Speaker 1: What's your experience now two weeks in are there is
Speaker 1: there actually a fourth branch of government?
Speaker 2: Most definitely is this is actually really what BIG's saying
Speaker 2: is really goes to the heart of the problem. In
Speaker 2: order for us to be a true democracy, a functioning democracy,
Speaker 2: the government must be responsive to the people. That's literally
Speaker 2: what democracy means. However, when you have a vast unelected
Speaker 2: bureaucracy that is not answerable to the public, and where
Speaker 2: the and if the elected officials, if the president, the
Speaker 2: people in Congress and the Senate actually don't have if
Speaker 2: they don't have the power to affect the bureaucracy, and
Speaker 2: it's actually extremely difficult to affect the bureaucracy, then you
Speaker 2: do not have rule of the people. You do not
Speaker 2: have democracy. You have rule of the bureau bureaucracy. And
Speaker 2: this is obviously wrong, It is unconstitutional, and it is
Speaker 2: imperative therefore that we return power to the people of
Speaker 2: the country and not have attorney of the bureaucracy, which
Speaker 2: we most definitely have had to follow out to a
Speaker 2: degree that is absurd as fire this. It's not just
Speaker 2: that there's an unconstitutional fourth branch of government, but it
Speaker 2: is arguably the most powerful branch of the government.
Speaker 3: Johnny, I see you're back.
Speaker 4: Yes, can you hear me?
Speaker 3: Now? I can? Yes?
Speaker 5: Oh, I apologize, gentlemen. Ya hop to my laptop. I've
Speaker 5: been working on this for as a long set, over
Speaker 5: a decade now with my Squeal Awards, and there are
Speaker 5: many in Congress that actually really do care.
Speaker 4: About this absolutely.
Speaker 5: The problem I think is there there are not enough
Speaker 5: of us, yes, that have And so while I highlight
Speaker 5: a lot of the abuses, and you wanted some anecdotes,
Speaker 5: al and I've shared a number of those with you
Speaker 5: and familiar.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's hard to resonate. It's hard for the public
Speaker 2: to resonate with statistics because but people can really resonate
Speaker 2: with powerful anecdotes.
Speaker 6: Joey had a bunch of them. Yeah, you had a
Speaker 6: bunch of them, Jony.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I did.
Speaker 5: Sending kiddies to spas to find out whether they produce
Speaker 5: less ferbals, hack up less ferbiles. So yeah, we've spent
Speaker 5: taxpayer money on that. We put shrimp on a treadmill
Speaker 5: to see how fast they run.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: All of these things, while they may be fun, why
Speaker 5: are we spending taxpayer dollars on them? And it goes
Speaker 5: to the point of we've sent millions of dollars to
Speaker 5: China to study what COVID.
Speaker 4: We saw how that ended.
Speaker 2: In fact, it's it's pretty outrageous that the COVID, the
Speaker 2: virus was developed in what a labin Wuhan, and yet
Speaker 2: it was funded by US tax dollars, which was simply
Speaker 2: routed through the fake nonprofit EcoHealth because the government US
Speaker 2: covin can't give it directly to China, and they just
Speaker 2: gave to EcoHealth knowing that it would go to China.
Speaker 2: So our US tax dollars were used effectively to in
Speaker 2: the end kill Americans, which is insane.
Speaker 4: Absolutely insane.
Speaker 5: And I know, Elan, you have been on aid, you have,
Speaker 5: really and for sure.
Speaker 4: This was another one of my efforts.
Speaker 5: And this began years ago when we were trying to
Speaker 5: figure out what they were doing with our American taxpayer
Speaker 5: dollars that were going to support humanitarian efforts in.
Speaker 4: Ukraine.
Speaker 5: So I wanted to know exactly how those dollars were
Speaker 5: being spent and not just read yes, oh my gosh.
Speaker 5: And I shared this with you earlier, Elan, just privately,
Speaker 5: but we got all kinds of threats from USAID because
Speaker 5: I was trying to exercise my oversight capacity in Congress.
Speaker 2: So they just shock, how it's outrageous that a taxpayer
Speaker 2: funded organization would threaten a US senator who is simply
Speaker 2: trying to figure out if American tax payer money is
Speaker 2: being spent correctly and not.
Speaker 3: Fortunately yes.
