had the funding because estimates are that each of these aircraft will cost about three times as much as an F-35. | ||
| And then it does beg the question, is it three times the capability? | ||
| Well, it's hard to judge on the outside because a lot of those capabilities are classified. | ||
| But we know it is a manned, a crewed sixth generation fighter where a lot of the technology in the air domain seems to be going uncrewed. | ||
| And so there are real questions about, you know, are we starting this program? | ||
| Are we going to ramp up production? | ||
| And, you know, we will be building this aircraft through the 2040s, maybe the 2050s. | ||
| Is this the technology that's going to be relevant at that time? | ||
| Are we, you know, doubling down investing on manned fighter aircraft when these things are about to go obsolete? | ||
| So there are real questions about that. | ||
| The Biden administration said, look, there's not funding for this, so let's pause it and reconsider. | ||
| It was a big surprise in the defense industry and in the Washington DC defense community when the president suddenly came out and announced the award of that contract out of the Oval Office, even before we had a new Air Force secretary that was confirmed who could go through the analysis that the last administration had finished. | ||
| So, yeah, there's still a lingering question of how are we going to pay for this fighter that costs three times as much per plane as the F-35s that we're building today. | ||
| Again, if there's a sizable increase in the defense budget that's sustained over time, the Air Force can afford that. | ||
| If it's not sustained, the Air Force is going to have to make some difficult choices about other things they want to cut within their budget. | ||
| Michael, a Democrat, Middletown, Connecticut, you're on the air, Michael. | ||
| Yes, hi. | ||
| This is Michael Anthony from Middletown, Connecticut. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm calling because I say that the defense budget should be cut. | |
| It should be cut to a half a trillion because that's too much money. | ||
| $1.5 trillion is too much money. | ||
| We could increase money for child care expenses or we could for the SNAP program for all these other programs, but they don't have money for, but they want to ask for money for the defense. | ||
| That's all about power. | ||
| Trump is a nut. | ||
| He just wants power. | ||
| And he should not be allowed. | ||
| The people should vote. | ||
| They should have the people vote where our money should go. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Todd Harrison. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, no, there have been people in the previous Trump administration who have actually said similar things about cutting the defense budget in half or by 40%. | |
| You know, and so, yeah, I think that, you know, that would require a big shift in strategy. | ||
| You can't cut that much, of course, from efficiency savings. | ||
| Although, don't get me wrong, there's lots of inefficient spending in the defense budget. | ||
| It's not going to amount to that much, though. | ||
| What I would challenge people to do is actually go look at the specifics of what specific programs, what parts of the force would you cut? | ||
| How many brigades would you take out of the Army? | ||
| How many ships would you retire from the Navy? | ||
| How many fighter squadrons from the Air Force? | ||
| Go through and do that exercise to cut the budget to whatever level you feel is appropriate and see what you're left with and see if you're comfortable with that and what kind of strategy can you execute with that. | ||
| We actually at AEI, we put a tool online where you can do this. | ||
| If you go to Defense Futures, all one word, defensefutures.aei.org, you can log in there, make an account, and you can go through and try to cut or try to increase the defense budget however you want, and you can see what that actually does over time to your force and to your strategy. | ||
| Sue in New Jersey has sent us a text. | ||
| She said, So, what are the real reasons behind Doge? | ||
| Find money to spend on building up our military. | ||
| Can you talk, Todd, a little bit about the impact that the Doge cuts might have had on the Defense Department itself and then the ripple effects that that might have had among defense contractors? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, you know, I know Doge was a big topic of conversation this time last year. | |
| It has pretty much faded into the background now, but the effects of the Doge cuts still linger. | ||
| Doge was not intended to cut money so we could spend more money on defense because Doge was cutting defense, you know, just like it was going through and cutting programs in other departments and agencies. | ||
| I mean, it did not try to eliminate things quite to the scale as it did with USAID and other organizations, but DOGE definitely had an impact on DOD. | ||
| What we saw within DOD were a lot of personnel cuts. | ||
| And this was driven right out of the White House with Elon Musk and the email that went out from the White House saying there's a fork in the road, giving people the option to elect into this deferred resignation program, DRP. | ||
| What you ended up having happen is there were pockets within DOD where a lot of people decided to take that offer. | ||
| And so I'll give you an example within the United States Space Force. | ||
| A lot of what the Space Force does is it acquires systems, right? | ||
| You know, we don't build our own satellites in the military. | ||
| We rely on industry to do that. | ||
| And so you need a lot of acquisition people, a lot of contracting people. | ||
| Those are a lot of civilian positions within the Space Force. | ||
| They were eligible for this deferred resignation program. | ||
| And numbers I've seen show that about 20% of the Space Force's contracting workforce took the offer. | ||
| And so that's a lot of experience that just left and went out the door right when there's this influx of money for Golden Dome and other things that are coming in where the Space Force actually needs to put a lot of new things on contract. | ||
| And we just lost 20% of the contracting workforce. | ||
| So that, you know, that has created a lot of problems within DOD. | ||
| They've tried to rehire some of these people, but often when you lose talent, it's gone. | ||
| They find a better job in industry, or they just move on from government service altogether. | ||
| So I think Doge really hurt DOD more than anything over the past year. | ||
| Let's talk to James. | ||
| He's former military in Bronx, New York. | ||
| James, you're on with Todd Harrison. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, sir. | |
| My question to Todd is this. | ||
| At this particular time, where America is on five different reasons right now, and you have troops. | ||
| Yes, my question is this. | ||
| At this particular time, you're asking for one point $5 trillion to fill up the Defense Department. | ||
| At this particular time, Trump, he's doing things at his own whim. | ||
| He's in various different countries. | ||
| And it seems as if right now this is unstable. | ||
| So why are people pushing for this type of money just because Trump decides that it's his call? | ||
| He has absolute authority to do what he wants to do, and no one can check his hand. | ||
| So it kind of leaves the American people, the system, vulnerable. | ||
| All right, Todd? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, no, I guess a few points I'd make. | |
| One is, you know, in our Constitution as Commander-in-Chief, the President does have the authority to use the military to conduct strikes, you know, as the President deems are necessary and in the interest of national security. | ||
| So there's a lot of authority there. | ||
| And you do have the War Powers Act, but Congress has ceded a lot of that authority to the executive branch to conduct these types of one-off operations like we've seen, like the strikes in Iran that were just one night, you know, the strike or the operation in Venezuela, which was just one night of military operation, you know, and then the ongoing counter-drug stuff, taking out ships in the Gulf and the Caribbean. | ||
| You know, the president has the authority to do that. | ||
| It doesn't mean it's always a good decision to do these things. | ||
| But the increase in the defense budget, the president didn't actually connect it to these operations. | ||
| And these operations, because they have been one-off events, they can be absorbed within the current level of defense spending. | ||
| They're not that large. | ||
| Where you get into very large costs for military operations is when you put boots on the ground and you actually try to occupy territory. | ||
| That's where your costs start to go up significantly and they can build very quickly over time, as they did in Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| So I think to your broader point, though, of you know, we see these operations going on in different parts of the world, and sometimes they seem to be very different than what the president has espoused as his approach to national security in the past. | ||
| What we're seeing, I think, is a new national security strategy that is kind of forming in real time through the president's actions, not through the president's words. | ||
| And so, you know, I think analysts like me and others in this community, we are trying to look and trying to figure out and decipher, you know, what is this president's actual strategy? | ||
| And it appears to still be evolving. | ||
| And it's not clear, you know, how this all fits together in a coherent strategy. | ||
| And it may never fit together as part of a coherent strategy. | ||
| But, you know, that's what we're looking at is kind of a real-time evolution of U.S. national security strategy. | ||
| In Ordin, Nebraska, Bob is a Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Bob. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Mr. Harrison, my question is: you want to get $1.5 trillion from Pentagon, but they can't even keep track of their own budget. | ||
| They have no idea what's going to where. | ||
| How are they going to keep track of $1.5 trillion? | ||
| So Bob's talking about the failure to pass an audit at the Defense Department. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, though, that has been a long-simmering problem for DOD really since the 1990s that they were supposed to become auditable. | |
| And, you know, if you dig into the details, and I've looked at this pretty carefully in the past, the problem is the accounting systems that DOD uses are very old. | ||
| They're very fragmented across the department, and they don't pass the right information between systems in order to pass a modern audit. | ||
| They weren't designed to because back when these systems were put in place and the processes were put in place, DOD wasn't required to pass an audit. | ||
| They are now required to pass an audit. | ||
| And so, really, what this ends up being is an IT problem. | ||
| They cannot easily trace spending from the top level all the way down to show this is what you got for it. | ||
| This is, you know, the number of pieces of equipment that you got, and you can show an inventory of receipts for them. | ||
| So, yeah, that doesn't work. | ||
| And that has been an ongoing issue. | ||
| DOD is spending about a billion dollars a year, a billion with a B, on audit readiness, trying to upgrade these systems, upgrade these processes so that they can eventually one day pass a clean audit. | ||
| They are going to continue to run the audits and they're going to continue to fail and identify more and more issues. | ||