Speaker 5: And so what my staff and I had estimated was
Speaker 5: that thirty to forty percent of the USAID's awards would
Speaker 5: go to indirect costs, so they're overhead their rent employees.
Speaker 4: That the time, okay, okay, after.
Speaker 5: Months and months of obstruction where you had wouldn't let
Speaker 5: us in, they told us the NIGRA, the negotiated indirect
Speaker 5: cost rate Agreements. It's a lot of government jargon, but anyway,
Speaker 5: the indirect cost They said that the database, oh.
Speaker 4: It doesn't exist. That was a lie. That was a lie.
Speaker 5: It was false because we found it, and then we
Speaker 5: were told we weren't allowed to access.
Speaker 4: The data base.
Speaker 5: And then that's when Congressman McCall and I came together
Speaker 5: and we launched an official congressional investigation so that we
Speaker 5: could gain access to the rates. And then after about
Speaker 5: six more months of negotiations, then my staff was finally
Speaker 5: allowed to access very limited data. They were allowed to
Speaker 5: go into a room and they couldn't take notes, they
Speaker 5: were on camera the whole time, they couldn't remove any
Speaker 5: of the information.
Speaker 4: But what my staff found is.
Speaker 5: You were laughing at that thirty to forty percent, because
Speaker 5: that is outrageous.
Speaker 4: That was understated.
Speaker 5: In some of the cases, the niper rates were upwards
Speaker 5: towards anywhere from fifty to sixty percent, and that doesn't
Speaker 5: include the cost for subcontractors, what the subcontractors were adding on.
Speaker 5: So this is the problem with USAID. And that's why Elon,
Speaker 5: I'm just I'm with you on this because so much
Speaker 5: of that taxpayer money is not even going to we
Speaker 5: love to feel good about helping starving children and name
Speaker 5: your country, but it's not going there. It's going to
Speaker 5: pay rents in Paris. It's going to support somebody's fancy
Speaker 5: dinner to entertain whoever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So to be clear, in shutting down, which we're in
Speaker 2: the process is doing shutting down your said the reason
Speaker 2: for that, as opposed to simply trying to do some
Speaker 2: minor house cleaning, is that as we dug into USAID,
Speaker 2: it became apparent that what we have here is not
Speaker 2: an apple with a worm in it, but we have
Speaker 2: actually just a bowl of worms. And so at the
Speaker 2: point which you don't really have you go to apple
Speaker 2: and has got a women, it maybe can take the
Speaker 2: worm out. But if you've got actually just a ball
Speaker 2: of worms, it's hopeless. And U s id is a
Speaker 2: bowl of worms. There is no apple. And when there
Speaker 2: is no apple, this you've just got to basically get
Speaker 2: rid of the whole thing.
Speaker 3: That is why got to go. It's beyond repair.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's a solution to this, which is that
Speaker 1: let's say something's cut that the people of this country
Speaker 1: just demand needs to exist again. It can always be
Speaker 1: voting back into existence by senator or instent colleagues. Totally,
Speaker 1: the fact that isn't going to happen. It feels exactly
Speaker 1: why many of these agencies really Deletion is the only
Speaker 1: answer that's left.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly right.
Speaker 2: If it turns out we really need such an organization,
Speaker 2: if you should, we've just created pro solved by the people. Yes,
Speaker 2: by the people, answerable and answerable to the people and
Speaker 2: to the people's elected representatives.
Speaker 3: That is the way that GUMMT is supposed to work.
Speaker 5: That I agree, and more transparency. Sunshine is the best
Speaker 5: disinfectant out there.
Speaker 3: And sunshine that tells you something.
Speaker 5: Yes, we really we need to be able to exercise
Speaker 5: our oversight, and this is where we have been blocked
Speaker 5: so long in Congress. You can go on to my
Speaker 5: official website on the Internet. You can look through my priorities,
Speaker 5: go to my squeal area, you can go back. I've
Speaker 5: got the last several years on there of efforts, whether
Speaker 5: it's USAID, NIH, the National Institutes of Health, those taxpayer
Speaker 5: dollars that were going to China's Wuhan Institute of Virology,
Speaker 5: snap over payments through USDA and the states, you name it,
Speaker 5: the gosh.
Speaker 4: Just even back to work.
Speaker 5: My back to work report, the out of the office
Speaker 5: that we've talked so much about, and on day one,
Speaker 5: the President came in and said.
Speaker 4: Hey, everybody, back to work.
Speaker 5: I don't think most Americans understand that only six percent
Speaker 5: of our federal workforce shows up to work in the
Speaker 5: office every single day.
Speaker 4: Only six percent.
Speaker 3: Yes, And it's truly insane effect.
Speaker 2: And one of the most insane things I've seen was
Speaker 2: that I was speaking with the well hopefully I seemed
Speaker 2: to be Attorney General hand boundy, and she was telling
Speaker 2: that the US engraving is actually I guess we was
Speaker 2: used to the US MINT, which is actually the building
Speaker 2: that is an historic building, actually a beautiful building. Is
Speaker 2: it's here in d C and the windows are all
Speaker 2: broken and has turned into a homeless encampment. That means
Speaker 2: like this, somebody like this. No one comes to work
Speaker 2: to such a degree that this beautiful building has all
Speaker 2: the windows broken and it's been turned into a homeless
Speaker 2: encampment in downtown d C. That's how absurd it is.
Speaker 2: It's beyond belief.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's why so many of these buildings. If
Speaker 5: we could repopulate them, that would be great. And that
Speaker 5: way we can have oversight and make sure employees are
Speaker 5: doing what they're supposed to do. I'm going to hammer
Speaker 5: on USAID one more time. Yeah, So we talk about
Speaker 5: the locality pay a piece use, and that's what happens
Speaker 5: when people aren't working in the office what they're doing
Speaker 5: in DC and not everyone. I don't want to accuse
Speaker 5: every federal worker of being a bad actor, but I
Speaker 5: have seen so many examples of this. We had a
Speaker 5: USAID employee that was falsely using an office supply retailer's
Speaker 5: mailing address. I think like Staples and places like that,
Speaker 5: using that address in Virginia to defraud the taxpayers by
Speaker 5: claiming higher Washington, DC locality pay. But they were actually
Speaker 5: living in another state full time, and they had the
Speaker 5: full knowledge and assistance of their supervisor in pulling off
Speaker 5: this scam. And then and then the IG, the USAI
Speaker 5: d IG blew off my request for an investigation.
Speaker 3: Did they give that?
Speaker 2: Seems how can they do that?
Speaker 3: They can see them.
Speaker 5: This is the problem we have is that there are
Speaker 5: checks and balances in place where we can write letters
Speaker 5: all day and we can request IG oversight. But if
Speaker 5: that IG says I'm not going to investigate, I'm not interested. I,
Speaker 5: as a United States Senator, don't have the power to force.
Speaker 4: Them to do it.
Speaker 5: And this is why I'm so excited that we have
Speaker 5: DOGE and that we have a president that's willing to
Speaker 5: back us up.
Speaker 2: Absolutely so really, none of this could be done without
Speaker 2: the full support of the President. And with regard to
Speaker 2: the usa I D stuff, I went over with them
Speaker 2: in detail and he agreed with the that we should
Speaker 2: shut it down. And that's want to be clear, that's
Speaker 2: and I actually checked with him a few times.
Speaker 3: Are you sure, like yes, so we're shutting it down. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's also incredibly politically partizant and has been supporting radical
Speaker 2: left causes throughout the world, including things that are anti American,
Speaker 2: which is insane, right, And.
Speaker 5: That's why there are probably some arguments to be made
Speaker 5: about what could be important work that falls under USAID.
Speaker 5: But the fact of the matter is that it's been
Speaker 5: it has been overshadowed by these bad actors. Yes, if
Speaker 5: there are truly good pro American programs, then let's move
Speaker 5: them to the State Department exactly. Let's make sure we
Speaker 5: have proper oversight. Let's make sure that when senators and
Speaker 5: congressmen are asking for documents that they provide them.
Speaker 4: In a timely manner.
Speaker 5: Yes, let's make sure the igs are upfront and honest
Speaker 5: and wanting to be the watchdog over the agencies that
Speaker 5: they are charged with. This is not rocket scientist, and
Speaker 5: you're a rocket scientist.
Speaker 2: This is simply common sense and being responsive to the electorate.
Speaker 2: And you just can't have these these sort of institutions
Speaker 2: which are taking let's tax payer money but then are
Speaker 2: not answerable to elected representatives of the public.