| But, you know, I would caution that those failures, that is a work in progress, right? | ||
| Every time you run an audit and you fail, you get actionable things that you can go back and fix and then you run it again. | ||
| And so that's going to take a time, a lot of time. | ||
| And I, you know, I share your frustration. | ||
| How much time, Todd, do we know how much time that will take? | ||
|
unidentified
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We don't. | |
| I would not expect it. | ||
| I mean, we've had parts of the military that have actually passed clean audits. | ||
| I think the Marine Corps has passed a clean audit. | ||
| I think the National Reconnaissance Office, which is part of the intelligence community, they've passed, got a clean audit. | ||
| So there's some progress to show, but I would not expect that we will see all of DOD get a clean audit within this decade. | ||
| I think it's going to take longer and take a lot more money, quite frankly, to get ready for an audit. | ||
| All right, let's talk to Russell, Potomac, Maryland, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Russell. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, good morning. | |
| I just want to piggyback on the last caller saying that we haven't passed an audit in seven or eight years. | ||
| $1.5 trillion is a number that most people can't even fathom. | ||
| So instead of intellectualizing and pontificating, I think we really need to go on a tax strike and have a revolution. | ||
|
unidentified
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This is craziness. | |
| ISIS killing people in the middle of the street. | ||
| And we're talking about like Trump asking for more money. | ||
|
unidentified
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This is crazy. | |
| It's craziness. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Anything you want to add, Todd? | ||
|
unidentified
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No, if you don't pay your taxes, you could get in a lot of trouble. | |
| That is a crime. | ||
| Okay, one last question for you. | ||
| We got this from Adam in Maryland who wants to talk about the, he says, the massive cost overruns and abusing how the National Guard troop temporary deployments are used. | ||
| Can you talk about the cost of those National Guard deployments and how those are being accounted for? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, so I'll tell you, I have not tried to look at the cost of that. | |
| There is a cost, of course, when you activate folks from the Guard. | ||
| You're now paying them full-time pay. | ||
| And in many cases, they're getting temporary duty pay as well because they're not in their home location. | ||
| So you're paying stipends for their hotel and for their food and everything since they're on travel away from home. | ||
| It scales, obviously, with the number of people, but that's not something that I've tried to look at so far. | ||
| So I wouldn't want to hazard a guess as to how much that's added up to. | ||
| All right, that's Todd Harrison, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and they are at AEI.org. | ||
| Thanks so much, Todd, for joining us today. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thanks for having me. | |
| Later on this morning, 2025 saw substantial cuts to the federal workforce under the Trump administration. | ||
| We'll talk about what to watch this year with Max Steyer of the Partnership for Public Service. | ||
| But first, after the break, we'll check in with Time Magazine White House correspondent Nick Popley as part of Open Forum. | ||
| You can start calling in now. | ||
| It's 202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, and 202-748-8002 for Independents. | ||
| We'll get to that after the break. | ||
|
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I absolutely love C-SPAN. | |
| I love to hear both sides. | ||
| I've watch C-SPAN every morning and it's probably the only place that we can hear honest opinion of Americans across the country. | ||
|
unidentified
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You guys at C-SPAN are doing such a wonderful job of allowing free exchange of ideas without a lot of interruptions. | |
| Thank you, C-SPAN, for being a light in the dark. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're an open forum. | ||
| Would like to hear from you about anything that you'd like to talk about regarding public policy, current events, things that you've seen in the news. | ||
| You can start giving us a call now. | ||
| While you're doing that, I will update you on some programs that we've got coming up for you today. | ||
| So at 10.30 a.m., we've got Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. | ||
| She will share her thoughts on the future of the Democratic Party at an event hosted by the National Press Club. | ||
| That's at 10.30 on C-SPAN here. | ||
| And at 1 p.m., we've got the Supreme Court review of bans on transgender athletes in school sports. | ||
| So later this week, the Supreme Court reviews state bans on transgender athletes' participation in school sports. | ||
| Ahead of that, former athletes and GOP attorneys general from across the country will hold a press conference. | ||
| That's happening today, and it features two attorneys general who will argue the case before the high court. | ||
| That's from the Republican Attorneys General Association, and we'll have live coverage of that at 1 p.m. on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| Also at 1 p.m. today, the FCC Commissioner Olivia Trustee will discuss the importance of national security in America's communications infrastructure and the FCC's role in promoting network reliability, resilience, and continuity of service. | ||
| That's hosted by the Hudson Institute, and we'll have live coverage over on C-SPAN 3 at 1 p.m. | ||
| All of those you can watch on our app, C-SPANNow and online at c-span.org. | ||
| We'll get to your calls now to Jane in Hendersonville, North Carolina. | ||
| Good morning, Jane. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, longtime listener, first-time callers. | |
| I'm very excited, very, very grateful for C-SPAN. | ||
| I've followed you for a long time. | ||
| I'm a 38-year-old mom. | ||
| I work, and in my life, I've been a registered Republican, registered libertarian, and now I am unaffiliated. | ||
| And I'm imploring my Republican and right-leaning independent American siblings, cousins, to please look at what's happening with some clarity. | ||
| I know that there are people out there who remember Waco, who remember Ruby Ridge, and I just, I can't understand how people who were so rightly enraged by the injustice of that, of the government killing American citizens. | ||
| I'm just please try, let's all please try to look beyond the rhetoric and aim for peace, aim for nonviolence, aim for taking the temperature down, aim for holding people accountable who breaks the law. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right, Jane, and we are in an open forum. | ||
| You can share your thoughts as well. | ||
| Democrats are on 202748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202748, 8001. | ||
| And Independents, 202748, 8002. | ||
| Our lines are open for you. | ||
| This is an update on the situation in Iran from the BBC. | ||
| Iran says it is prepared for war if the U.S. intervenes after hundreds killed in protests. | ||
| Here's the summary. | ||
| It says, Iran's foreign minister says his country is prepared for war if the U.S. intervenes following a deadly Iranian crackdown on anti-government protests. | ||
| Speaking on Monday morning, he said Iran does not seek war. | ||
| That's his quote. | ||
| It comes after President Donald Trump warned the U.S. is considering, quote, very strong options to intervene in the country. | ||
| The U.S.-based rights group says nearly 500 protesters have been killed since protests began. | ||
| That number may need to be updated. | ||
| Anger over the plummeting value of the Iranian currency sparked the demonstrations in late December. | ||
| It says, meanwhile, Iran remains under a days-long internet blackout, making it difficult to get information. | ||
| The BBC and other international news media are also unable to report from inside the country. | ||
| One Iranian the BBC has spoken to via Starlink says, quote, this grief and fury shouldn't stay hidden. | ||
| The world should know what's happening to us inside. | ||
| That is an update on the situation in Iran and those nationwide protests there. | ||
| Diamond is in Staten Island, New York. | ||
| Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, yes. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I'm just really upset with the way things are going now. | ||
| I can be Democrat, I could be Republican, I can be an independent on certain issues, sure, but everything that is going negative. | ||
| Oh my goodness. | ||
| And then I go on the news, I read newspapers, I go on the internet, and with the shooting, look, I understand ICE. | ||
| Good, they're out here, they want to take the worst to the worst, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| But they're out here harassing innocent people, innocent Americans. | ||
| And then with the shooting, our DHS head is trying to tell me that this lady was a domestic terrorist. | ||
| Come on, people. | ||
| They're taking away your rights. | ||
| They're taking away your health care. | ||
| And you're standing by. | ||
| Yes, yes, yes. | ||
| Oh, yeah, that's good. | ||
| That's okay because he'll get to it. | ||
| I don't understand, people. | ||
| Please, you see what's happening just like I see what's happening. | ||
| You can't tell me the sky is red, and I see that the sky is blue. | ||
| It's just a lot of issues that we're so backward on. | ||
| And everyone, everyone is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. | ||
| But you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Marilyn, Democrat in Lake Worth, Florida. | ||
| Good morning, Marilyn. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| I'd like to know when the Republican Congress is going to grow some balls and stop taking orders from a president who thinks he's a king. | ||
| The Republicans were hired or voted in to do a job, and they're not. | ||
| I'm looking forward to the day when they're all voted out and they'll know why. | ||
| And Marilyn, is there a particular issue that you're most concerned about? | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm concerned about a president who thinks he's a king and he's taking his marching orders from Putin. | |
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
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And when is the Americans going to wake up and realize this? | |
| Here's Greg, Harrison, Ohio, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Greg. | ||
| Hey, I just wanted to call. | ||
|
unidentified
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I've listened to you for a long time. | |
| And you take a bunch of crap and you just are great about it. | ||
| And then they'll talk about your beauty and stuff. | ||
| And you're just great about it. | ||
| That's all I got to say. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And this is from the Independent with this headline about Venezuela. | ||
| You can't give Nobel Peace Prize to someone else. | ||
| The committee tells the winner Machado before Trump meeting. | ||
| Warning comes after U.S. President says he would be, quote, honored to accept the prize if offered by Venezuelan opposition leader during a meeting in Washington. | ||
| We are watching for that upcoming meeting. | ||
| We're going to be talking to a reporter, a White House reporter, and asking about that. | ||