Speaker 3: Then they're totally disconnected.
Speaker 2: So I caull it like we must move away from
Speaker 2: the rule of the bureau to rule of the people
Speaker 2: at demos.
Speaker 1: And I would sink I'm hopeful that some of this
Speaker 1: creates momentum with interns, with some of your colleagues as well.
Speaker 1: In passing the Rains Act, right, half of this is
Speaker 1: decades of Congress effectively just punting off the responsibility to
Speaker 1: avoid accountability.
Speaker 6: Not you, but many of your colleagues over the years.
Speaker 1: And hopefully if this is a catalyst to say Congress
Speaker 1: and the Senate say we may take the lawmaking power
Speaker 1: back to the elected representatives of the people and get
Speaker 1: the kinds of things done that haven't gotten done for years,
Speaker 1: like the Rains Act and other mechanisms to say lawmaking
Speaker 1: power comes back to Congress. Think that could be one
Speaker 1: of the best things to come out of all of this.
Speaker 1: I'm hopeful that happens this time. I know you're supportive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, fundamentally there's going to be a feedback loop
Speaker 2: to the people. You can't have these organizations that are
Speaker 2: just disconnected from the will of the people like you
Speaker 2: just fundamentally do not have a democracy in that situation.
Speaker 2: You have tyranny of the bureaucracy, which is just inappropriate
Speaker 2: and needs to end.
Speaker 1: By the way, and you know who's pumped up about
Speaker 1: you bringing everybody back to work is actually Muriel Bowser,
Speaker 1: mayor of DC. You're talking about the homeless encampments. I
Speaker 1: talked to her maybe last month or month and a
Speaker 1: half ago, And that's a Democrat, doesn't matter. It's basically
Speaker 1: the base principle of a self governance and b saving
Speaker 1: money and making sure that our buildings aren't being infested
Speaker 1: by homeless invasion, but instead is actually creating a thriving capital.
Speaker 1: I think is shockingly a bipartisan idea if we give
Speaker 1: people the permission to come out as Democrats and say
Speaker 1: those things make sense, which I think we're seeing some
Speaker 1: of which I think is cool.
Speaker 3: No, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2: The lack of people showing up for work in d
Speaker 2: C has actually made DC look like a ghost town.
Speaker 2: In fact, parts of Really it looks post apocalyptic in
Speaker 2: parts of DC because once people start coming to work,
Speaker 2: then the restaurants close down. Then the stores closed down,
Speaker 2: and then you just have boarded up stores and restaurants,
Speaker 2: and it destroys the small businesses in downtown d C. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and there's a reason where people come to work and
Speaker 2: are more effective and more collaborative. In one place, they
Speaker 2: were rediscovering why do you have offices? Oh, it turns
Speaker 2: out there's a reason, and the President has made it
Speaker 2: more clear.
Speaker 3: Return to work. That's it, end of story.
Speaker 1: I think the first two weeks has been pretty massive,
Speaker 1: and if it continues at that rate, even if you
Speaker 1: think about one of the big economic questions right now
Speaker 1: is the ten year treasury rates, right, they're going up.
Speaker 1: Bond markets don't like our national debt. If this is
Speaker 1: the pace of what cutting looks like presented in a
Speaker 1: coherent plan, I'm hopeful that bond investors and credit investors
Speaker 1: in the US government debt can at least say, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is positive progress which actually will bring down not
Speaker 1: only the costs that you're cutting directly, but also our
Speaker 1: interest rate costs. Yes, and I think that's really when
Speaker 1: we hit a you know, virtuous cycle here, which I
Speaker 1: think could happen soon.
Speaker 2: No, I agree, Actually, the bond marks do not currently
Speaker 2: reflect the savings that I'm confident we can achieve. And
Speaker 2: I'm actually I'm giving a talk later this week with
Speaker 2: JP Morgan Chase and Jamie Diamond and this little bit
Speaker 2: obviously with financial audience and really to just to say, look,
Speaker 2: if you're shorting bonds, I think you're on the wrong
Speaker 2: side of the bet. It's basically seriously, yeah, it's really
Speaker 2: basically the bond will there will be less debt needed
Speaker 2: as we as we stop wasting taxpayer money on crazy things.
Speaker 3: Whatever.
Speaker 2: The fifty million dollars for condoms to Gaza, which I
Speaker 2: suspect didn't actually end up being condoms in Gaza, that's
Speaker 2: a lot of condoms, guys.
Speaker 3: What is it a super bank or condoms? I mean, who,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, you guys, that's the real line item.
Speaker 5: I don't doubt if we did have those items going
Speaker 5: to Gaza.
Speaker 4: I don't know if it was that many.
Speaker 3: But this is.
Speaker 4: The problem.
Speaker 5: It was probably that line item, but god knows what exactly.
Speaker 5: But that's the problem we have with the budget and
Speaker 5: why when moneys flow through all of these entities. We
Speaker 5: may have a line item that goes to say USAID
Speaker 5: and or maybe goes through USAID to the United Nations,
Speaker 5: and then from the United Nations it goes to a
Speaker 5: subcontractor and from that subcontractor it goes to someone else.
Speaker 5: It is a nightmare trying to follow that money and
Speaker 5: to understand what it's actually being used for. So again
Speaker 5: going back to the transparency, we just we need to
Speaker 5: make sure that we have our eyes on it and
Speaker 5: that it's easily accessible and maybe not just by members
Speaker 5: of Congress, but also the public as well.
Speaker 3: I agree it should be.
Speaker 2: If it's public money being spent, it should be in
Speaker 2: full view of the public. And when they want to
Speaker 2: hide this stuff, frankly, it is the reality is because
Speaker 2: there's massive fraud and abuse.
Speaker 3: That's the reality.
Speaker 2: Nobody needs to hide something unless they have something to hide.
Speaker 3: Once in a while you've got something that's say.
Speaker 2: An intelligence operation or that actually needs to be classified,
Speaker 2: but that's a rare situation. That's a tiny fraction of expenditures.
Speaker 2: The vast majority of these things, it's unfortunately a truands
Speaker 2: amount of fraud and abuse. And the reason that it's
Speaker 2: so extreme with the federal government is that the checks
Speaker 2: never bounce for the federal government. Okay, so the federal
Speaker 2: government can always make more money, and the problem is
Speaker 2: that in doing so, that's what creates inflation. Something that
Speaker 2: I really want to reinforce for people is that it's
Speaker 2: government spending that creates inflation. So when you see prices
Speaker 2: go up at the grocery store, it's because government spent
Speaker 2: more money than broad in taxes, increased the money supply,
Speaker 2: deluted the value of money, and made you made your
Speaker 2: paycheck go be less valuable. It means it meant like
Speaker 2: the prices are going up because of government induced spending.
Speaker 3: Of government spending that results in inflation.
Speaker 2: So now it's just very important to connect those dots
Speaker 2: because people don't. They think maybe the supermarket is taking
Speaker 2: advantage of them, and they're not. You can look at
Speaker 2: the financials of the supermarket. They have two percent margins.
Speaker 2: It's going to do with price scouting the supermarket. It's
Speaker 2: just that the government spent too much that increased the
Speaker 2: money supply and diluted the value of somebody's paycheck, and
Speaker 2: that's why the prices go up at the grocery store.
Speaker 2: So the good news is if we solve government over
Speaker 2: spending and the money supply grows at the same rate
Speaker 2: as the output of goods and services, there will be
Speaker 2: no inflation and the prices in the supermarket now will
Speaker 2: be the same as the process supermarket in a year,
Speaker 2: and that's a super big deal, and that really affects
Speaker 2: people's lives. That's what we're aiming for, and we're going
Speaker 2: to do everything possible to succeed in that goal.
Speaker 6: And I think every dollar saved.