| But here is Republican Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida. | ||
| She is a supporter and friend of Machado's. | ||
| And she was asked on CBS about the upcoming meeting with President Trump in an interview yesterday. | ||
| You are one of Maria Corina Machado's top allies in Congress. | ||
| You've said she is coming to Washington this week. | ||
| President Trump said maybe Tuesday, maybe Wednesday. | ||
| Details still being worked out. | ||
| Why is it important for her to get in front of the President of the United States who is backing Maduro's number two as the current president of that country? | ||
| Okay, well, I don't think that the president is really backing anyone that is related to the Maduro regime, but concentrating on Maria Corina Machado, she earned it. | ||
| She was the one who put together this. | ||
| She proved to the international community that they, the opposition forces, had won the election. | ||
| She was able to somehow create the tallies and prove to the Trump administration that they had won 70 by 230. | ||
| Remember that Maduro did not give her the opportunity to be the presidential nominee because he did not like her, because he knew that he was going to lose against her. | ||
| So she has earned it. | ||
| And I am sure that she will have a very good, long, solid conversation with the president. | ||
| She knows the story better than anybody. | ||
| I was in touch with her during the 16 months that she was hiding in a tunnel because the Maduro forces were looking for her to kill her. | ||
| So she's earned it. | ||
| So I think we are going to welcome her in Congress, and I'm sure that President Trump is going to be highly, highly pleased with that meeting. | ||
| And we're in Open Forum. | ||
| Bob is a Republican in Franklin, Indiana. | ||
|
unidentified
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Bob. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| First, I'd like to talk about the shooting in Minneapolis. | ||
| And first of all, let me congratulate all of you out there for borrowing $170 billion with a B to pay $50,000 bonuses to what looks like trigger-happy officers. | ||
| And that's what that looks like to me. | ||
| But you know what's worse than a trigger-happy ICE officer? | ||
| It's a trigger-happy commander-in-chief and a trigger-happy Secretary of Defense, excuse me, Secretary of War, because they like the word war. | ||
| We have a White House that's eager to go to war. | ||
| They have either threatened or bombed, threatened takeover of at least nine countries in less than one year. | ||
| Folks, World War III is not going to be like World War I or two. | ||
| Our two largest enemies can have missiles in your front yard in mere minutes. | ||
| The next World War, if and when it happens, you know, it's there's not going to be any deferments. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's not going to care if you're Republican or Democrat. | |
| World War II or World War III doesn't care if you're a senior on Social Security or if you're some young guy with muscles in your earlobes. | ||
| It doesn't care if you're a homeless guy or if you play golf at Mar-a-Lago. | ||
| And yet, we have a reckless, trigger-happy gambler in the White House with no restrictions, only stooges and a sleepy, lazy Congress. | ||
| Three of these countries are NATO allies, putting at risk the world order that's kept our country safe. | ||
| You know, we've taken over a country for what Donald Trump has called trash oil and tar. | ||
|
unidentified
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World War III is not worth the risk of trying to take trash oil and tar. | |
| You know, World War III doesn't care if you have an AR-500 like I do. | ||
| It doesn't care if you carry a gun seven days a week like I do. | ||
| In World War III, those will be toys. | ||
| All right, Bob. | ||
| And a quick update for you from CBS News: the Trump administration officials to meet with Danish officials about Greenland on Wednesday, according to diplomatic sources. | ||
| That meeting has not been officially announced. | ||
| It comes after Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Congress last week that President Trump is interested in purchasing the Danish territory. | ||
| The White House also said Tuesday that officials are discussing a wide range of options for acquiring Greenland, including using the U.S. military to take it by force. | ||
| That's according to reporting by CBS News. | ||
| And now we will just pause our calls for open forum. | ||
| If you're on the line, please do stay on. | ||
| We're going to talk now to Time politics reporter Nick Hopley. | ||
| Nick, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thank you for having me. | |
| So let's start with the ICE shooting in Minneapolis. | ||
| And Christy Noam has vowed to send hundreds more agents to Minneapolis. | ||
| What are you hearing from White House officials about that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, the Trump administration is doubling down on its claim that the ICE agent acted in self-defense, even as the footage of the incident paints a more complicated picture. | ||
| And as you mentioned, the Trump administration is sending additional ICE agents, hundreds of additional ICE agents, into Minneapolis. | ||
| And that will only further, undoubtedly, further inflame tensions in that community. | ||
| But look, the Trump administration believes that the American people gave them a mandate to carry out the largest mass deportation effort in history. | ||
| And this is a part of that. | ||
| So we're seeing it play out. | ||
| But look, you know, people are across the political spectrum concerned about this incident last week in Minneapolis. | ||
| They saw the footage and came to a very different conclusion. | ||
| And so, you know, naturally, a lot of people are wondering if the administration jumped to a conclusion or reached a conclusion before the full facts of an investigation have been revealed. | ||
| So we're seeing how that's going to play out. | ||
| Obviously, the investigation is underway. | ||
| The FBI under Kash Patel will be in charge of that investigation. | ||
| It won't include local and state officials in Minnesota. | ||
| So, you know, there's real concern amongst folks that the investigation won't be fair and impartial. | ||
| And so we'll see how that plays out. | ||
| To international news now, the situation in Iran. | ||
| What are you hearing as far as a potential military action against Iran and the regime's killing of those protesters? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, U.S. officials are saying that Trump is engaged on the protests in Iran, but hasn't yet decided if he'll take any military action at all. | |
| The president has been getting hourly reports on the protests in Iran. | ||
| And on Friday, or sorry, on Tuesday or Wednesday this week, the president will be getting a briefing. | ||
| On Tuesday this week, the president will be getting a briefing on the protests in Iran, and he will be given some kinetic and non-kinetic options that could include military strikes on Iranian security forces. | ||
| It could include cyber attack in Iran. | ||
| It could also include additional sanctions on Iran or some other option. | ||
| But look, it's important to note that there is some concern inside the Trump administration that military force against Iran could backfire. | ||
| It could potentially rally people around the Iranian regime rather than weaken it. | ||
| And so I think that's why, at least for now, we haven't seen the Trump administration take action and is instead pursuing pressure over military action at the moment. | ||
| So it's important to note that the Pentagon has not moved military assets into the region. | ||
| So it doesn't appear that a strike is imminent. | ||
| But again, the President will have a briefing on this on Tuesday and we'll know more at that point. | ||
| And regarding Venezuela, President Trump is planning to meet Nobel Prize winner Maria Carina Machado this week. | ||
| Do you have any further information about the timing of that meeting and what they're hoping to accomplish? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that meeting, again, that'll be the first face-to-face meeting between President Trump and the Venezuelan opposition leader, Maria Carina Machado. | |
| We know that the meeting will either be on Tuesday or Wednesday this week. | ||
| The president is scheduled to travel to Michigan on Tuesday, so I would imagine it'd be more likely to be on Wednesday. | ||
| Hopefully the event is open press so we can hear what they discuss. | ||
| I would imagine they'd talk about probably her role in a post-Maduro Venezuela and also potentially the opposition party's role in that government, the future of elections in that country in a couple of years perhaps. | ||
| Also, I would imagine they discuss the Nobel Prize that she was awarded over Trump. | ||
| Trump obviously openly campaigned for that Nobel Prize. | ||
| And he said on Friday that he would be very honored if Machado gave him that Nobel Prize. | ||
| So we'll see how that plays out. | ||
| But the Nobel Committee has said that you can't transfer or share the Nobel Prize. | ||
| So hopefully we have some more clarity on what they discuss. | ||
| But clearly, Machado is looking for support from Trump as he chose to support Del Codriguez, who is the vice president of Venezuela under Maduro. | ||
| So she's a part of the same Maduro regime, and Trump chose to back her over Machado. | ||
| So I'm sure they'll discuss her role in the future, Venezuela. | ||
| And there was a war powers vote in the Senate this past week. | ||
| There were five Republicans that voted with Democrats. | ||
| Remind viewers of President Trump's reaction and if he is trying to pressure those five Republicans to change their vote. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, he absolutely is. | |
| And we're told that Trump was very frustrated at those five Senate Republicans who voted to limit his ability to conduct further military action in Venezuela. | ||
| And so those senators included some of the usual suspects, but also Josh Hawley, Republican senator of Missouri, and also Todd Young of Indiana. | ||
| And so we're told that the president was even yelling at one of those senators for their vote. | ||
| And so that was a test vote, a procedural vote. | ||
| So this week we're expected to see the final vote in the Senate. | ||
| Then it would go to the House, and the President is obviously unlikely to sign it into law. | ||
| So if anything, this is more of a symbolic rebuke of the president's actions in Venezuela rather than relitigating the past. | ||
| And so it would, you know, what this bill, what this war powers resolution would do is essentially limit the president's ability or restrict the president's ability to carry out additional strikes in Congress to carry out additional strikes in Venezuela. | ||
| And remember, the strikes in Venezuela did catch lots of members of Congress off guard. | ||
| And so that's what really prompted this resolution. | ||
| And finally, Nick, the CBS is reporting that Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is planning to visit Greenland on Wednesday. | ||
| What is the White House saying about that meeting? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, the President has been very clear that he wants to take over Greenland. | |
| It's his next target. | ||
| And the President has repeatedly said that the U.S. is going to take over Greenland one way or another. | ||
| He's threatened military action against Denmark or Greenland, Denmark being a NATO ally. | ||