Speaker 1: The problem you just mentioned, Elon is exactly why in
Speaker 1: your interest rates on US treasuries are persistently going up,
Speaker 1: even if the government's trying to make them go down,
Speaker 1: the market's bidding them right back up. But conversely, for
Speaker 1: every dollar hard dollar actually saved, right, so how many
Speaker 1: ever billion it was in the first two weeks, there's
Speaker 1: actually it's almost like a two to one saving because
Speaker 1: that means that the interest rate that lenders to the
Speaker 1: US government charge will go down at a time when
Speaker 1: the interest rate payment itself on our national debt is
Speaker 1: one of the biggest items of our federal budget. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that automatically comes down for every one of these
Speaker 1: other savings, exactly. And the only thing to be presented
Speaker 1: as a coherent plan, which I think you're already beginning
Speaker 1: to do that alone, I think will have a two
Speaker 1: to one savings for every dollar that's actually hard dollar
Speaker 1: that's actually saved, because you get the interest cost next
Speaker 1: year that comes down as a consequence as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's actually a very good point you just made.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to basically repeat that and reiterate that
Speaker 2: for the audience. When you get you actually get a
Speaker 2: double benefit when you bring down government spending, and it's
Speaker 2: a very important double benefit, which is that you stop
Speaker 2: inflation and interest payments go down because the government is
Speaker 2: no longer borrowing money. So if the govern is borrowing money,
Speaker 2: it's actually competing with everyone else to borrow money, and
Speaker 2: that drives up the interest rate. So if we solve
Speaker 2: government spending in a nutshell, your grocery both days the same,
Speaker 2: your mortgage payment goes down.
Speaker 3: And your call payment goes down, and your credit card
Speaker 3: bill goes down, exactly. I think that's what the people
Speaker 3: of America want.
Speaker 4: Obviously agree, it's really important.
Speaker 5: And I'm sitting here tonight in Iowa, and I took
Speaker 5: my mom to church this morning, and man, everybody at church,
Speaker 5: we all stand around afterwards and visit, and everybody's just
Speaker 5: really excited about the opportunity that the new administration is
Speaker 5: bringing because costs are just through the roof for people
Speaker 5: in my neighborhood in southwest Iowa.
Speaker 4: It's hard.
Speaker 5: These are folks just getting up every single morning trying
Speaker 5: to do their job and do the best, and yet
Speaker 5: we as a government have failed to listen to their
Speaker 5: needs and then to be able to cut the spending
Speaker 5: at the federal level to make sure that their taxes
Speaker 5: stay low and make sure that we are paying down
Speaker 5: our debt. No more deficit spending. Let's try and balance
Speaker 5: this budget as best we can. And we've heard plans
Speaker 5: from Ron Johnson and others in the Congress, but we've really.
Speaker 4: Got to get serious about it.
Speaker 5: Because every one of my constituents owes sixty seven thousand
Speaker 5: dollars to our national that's out great much.
Speaker 2: And it's getting worse of a time. So really, if
Speaker 2: we don't do something about it, America is going to
Speaker 2: go bankrupt. That's the fact that so we must do
Speaker 2: something about imperative. Senator Mike Lee, I see you've joined.
Speaker 2: Would you like to add something to this conversation. You've
Speaker 2: got some great stuff as well to talk about.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'd love to, Thanks so much for the invitation. Look,
Speaker 7: I see this as an inflection point every seventy five
Speaker 7: to ninety years in Anglo American history, we've seen a
Speaker 7: major upheaval. We had one in seventeen seventy six, another
Speaker 7: one in eighteen sixty one, another one in nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 7: twenty twenty five. We're due for one, and I think
Speaker 7: that's going to be the Doch Revolution. And I think
Speaker 7: it has to be about much more than just the individualized,
Speaker 7: wasteful spending had projects. At the core of all this
Speaker 7: is a fundamental ailment, which is that we've missed the
Speaker 7: purpose of the United States government. It's supposed to be
Speaker 7: about just a small handful of things wait to night, trademarks, copyrights,
Speaker 7: and patents, regulating inters foreign commerce.
Speaker 2: The founders of the country would it would blow their
Speaker 2: minds that the federal government has gotten so gigantic and
Speaker 2: is interfering with people's lives in so many ways.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right.
Speaker 7: And then we've compounded the problem once we lost track
Speaker 7: of what the federal government's purpose is, we put the
Speaker 7: wrong branch in charge of the wrong responsibilities. We've been
Speaker 7: making most of our law one hundred thousand pages a
Speaker 7: year through the executive branch, which the Constitution says you
Speaker 7: can't do. It says you cannot make a federal law
Speaker 7: unless you go through both houses of Congress and then
Speaker 7: give it to the president. So we've destroyed federalism and
Speaker 7: separation of powers. I think for Dose to succeed, we
Speaker 7: have to restore both of those. In my view, the
Speaker 7: best way to start is by passing the Reins Act,
Speaker 7: which would require Congress to enact those laws. And I
Speaker 7: think to get that path this year, we've got to
Speaker 7: attach it to the dead Ceiling bill. I pass on
Speaker 7: that on my baselinke.