| He's also floated the option of purchasing Greenland, though it doesn't appear that any offers have been made, and it's not clear if Denmark would even accept any offer or if they're even willing to negotiate. | ||
| Trump has instructed his top officials to speak with Danish officials. | ||
| Market Rubio will be meeting with the Danish officials this week on Wednesday. | ||
| Hopefully, we'll have more clarity on the situation after that meeting. | ||
| The president is meeting with Rubio today this morning. | ||
| And I think it's important to note that, again, Denmark is a NATO ally. | ||
| And so, under Article 5 of NATO, an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all members. | ||
| And so, what Trump, I think there's a lot of concern amongst Democrats that what Trump is doing could potentially destroy NATO. | ||
| And that could have massive ramifications for future presidents and the future of American foreign policy. | ||
| And so, a lot of eyes will be on this for sure. | ||
| Trump was asked about the consequences of going after Greenland and potentially erasing NATO, this is a historic alliance. | ||
| And he said that they need us more than we need them. | ||
| So, I think that tells you a little preview of what to expect from the president on this. | ||
| All right, that's Nick Popley, politics reporter for Time. | ||
| His work is at time.com. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for having me, Mimi. | |
| And thank you for holding on the line. | ||
| Let's talk to Jeff in Nebraska, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Jeff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, first thing I want to say is: can you please start hanging up on the Democrats that are calling in on the Republican line? | |
| It's bad enough trying to get through and then not sit and listen to political hacks from the Democratic Party on the Republican line. | ||
| Second, these people that are calling in complaining about their health insurance losing it, there's $9 billion that was stole from the American people up in Minnesota by the Somalis. | ||
| And I haven't seen C-SPAN say one thing about that. | ||
| And it could have been used for the health insurance for the American people. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Goodbye. | ||
| Robin, the Democrat in Alabama, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I've been sitting here so long. | ||
| I did like a little interview in the grocery store. | ||
| Are you there? | ||
| Yes, we're listening. | ||
|
unidentified
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And I went and spoke to these little old women who had crucifix on their chest and how they just don't care what Trump does. | |
| You know, he can have people shot in the face and then defend it, which is totally absurd. | ||
| If you see that with your own eyes, you know it's murder. | ||
| But these little old ladies don't care what he did. | ||
| They don't care that he's a sexual predator. | ||
| They don't care that he's a 34-count felon. | ||
| They just love what he's done for the country. | ||
| Yet, these are these little Baptists or whatever kind of Christians they call themselves. | ||
| They can see these injustices being done, and they don't care. | ||
| And if they believe in the God that they profess, they'll be held accountable just like everybody else. | ||
| They need to get this president out of there, and they need to get this JD Vance out of there. | ||
| He also, he condoned that murder. | ||
| These people are out of their mind. | ||
| They're white supremacs, okay? | ||
|
unidentified
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That's my opinion. | |
| The white people, not women, not blacks, not Hispanics. | ||
| The white people think, the white supremacists think that they're the only ones that have blood that run through their veins. | ||
| Something needs to be done. | ||
| The line's been crossed. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Let's talk to Hank, Republican, La Vista, Nebraska. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
| Hank, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hanker. | |
| If it's me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My name is Mike. | |
| Oh, sorry about that. | ||
| We got that wrong. | ||
| Go ahead, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I just wanted to say the woman shot in Minneapolis. | |
| You know, they were telling her to get out of the car. | ||
| So when law enforcement is telling you to stop, get out of the car. | ||
| You know, one, you don't want to follow the police. | ||
| It's dangerous. | ||
| She wasn't observing. | ||
| She's obstructing. | ||
| Just for safety, when a police officer or somebody, ICE or whoever says, get out of the car, just stop, get out of the car. | ||
| That way you're going to be safe. | ||
| Hopefully. | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| So, Mike, let me ask you this. | ||
| The argument can be made that she felt intimidated. | ||
| I'm not saying what she actually felt, but let's just assume that she was too scared to get out of her car. | ||
| What would you say in that case? | ||
| Like, would you, you know, if that was your daughter or your wife, would you say, don't worry about it? | ||
| I mean, just get out of the car and he's not going to hurt you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If you heard the conversation she had before the shooting, she was, you know, playing with them, you know, making comments like she was being funny, and so was her friend or her wife or whoever she was. | |
| So she knew where she was at. | ||
| She knew she was putting herself in danger. | ||
| I don't think she ever thought that she could get shot. | ||
| But again, if a cop is standing in front of a car and others are saying, get out of the car, and they don't, they're putting themselves at risk. | ||
| People call that murder. | ||
| And I call it very unfortunate that she was there. | ||
|
unidentified
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But quit messing with law enforcement, any law enforcement, you're going to be safe, I think. | |
| Just follow what they ask you to do. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's all I'm saying. | |
| Got it. | ||
| And in Massachusetts, Line for Democrats, Mike? | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Haven't talked to you in a while. | ||
| Not too easy to get on here. | ||
| But I wanted to talk about my favorite subject: defense spending. | ||
| I spent 33 years of my life working with a defense contractor, and I learned how reliant we are for good jobs with good benefits in the United States. | ||
| And that's not counting all the support jobs around defense spending. | ||
| And what today, what it boils down to, the Republicans know how to play it to the hilt, even though I don't agree with a lot of their policies as a moderate Democrat. | ||
| They put you in the frame of mind. | ||
| See, this trillion and a half, $1,500 billion defense budget will keep us millions of Americans in good paying jobs with benefits. | ||
| And that's what it's all about. | ||
| But nobody wants to come right out and say it because it seems kind of sad that we have to rely on weapons of death and destruction that hurt and kill people to have economic prosperity. | ||
| But that's the way free market capitalism works. | ||
| It does very well in defense. | ||
| And I was wondering if you wanted to respond to me. | ||
| Nope, I'm good. | ||
| Thank you, Mike. | ||
| Ron in Minnesota, Independent Lion, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'd like to talk on immigration. | |
| And what I'd like to talk about is nobody's ever brought up why Jason Miller was in Brazil a few weeks before the end of Trump's first term. | ||
| And then a few weeks after that, there were all those immigrants on top of the trades coming to Minnesota. | ||
| I mean, coming to the United States. | ||
| I always wondered, was there a connection? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Wait, so you're saying Jason Miller in Brazil, are you saying, so this is what CNN says? | ||
| This is from September of 2021. | ||
| It says former Trump advisor Jason Miller briefly detained in Brazil. | ||
| Is that what you're talking about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He was in Brazil just a few weeks at the end of Trump's first term. | |
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In January. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Michael in Ohio, Line for Republicans. | ||
| You're on the air, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, and how are you doing? | |
| I'm okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good, good. | |
| My topic is about the ICE protests. | ||
| It's very discerning and sad that a person had to get killed for the American people to wake up and understand there's half of this nation that doesn't want to obey the law. | ||
| The law says you do not interfere with police operations. | ||
| You do not protect the guilty. | ||
| And people that are here illegally are guilty. | ||
| We have an immigration law. | ||
| It's old. | ||
| It's actually antique. | ||
| It was last updated in 1924. | ||
| And nobody since then in either party has chosen to tackle it. | ||
| They just say it's broken. | ||
| Well, the person that broke it was Obama when he imported people that were not eligible to come into this country because he overdid the limits that were placed in that 1924 resolution. | ||
| And one party just doesn't want to admit that they're talking out their ears. | ||
| They don't know what they're talking about when it comes to the law. | ||
| They make it up as they go. | ||
| Read the law books. | ||
| Read the Constitution. | ||
| And a lot of the things they say is total hogwash. | ||
| 14th Amendment does not guarantee a child born in this country citizenship. | ||
| It was meant for slavery, and it was appealed only one time, and that was back, oh, God, late 1800s by an Oriental against the U.S. government. | ||
| All right, Michael. | ||
| Sandra in Florida, Line for Democrats. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi. | |
| look up please for me the story about Ron DeSantis in the state of Florida and his alleged misuse of 10 million dollars from a state Medicaid settlement and giving that money to his wife's charity and also using 35 million dollars of other funds to address | ||
| the amendment that was for marijuana legalization in Florida? | ||
| I mean, we've got our own problems. | ||
| We've got a governor doing what they're accusing the Somalia people of doing. | ||
| And we have Rick Scott, our senator, who in 1997 was under federal investigation when he was the CEO of Columbia HCA and had fines and penalties for defrauding Medicare and other government programs through illegal kickbacks and overbilling. | ||
| And he had to resign from his position. | ||
| So that was the largest settlement, I think, in the state, in the country at that time. | ||
| But if people could stop talking about the Somalian people, this is our senator in Florida and our governor. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| This is, it says Florida Governor Ron DeSantis faced scrutiny and criminal investigation in 2025 over a secret $10 million payment from a Medicaid settlement with healthcare company Centene, directed to Hope Florida Foundation, a charity led by his wife. | ||
| This is Mary in Wisconsin, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Mary. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, Mimi. | |
| I just wanted to talk about daycare. | ||
| People need to understand that if you put a child in a daycare center, you're putting them into an arms of a stranger. | ||
| And there are no ways of preventing people from coming and going in people's homes. | ||
| So you have public people coming into people's homes, and you would never know who's with your child. | ||
| And I have heard some horror stories. | ||
| I'm not going to repeat what they are, of sexual abuse in daycare centers and physical abuse. | ||
| And also, they give them some gummy bears to make them sleepy so they don't have to do anything or what they can do to the child. | ||
| And that actually... | ||
| So, Mary, what do you suggest for parents that have to go to work and don't have any other options? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, you know what I did? | |
| What I would do? | ||
| I stayed home, and we lived without stuff. | ||
| We didn't have things, but they had love and they had protection. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And also, if you had to go out and work, say you don't have a husband, then you should get six women together. | |
| Everybody can stay in one room, one apartment, and everybody can take turns taking care of their children because that would be a lot safer. | ||
| At least you know you're looking at them in the eye and you can see who they are and how they treat their children, how your children are be treated by their kids. | ||
| Because if you grow up in an environment where you're love and you don't have any violence, you're going to be protected in that little area. | ||
|
unidentified
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And it's a little bit more work, but why have a child if, like I tell my two adult girls, never get into an Uber because you're in the arms of a stranger. | |
| But, you know, oh, can I please say one more thing? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Kids are put in a daycare center are nonverbal. | ||
| They don't talk. | ||
| And they think, well, this is what happens to me when I'm here, but when I go home, nothing happens. | ||
| And I think that's, when I was growing up, no daycares were in existence. | ||
| All right, Mary. | ||
| And Francis is in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Independent Line. | ||
| Go ahead, Frances. | ||
| Hi. | ||
| I wanted to speak about the fact that Mimi, you're being very disingenuous. | ||
| At about the 36-minute mark, you talked about how that the people, a couple during the Biden administration, could call up and complain about him. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, I want to tell you that that's just not a true statement. | |
| I have seen several, and Pedro was one who kept on canceling on people who tried to talk about the fact that Ashley Biden had said that Joe Biden had molested her. | ||
|
unidentified
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They took nasty showers together. | |
| And that is confirmed. | ||
| If you go online and you look, you can see that those are the things that she said in her diary that a judge said was true. | ||
| And you never let anybody talk about that. | ||
|
unidentified
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You let all these people talk about Trump being a pedophile. | |
| You never once asked them, well, where do you find that information? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, I've never heard that before. | |
| Where did you see that? | ||
| Well, nobody has ever seen it because it isn't true. | ||
| But it is true about Biden. | ||
|
unidentified
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And it is really disingenuous of you to just suggest that nobody ever gets to complain about this. | |
| And Republicans. | ||
| Thank you, Francis, for your input on that. | ||
| Quick update. | ||
| Wall Street Journal, front page, U.S. steps up Iran planning studies possible military action. | ||
| It says Trump sets meeting on unrest response as heavy death toll is reported at protests. | ||
| That's at the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Coming up after the break, we'll be joined by Max Styer of the Partnership for Public Service to talk about what he's watching in the year ahead when it comes to further cuts to the federal workforce. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series. | |
| Sunday with our guest Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. poet laureate Rita Dove, who has authored several collections of poetry. | ||
| Don't think you can forget her. | ||
| Don't even try. | ||
| She's not going to budge. | ||
| No choice but to grant her space, crown her with sky, for she is one of the many, and she is each of us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein. | |
| Did your teachers say, well, look, poetry is not a big career future. | ||
| You should write prose. | ||
| Did they people tell you that or how? | ||
| You see, I didn't even know that it was something that you could do and live with your life. | ||
| I thought that, and I was writing poetry from the age of 10, I guess, but it was always a secret thing. | ||
| It was a thing that I wrote and thought, okay, this is my secret. | ||
| It was my thing that I enjoyed. | ||
| I didn't realize that a little black girl could become a poet. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watch America's Book Club with Rita Dove. | |
| Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| On this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | ||
| After 15 books on revolutionary America, John Furling still has more to say about the early period in the life of the United States. | ||
| Ferling is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of West Georgia. | ||
| In the preface of his current book, Shots Heard Round the World, Professor Ferling opens with this, quote, Now that America will be commemorating the 250th anniversary of its War of Independence, what pops into your mind as you hear or witness references to that conflict? | ||
| Professor Ferling gives his answer in a 500-page book focusing on America, Britain, and Europe in the Revolutionary War era. | ||
|
unidentified
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A new interview with author John Ferling about his book, Shots Heard Round the World, America, Britain, and Europe in the Revolutionary War. | |
| Book Notes Plus with our host Brian Lamb is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined now by Max Steyer. | ||
| He is president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service to discuss the federal workforce and the cuts over this past year. | ||
| Max, welcome back to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much, Mimi. | |
| It's great to be here. | ||
| Remind us of your mission and your funding for the partnership. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| Mission really straightforward, and that is we believe in better government, stronger democracy. | ||
| Our theory of the case is having a well-run government, both the federal level and state and local level, is fundamental to our democracy. | ||
| It's a non-partisan issue. | ||
| No matter what policy position you want to pursue, having public institutions that can deliver good results to the public is essential. | ||
| Our funding comes from government, so we do fee-for-service work from traditional foundations, individuals, company sponsorship. | ||
| We are, again, a non-partisan nonprofit, so a challenging issue for all nonprofits, but we work to make sure we can get to double bottom line, achieve our mission, and have the resources to be able to get stuff done. | ||
| And what would you say is the state of the federal workforce right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not good. | |
| Worst, certainly in my lifetime and probably well beyond that. | ||
| You know, we just had important data released from the Office of Personnel Management that shows a net 10% decrease in the federal workforce, not exactly over the full year of the first year of the Trump second term. | ||
| But the issue isn't numbers. | ||
| The really more prominent problem is the way those folks were chased away from our government and who was chased away. | ||
| A good example: we've had a challenge for a while getting young people in our government, and we saw a drop of a full percentage point in those under the age of 30. | ||
| So now we're looking at Inters, Department of Agriculture leave. | ||
| You had a quarter of the IT management from Social Security Administration. | ||
| Defense Department had the largest number of people leave. | ||
| I mean, you basically saw a hurricane go through our government, and the damage was non-planned, idiosyncratic, and profound. | ||
| The argument, though, Max, is that that hurricane, as you call it, had to go through the federal government because there were so many extra people. | ||
| It was so bloated and so inefficient. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And a couple of thoughts on that, just to look at the data. | |
| Actually, the size of the federal workforce is the same as it was in the 1960s. | ||
| I'm talking absolute size. | ||
| Our country has grown a great deal since then, and the responsibilities of our government has as well. | ||
| You could imagine a world in which you did see a 10% reduction in the staff that was smart and that didn't reduce the actual capability of our government. | ||
| That's not what happened here. | ||
| It was not the right people. | ||
| Again, as I mentioned, it was disproportionately young people, disproportionately people with tech savvy, those that were willing to speak truth to power, those that represented positions that the current administration doesn't like, as opposed to not being quality people. | ||
| These were not the right people to let go, and any smart leader would have understood that. | ||
| The easiest way to understand it is Russ Vogt walking in said, I want to traumatize the workforce. | ||
| I've never in my entire life seen a manager who you would ever want to hire say that he wanted to traumatize his workforce. | ||
| It's what they did, and they chased away great talent in doing so. | ||
| If you'd like to join our conversation with Max Steyer at the Partnership for Public Service, you can start giving us a call now. | ||
| Lines are bipartisan. | ||
| Democrats are on 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| We also have a line set aside for federal workers. | ||
| That line is 202-748-8003. | ||
| So if you're currently in the federal government or if you were laid off or took early retirement, took the fork in the road, do give us a call on that line and share your experience with us. | ||
| Max, the OPM, the Office of Personnel Management, has released some data, and you can see this at data.opm.gov. | ||
| It shows the federal civilian workforce over time. | ||
| This is a chart that goes back to 2015, essentially showing that it had gone up and then back down to those 2015 levels. | ||
| It talks about each agency and how many people work for each agency, etc. | ||
| What are your thoughts on data coming from the OPM and if they have been transparent with that data? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, look, I mean, starting point, you know, kudos to Scott Cooper, the OPM director and OPM, for putting this data out. | |
| It is so important when the administration is making changes and really important changes, providing that information is vital, and they did it here. | ||
| That's not been the case in many other instances across our government where we've seen huge change, often harms to our government and the data needed to understand it hidden. | ||
| So this is actually unusual for this administration and definitely to be celebrated. | ||
| And thanks to the whole OPM team for doing that. | ||
| The story it tells, as I just outlined, is not a good one. | ||
| You're right that you can imagine a world in which coming back down to 2015 levels or below even might be a good way to save resources. | ||
| That is not what happened here. | ||
| This was unplanned. | ||
| I mean, again, I use the metaphor of hurricane. | ||
| You can think of Godzilla. | ||
| Across the board, the people who were let go were not the right ones, and no planning was done to make sure that was the case. | ||
| Even look at some of the individual numbers. | ||
| When you think about the very first people that the president fired, it was the inspector general, 17 inspector generals whose job it is to find waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| They're responsible for saving billions and billions of dollars for the American taxpayer. | ||
| And he let them go. | ||
| And why? | ||
| You know, not because they did their job poorly. | ||
| There was no cause here. | ||
| It's because he didn't want anyone looking over his shoulder. | ||
| He didn't want anyone second-guessing his choices. | ||
| He didn't want to have the oversight that Congress wanted and that the American people should want. | ||
| So again, it's how it was done more than anything else that people should be troubled by. | ||
| And the future doesn't bode well either because what I see coming forward in 2026 is not necessarily the continuation of massive firings, but a change in the system so that the people who are restocking the federal workforce are those that are loyalists as opposed to those that have the best quality capabilities that can work on behalf of the American people. | ||
| We're seeing a critical change in the way our government is run. | ||
| It is now moving back to the spoil system, away from nonpartisan experts being in our government to instead those that are willing to do whatever this president wants, no matter the law or the Constitution, both at the political and the career level. | ||
| That's not what our system should be designed to do. | ||
| It's bad for the American people and we're going to have corruption and incompetence as a result. | ||
| Let's put some numbers up on the screen for everybody. | ||
| These are reductions in the federal workforce in 2025. | ||
| There were more than 322,000 employees that left the federal workforce during that year. | ||
| Every federal agency was impacted. | ||
| As far as the percentage of the workforce, it was the Department of Education, HUD, and Treasury saw the most cuts. | ||
| But in terms of raw numbers, it was the Defense Department, Veterans Affairs, Treasury, and HHS was impacted the most. | ||
| And Max, just in terms of the impact that this has on the American people, I know during the shutdown that happened towards the end of last year, there were callers that called in and said, you know what, the government's been shut down. | ||
| I haven't seen any impact to my life. | ||
| I'm just fine. | ||
| As far as I'm concerned, keep it shut down. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And, you know, the most important thing with respect to the shutdown, and frankly, there is a risk still we may see another shutdown, I think hopefully unlikely at the end of this month. | ||
| But the reality is that it's really a misnomer. | ||
| It's not really a shutdown. | ||
| Three-quarters of the federal budget is mandatory. | ||
| So most of what government does, in fact, did not get interrupted. | ||
| And even amongst the quarter that remains of the budget, much of that continued on because the president has a lot of discretion to decide what can continue irrespective of a shutdown. | ||
| So, you know, if our government truly stopped, we would see chaos in the streets. | ||
| It would be the end of our country as we know it. | ||
| We've never seen that, at least not so far, but what we are seeing is a degradation of services. | ||
| So that 10% cut, and again, that's 10% as an overall number, but a third of the food safety inspectors that are gone, what does that mean? | ||
| We will have more people getting sick from foodborne illnesses. | ||
| What does it mean that a quarter of the IT management at Social Security Administration are gone? | ||
| It will mean that people are not going to get their benefits in the same way that they had before. | ||
| They're going to wait longer, which is already happening. | ||
| The big cuts at the VA you described, our veterans are going to receive less good treatment. | ||
| Biggest cut of all in terms of absolute numbers, the Defense Department. | ||
| What sense does that make when you have a president saying he wants to double the Defense Department budget at the same time in which he's let go, fired, or constructively fired more people from the Defense Department than any place else? | ||
| This is terrible management. | ||
| This is a terrible stewardship of the public's resources. | ||
| And what I'm saying is not a partisan issue. | ||
| What I'm describing is a return to a 19th century idea that our government is there for the benefit of those who got elected as opposed to the American public. | ||
| And Republican and Democratic presidents for 140 years pushed back against that notion. | ||
| They made different choices, but they were all committed to the public good. | ||
| Americans should understand that this change is not partisan and it's bad for them. | ||
| And just a small correction, Max, it's not a doubling of the defense budget. | ||
| It's 50%, which is still substantial, but it is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for that. | |
| It's not the doubling. | ||
| Mary in Massachusetts, Independent Line, you're on with Max Dyer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thank you for taking my call. | |
| I actually have a question and then two comments. | ||
| I don't know if I can do all of them. | ||
| The question is, how many government contractors were there in the 1960s versus today? | ||
| And then my father was a lifelong Democrat, worked for the federal government, was a comptroller, and he would often get complain about the federal waste back in the 80s and the 90s. | ||
| And he would end up having to leave his position and take another position in the government to keep his security. | ||
| But that was a big problem. | ||
| And I personally have been dealing with the U.S. Patent Office. | ||
| And there's a lot of waste in the U.S. Patent Office because it's not streamlined. | ||
| Half the people don't talk to the other departments. | ||
| There's hundreds of departments in there, and nobody seems to know anything half the time. | ||
| So the amount of waste that happens in the U.S. Patent Office is also something that should be considered. | ||
| And not to mention the Obama Events Act has created a big problem where only multinational and multinational corporations and multinational law firms are really benefiting and not the independent inventor. | ||
| So there are some issues that we need to look at. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call. | |
| Go ahead, Max. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Excellent. | |
| Well, look, the contractor question is a really, really important one. | ||
| And people mistake, I think, the size of the federal workforce for the size of the federal government. | ||
| They're not the same things. | ||
| I mentioned that the federal workforce has effectively been the same size prior to Trump as it was in the late 1960s. | ||
| Our federal government obviously increased its size enormously. | ||
| Organizations typically measure their size by their budget, not by the headcount. | ||
| In the federal government's case, the headcount is especially deceiving because, as you just really, your question suggests, the number of contractors is really, in fact, much larger than the number of direct federal employees. | ||
| So we've seen huge increases in federal contractors. | ||
| There's not good data on that. | ||
| There's a gentleman named Paul Light who did the best work on this some years ago. | ||
| And there's a senator who tried to get agencies to give this information to them and they could not. | ||
| So big issue looking at contractors, not just contractors, but also grantees. | ||
| And there's important work that could and should be done to make sure that that is more efficiently done. | ||
| Oftentimes, contractors are used because the system is too difficult to actually hire the talent you need inside the government itself. | ||
| So, lots and lots of opportunity for improvements there, which comes to your second point, and that is the amount of waste that exists in our government already. | ||
| It is large. | ||
| There's no question about it. | ||
| I think it's important to understand that you can accept that proposition, you can do something about it, but not the way this administration is doing it. | ||
| I mentioned earlier the firing of the very front end of the 17 inspector generals that did not help in addressing waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| In fact, it increased it. | ||
| Choosing people, again, on the basis of loyalty, especially at the top, you look at the senior-most people in this administration, many of whom have a bunch of different jobs. | ||
| They're not, in fact, working as good managers of the organizations they run. | ||
| They don't have the qualifications, they don't have the commitment to the public good, and that means more waste, not less. | ||
| So, 100% with you that we should see substantial reform in our government. | ||
| What is happening right now is taking us actually in the wrong direction rather than in one that can address these issues that you rightly flag. | ||
| Paul in Leola, Pennsylvania, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much. | |
| So, I agree with you that the president's tactics and approach are not always kosher or, you know, not always seem to be the right way to do things. | ||
| But, and full disclosure, I voted for the president the first two times, and I didn't even vote for him the last time. | ||
| I voted for Kamala just because of this kind of chaos. | ||
| You know, it's just kind of sick of the Trump way. | ||
| However, we voted for him, and he is our president. | ||
| Our deficit and our debt are crazy. | ||
| I mean, we're approaching 40 trillion in debt. | ||
| Our deficit is what, 1.8 trillion a year for the last couple of years. | ||
| It's so easy to nitpick. | ||
| And I haven't heard you say, sir, how you would do it if you were president. | ||
| I am so happy that our president is trying to cut waste. | ||
| And so, how would you legally do it if you were president, sir? | ||
| Sir, how would you cut the deficit? | ||
| Let's get that answer for you, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, it's an excellent question. | |
| And in fact, my organization, the Partnership for Public Service, has a major initiative, government in the new era, which is directly trying to address what you are describing. | ||
| And so, let me quickly run through a few things, and then maybe we'll tell me when I have to stop. | ||
| First and foremost, you have to start from the proposition that our government is actually there for the public good rather than the interests of the leaders of the day. | ||
| And that has been the consensus, Republican, Democratic, independent view for 140 years. | ||
| We need to get back to that. | ||
| Otherwise, you do see corruption and bad choices that are a real problem. | ||
| Number two, we have 4,000 political leaders in our system right now that are unmanaged. | ||
| None of them have specific qualifications they have to meet. | ||
| None of them have performance plans. | ||
| None of them have any accountability at all. | ||
| So, again, one change that I would argue for is whether they're political or career, you need to have people managed. | ||
| You'll never have that career workforce actively accountable and doing its job well if the four or five layers above them have no management. | ||
| And so, changing the way we actually lead our government is the second piece that I would push for for reform. | ||
| Number three, I think we need to look at our government as an enterprise. | ||
| It's a legacy government that hasn't kept up with the world around it. | ||
| The problem set of today needs multi-agency, multi-level government, multi-sector responses, but it's not organized to do so. | ||
| So, we need to actually move towards an enterprise perspective of solving problems. | ||
| Number four, AI and technology is clearly going to be a force for opportunity. | ||
| It has to be done responsibly. | ||
| But actually, ensuring that we invest appropriately in the knowledge and capability of the federal workforce, including political appointees, to use those forces for improved performance would be a huge improvement at where we are right now. | ||
| And five, would be we need to focus on success, not just problem. | ||
| We have a lot of architecture in government that is admiring problems rather than looking for the solutions, and that creates risk aversion, which is a problem too. | ||
| As fast as I can do it, five things. | ||
| All right, not bad there, Max. | ||
| Edward, Burbank, California, Independent Line. | ||
| Go ahead, Edward. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, can you hear me okay? | |
| Yes, we can. | ||
| Okay, so regarding this Doge activity, I think number one, we've got a president who wants to run the government as if it were his personal company. | ||
| You can see that in everything that he does. | ||
| He wants to run the world as if it was his personal company. | ||
| Now, I worked for 30 years in corporate America, 15 years in banks as a salesperson and a manager, and then 15 years in a brokerage firm as a compliance officer. | ||
| I went through several mergers, lost my job a couple of times, but the reduction in forces was based on performance and/or duplication. | ||
| It was not someone just coming in and saying, You're out, you're out, you're out. | ||
| I did terminate people based on performance. | ||
| In compliance, I was auditing offices to determine whether they were following policy, procedures, and guidelines. | ||
| But it wasn't just coming in and saying, Hey, you're out. | ||
| Now, I think if they were going to do Doge, they should have started with the executive branch, the Congress, and the Judicial Supreme Court to reduce the waste, fraud, and abuse, and duplication and waste. | ||
| But they started with the federal government because they want to be the untouchables and not be looked at to see how improper many of what they do is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much. | |
| Nimi, can I jump in? | ||
| Yes, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, so I think you put your finger on something absolutely critical here. | |
| I do think the president sees no difference between running his private business and running the United States government, and he should. | ||
| The reality is that when you're serving as president of the United States, you really are supposed to be serving the American public rather than your private interests. | ||
| And there are constitutional limitations on what you can and cannot do. | ||
| You know, this president just gave an interview in which he said he sees no restraint on himself other than what he chooses not to do. | ||
| And that's not how our system is supposed to work. | ||
| To begin with, again, presidents are supposed to be looking after the public good. | ||
| He isn't running Trump International. | ||
| He's running the United States government. | ||
| We should all wish him success because he's the airplane pilot for all of us here. | ||
| But we have to have a set of expectations that include that his choices are for our good rather than his own good. | ||
| And that is not what we're seeing. | ||
| It's not the very explicit choice that he's made. | ||
| So that is the starting point. | ||
| You can actually use business principles to run our government a lot better, but you cannot run our government like a business. | ||
| It's not the same thing. | ||
| The purpose is not the same thing. | ||
| The constraints are not the same thing. | ||
| Just seeing the government shutdown is a good example of that. | ||
| Your board of directors, if you think of Congress that way, doesn't operate in that way. | ||
| So it's a different proposition. | ||
| You also need different skills. | ||
| And we're not seeing that understanding here at all. | ||
| And that's a problem. | ||
| Clifton in Albany, New York, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Clifton. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, when we have a president of the bank of six companies, you could see that he doesn't know how to run a business. | ||
| He just hires people and ensure he doesn't pay the highest wages. | ||
| And he went out and had all those people fired. | ||
| Right there, I see, I'm 80 years old. | ||
| I've been around a while, worked with several companies and retired after 35 years. | ||
| So I've seen a lot of ways companies cooperate. | ||
| I would have gone out and gotten former hired executives or bosses and bring them into the department. | ||
| I wouldn't have locked the doors and isolated everybody, send people in who know nothing about the jobs. | ||
| I've got retired people, brought them in and say, where do you see the efficiency and the inefficiency before I would fire people? | ||
| His priorities are so wrong to give $50,000 to people to join ISIS. | ||
| He has no idea what their education is, experience, IQs. | ||
| And yet he's making all these big decisions in our Congress and the useless Supreme Court just sit back and let him destroy this country. | ||
| The German chancellor said it's sad that the fascist supporters are letting him get away with this. | ||
| He's making the whole world unstable because nobody looks and trusts the United States. | ||
| All right, Max. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So again, I think, you know, your experience is meaningful here. | |
| And I agree with you that when you're thinking about how you want to run an organization, there are a couple of things that you need. | ||
| You need people who have experience. | ||
| Experience does matter. | ||
| And Doge certainly suffered from bringing people in who had no true understanding of the context they were operating in. | ||
| I think you need competence and character. | ||
| And I think that second piece is equally important, especially when you're dealing with public institutions. | ||
| The character piece is even more important than in any other context. | ||
| And we have not seen that. | ||
| I mean, if you look at the leadership choices, you know, to name names, you know, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegset, and the list goes on and on. | ||
| These are not people who have run major, huge organizations. | ||
| They don't have the experience. | ||
| And frankly, they don't have the character in that they're not committed ultimately to the constitutional order and to the good of the public. | ||
| They are responsive to the person who put them there, and that's it. | ||
| That is not how our system should run. | ||
| So I think your prior experience is important. | ||
| It has not been well represented in the way our president has operated to date. | ||
| I hope that there was some important learning from Doge, but I'm not seeing it. | ||
| And I think that's the other piece that is critical here, which is you have an administration that fundamentally will never admit that it made a mistake, that assumes that whatever it does is right because they did it. | ||
| And in today's world, that is, you know, a recipe for driving off the cliff. | ||
| We have a lot of challenges. | ||
| There's a lot of new problems that are out there. | ||
| You need to be able to rely on good information. | ||
| And this administration is shutting the door on it. | ||
| It kills the messenger when it gets information that it doesn't like. | ||
| And as a result, it's creating a situation in which it will not get important data to be able to choose better when difficult issues come and arise. | ||
| So again, this is terrible management. | ||
| It's not the way our government should be run. | ||
| So Max, about a month ago, Elon Musk gave an interview on the Katie Miller podcast. | ||
| And this is a headline from Axios that says, Musk says Doge was only somewhat successful and wouldn't do it again. | ||
| What was your reaction to that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My reaction was, you know, easy for him to say, and there's an awful lot of pain that our country and many, many, many thousands of federal employees have had to experience. | |
| It's all well and good for him to say wouldn't have done it again and maybe not so successful, but he has created an incredible amount of harm. | ||
| There are again legitimate questions about how much you want to invest, as an example, in international development. | ||
| They had no business shutting down a federal agency like USAID that had been created by Congress, set up by law, but they did that. | ||
| And if you look at numbers that came out of the Gates Foundation, there may be 200,000 children globally that are no longer alive as a result of that. | ||
| These are very, very real consequences internationally, domestically. | ||
| We don't have the full accounting for all of them, but they're really, really bad. | ||
| So what I would say is, you know, own up to, you know, it's what I would say to my kids, own up to your mistake and make good on it. | ||
| And that I have not seen. | ||
| He has not made good on it. | ||
| There's a lot of investment to the prior caller's points about the need to make our government better. | ||
| I'd love to see Elon Musk actually do this the right way and invest in improving the capabilities of the United States workforce, improving, truly improving the technology backbone. | ||
| He's not taking responsibility for fixing what he's broken, and that to me would be the right response. | ||
| Let's talk to Dennis, a Republican in Ohio. | ||
| You're on the air, Dennis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, I want to say something about your present guest. | |
| I disagree 100% with what he's saying. | ||
| He is strictly taking a liberal point of view on everything. | ||
| He's 100% wrong about Donald Trump. | ||
| Trump brought in people that were all good people. | ||
| They all had a lot of common sense. | ||
| And that's all they needed. | ||
| That's all our founding fathers wanted them to have was common sense and a good background. | ||
| They're all good people, and I think that he's erading all of them unfairly. | ||
| That's one thing. | ||
| The other thing is, I think everybody should go on the web that has access to the website to the internet, should go to gods5stones.com. | ||
| That's gods5stones.com. | ||
| It has the secrets to the problems we're having with our voting registration right now. | ||
| I'll discuss time then. | ||
| I think it's very important. | ||
| Everybody goes to God. | ||
| Let's take up that first point that President Trump has nominated and placed people in power that are good people and that they have common sense. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, you know, I even start with the very first point, which is the proposition that everything that I've said is liberal. | |
| And it's so important to understand that it is absolutely appropriate for people to fight over the policy directions of our government. | ||
| But I don't see it as liberal or conservative to argue that our government should be well run and should be ultimately there for the public good rather than the interests of those that are in power at the moment. | ||
| And that proposition is one, as I said earlier, that we've had consensus amongst Republicans and Democrats for 140 years. | ||
| And Donald Trump is turning that on its head. | ||
| So critical for me, whatever one may think about the choices that I believe should be for good management of our government, it's not about liberal or conservative. | ||
| So in terms of the nature of the people that the president is selecting, I think you just have to look down the list. | ||
| Is Pete Hegseth really the best person one can imagine, either with respect to his competence or his character to run the Defense Department? | ||
| Is Kash Patel the best person for the FBI? | ||
| Is Robert Kennedy the best person for HHS? | ||
| I mean, you're looking at a set of folk who have not had just the most basic experience running large organizations. | ||
| They don't have the core substantive expertise. | ||
| They have demonstrated, you know, lots of mistakes already in terms of what they have done. | ||
| You know, if you look at Pete Hegseth, if he had been an enlisted man, he would have been let go a long time ago for the things that he's done already. | ||
| The record speaks for itself. | ||
| But most importantly, I think you have to look at this question not just of competence, but of character. | ||
| They are making choices that are fundamentally about what the president is asking for. | ||
| Look at the news of the day. | ||
| They're now investigating the Federal Reserve and Jerome Powell. | ||
| And it is, you know, using our Justice Department, again, not to pursue the evidence, but rather to go after perceived political enemies or folks that you want to push in a particular direction. | ||
| That is true weaponization of government power. | ||
| It is wrong. | ||
| It is dangerous for our system of government, and it's going to result in bad things for the American people. | ||
| I think, you know, Mr. Powell's response is the appropriate one, but he shouldn't have to make it. | ||
| The folks at the Justice Department should not be doing that kind of prosecution. | ||
| And it's the nature of the people that the president has selected that is putting us in this position. | ||
| Arielle in White House, Tennessee, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have a question and possibly two comments. | ||
| I am currently working in the private sector in corporate America. | ||
| And I also have relatives that work in the public sector where they are seeing possibly it looks like this administration is looking to more so move the federal held jobs into maybe a privately held job. | ||
| And even within the private sector, we're seeing an increase in the use of AI. | ||
| So I would like to know what do you think the projections are within the workforce, given AI in this administration, and what is the foreseeable future with that? | ||
| As we know, Secure 2.0 is, it looks like an administrative approach to help with Social Security in the future. | ||
| So I would like to also know your thoughts on that. | ||
| And my last comment is: I think what we have to remember, regardless of who's in office, it's a job to serve the people in addition to the legislative and the judicial branches. | ||
| So it's not really about how we personally feel about President Trump. | ||
| Most average Americans wouldn't even have access to a guy with his access to wealth, I'll say. | ||
| So it's not about how we personally feel about him or any candidate. | ||
| It's about how good he is or how fit he is to serve we the people. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yep, 100% agree with your last point. | ||
| Ultimately, it should be a calling. | ||
| It's an extraordinary opportunity for public servants to be able to have critical purpose to serve the American public. | ||
| And I think that is the most important quality that we should be nurturing in both our political and our career leaders across the government. | ||
| Now, your points about AI, I think, are very important. | ||
| We at the partnership have a whole center on government AI. | ||
| And the reason why we do is that we do think it's a fundamental opportunity for our government to better serve the American public. | ||
| It's already transforming a lot in our country. | ||
| There's certainly much, much more to come. | ||
| And the public sector has actually a dual opportunity here. | ||
| The first is as a consumer of AI, and your question about what it might mean for employment in government, it's going to have significant implications. | ||
| And one hopes that you have good leaders who are AI literate, which is an area that we're very focused on, so that they're making smart choices about how to deploy AI that does two things. | ||
| One, improves the performance of federal agencies and does it responsibly in a way that is consistent with the values of our country. | ||
| But the second piece is equally important that our government is not only an important consumer of AI, but it's also a regulator of AI. | ||
| It said it should. | ||
| It set the ground rules for how not just the public sector, but our country writ large uses AI. | ||
| Any technology can be used for good or for evil. | ||
| And you obviously want to minimize the harm that it might cause and ensure that it can actually generate the best return for the public. | ||
| It's difficult to really predict in terms of numbers what this might mean for the federal government. | ||
| You are seeing some private sector companies find ways to reduce their labor force through AI. | ||
| And you see other companies that are simply improving their actual delivery of performance through AI and using their talent in different ways. | ||
| And I think there'll be some mix of that in the federal government if it's done smartly. | ||
| One of the biggest challenges in the federal space is you have frequent turnover of leadership, so you rarely have sort of long-term focus on management issues. | ||
| And that is something we need to change in order to really harness in a smart way the forces of AI. | ||
| Let's talk to Steve, a Republican in Highland Park, Illinois. | ||
| Hi, Steve. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Mr. Steyer, I just have one question. | ||
| What part of $38 trillion in national debt don't you understand? | ||
| You're advocating for keeping a big federal government workforce. | ||
| We cannot afford this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| And what did our grandfathers and great-grandfathers do before all these departments were existed and all these federal workers were doing all the great work for the people? | ||
| You know, maybe we should get back to looking in the mirror to solving our problems rather than to looking to government. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, we all wake up in the morning with problems. | |
| You know, the ones that look to government to solve them have a problem. | ||
| And we just can't afford it. | ||
| You know, everything Elon Musk said is true. | ||
| This is unsustainable. | ||
| You know, before Trump gets out, it's going to go over $40 trillion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So this is just, this is why gold is $4,600 an ounce. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So you asked the question, well, I don't understand of $38 trillion. | ||
| It scares me. | ||
| But you said something else, which is before Trump is gone, it's going to be over $40 trillion. | ||
| So what you're saying is that what Trump has done so far is actually not addressing the problem in any way, shape, or form. | ||
| It's not, again, the size of the workforce. | ||
| There are legitimate questions about the size of government, which are not the same things. | ||
| You said, what is your fathers or grandfathers did before we had all these agencies? | ||
| Actually, as I said, in the 1960s, the federal workforce is exact same size as it was before Trump arrived. | ||
| So it's even smaller today than it was then. | ||
| So it's not the size of the workforce. | ||
| Anyone who runs an organization well understands it's a question about effectiveness. | ||
| It's a question about do you have the right talent to get the job done? | ||
| It's about choices and prioritization. | ||
| It's not about mindlessly firing people like a third of the food safety inspectors at the Department of Agriculture. | ||
| So what I'm defending is the notion that there's a good way to change our government, and that is not what has happened so far. | ||
| Ian in Great Falls, Virginia, Independent Line, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hi there. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| I am a graduate of the Excellent Government program that's part of a partnership for public service. | ||
| And I have managed quite a large amount of federal funding through my work as a civilian. | ||
| And I have never seen even a whiff of fraud from the years I've been involved. | ||
| I think it would be helpful to reframe kind of this phrase fraud, waste, and abuse, because there's really not much fraud at all that is perpetrated by the government. | ||
| Most of the fraud is against the government or misuse of programs or like we're seeing in Minnesota right now. | ||
| And there's a lot of infrastructure to try and stop that. | ||
| And the inspector generals play a huge role. | ||
| I'm really hoping that AI and some of these programs can play a better role. | ||
| Unfortunately, I think the Doge effort really just disrupted and disrupted many investments. | ||
| It did not really stop any sort of spending at all. | ||
| It just reallocated spending to different priorities. | ||
| And back to this idea of fraud, waste, and abuse. | ||
| I mean, if there's fraud, we need to prosecute fraud. | ||
| The waste and abuse is a lot more nebulous because people have different priorities. | ||
| Before this program, there was a man who said, you know, we needed to have the $1.5 trillion budget because that's how capitalism works. | ||
| Well, you know, that's debatable because any industry is going to be great if you're throwing trillions of dollars at it. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Last comment, Max. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Well, thank you, first of all, for your service. | ||
| Very important to get great people in our government at the end of the day. | ||
| It's a knowledge-based environment. | ||
| So getting public servants who are committed to the public good, who have the capability matter a lot. | ||
| I agree with you. | ||
| The issues here are less about fraud. | ||
| There is fraud. | ||
| And I agree with you that typically it's not happening on the inside of government, although occasionally it is. | ||
| But again, you saw a drop of 4,000 lawyers to the Justice Department who are prosecutors to go after fraud who were fired essentially. | ||
| We're making the wrong choices. | ||
| The inspector generals are a great example that if we're trying to deal with waste, you need to have really smart, capable leaders who are rewarded for actually focusing on these management issues, and they're not, and certainly not with this administration. | ||
| So, Mimi, thank you so much for this opportunity. | ||
| Really appreciate it. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And that's Max Dyer, President and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service. | ||
| You can find them at ourpublicservice.org. | ||
| And that does it for us today. | ||
| Thanks to everybody for joining us. | ||
| Thanks for calling in. | ||
| Have a great day. |