Speaker 2: Lee, I absolutely agree with you percent. What you're saying
Speaker 2: just absolutely true that these vast amounts the federal regulation,
Speaker 2: which are the factor laws that are created. That it's
Speaker 2: an incomprehensible amount. It's literally no human could possibly even
Speaker 2: comprehend it. If you tried your hardest your whole life,
Speaker 2: you can barely understand a small fraction of the regulations.
Speaker 2: These regulations, if you look at them, there's millions of them,
Speaker 2: and it's not like any one regulation is the showstopper.
Speaker 2: But it's the way I visualize it, it's like Gulliver,
Speaker 2: Like America is like Gulliver, tied down by millions of
Speaker 2: little strings, and we need to cut those springs and
Speaker 2: free the giant.
Speaker 7: Exactly, that's exactly right. It's those laws, which they are laws.
Speaker 7: Those will put you in prison, those will shut down
Speaker 7: your business, those will ruin your life if you discreate them.
Speaker 3: No different than any of the law. It's totally crazy.
Speaker 4: It's exciting, Elan, isn't it true?
Speaker 5: President Trump has has an executive order that says for
Speaker 5: every one new regulation that is put into place, ten
Speaker 5: have to be rescented.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: Yes, Now, of course the bureaucracy is going to try
Speaker 2: to gain that by having the one regulation when like
Speaker 2: he says, I have every one can ask one question,
Speaker 2: but then have a question in three ten parts. So
Speaker 2: it's possible to get it's possible, it's possible to gain
Speaker 2: the regulations. So I think in addition to that executi Order,
Speaker 2: which I certainly applaud, I think we need to go
Speaker 2: and do wholesale removal of regulations. Like regulations basically should
Speaker 2: be default gone, default gone, not default there, default gone,
Speaker 2: and if it turns out that we missed the mark,
Speaker 2: kind of regulation always added back in. These regulations are
Speaker 2: added willing nelly all the time. So we just got
Speaker 2: to do wholesale spring cleaning of regulation and get the
Speaker 2: government off the backs of everyday Americans so people can
Speaker 2: get things done and the government isn't it doesn't have
Speaker 2: a sort of boot on the neck of the average Americans,
Speaker 2: which is because one of the core founding values of
Speaker 2: this country, what has made America great, what will lead
Speaker 2: to further greatness, is a focus on merit, that you
Speaker 2: get ahead as a function of your hard work and skill,
Speaker 2: and that you have freedom.
Speaker 3: It's the land of freedom and opportunity.
Speaker 2: And if the government has millions of regulations holding everyone back,
Speaker 2: it's not freedom.
Speaker 3: We've got to restore freedom.
Speaker 1: And by the way, that's copied, multiplied and fiftyfold higher.
Speaker 1: Where each of the fifty states then do the same thing,
Speaker 1: and many of these federal regulations are duplicative of the
Speaker 1: states doing the exact same thing, where the bureaucracies in
Speaker 1: each of the states are.
Speaker 6: Behaving like the federal government.
Speaker 1: So you think about the impact of people's lives, it.
Speaker 6: Just layers one on top of the other.
Speaker 1: And like you talk about zero based budgeting, I really
Speaker 1: like this concept of zero based regulations or the default
Speaker 1: is nothing and build.
Speaker 6: Back exactly, and that's what our founders wanted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, used to be like an not that long ago.
Speaker 2: If you wanted to start a business, you just start
Speaker 2: a business. You just go you just no license. You
Speaker 2: can just do it. The government's not like prying into
Speaker 2: every hard to get the license for this, do the
Speaker 2: license for that.
Speaker 3: Get to seventeen thousand permits.
Speaker 2: You look at LA and like how when I lived
Speaker 2: in LA, it was hard to get a permit to
Speaker 2: remodel your kitchen. And now with this disaster that's happening
Speaker 2: in LA, this terrible tragedy, just a sheer number of
Speaker 2: permits required to build a house are staggering. Basically, they've
Speaker 2: made it illegal's but we've got to saw somewhere on
Speaker 2: the regulatory front, and certainly at least if we addressed
Speaker 2: federal regulation, then people can choose to move to it
Speaker 2: from one state to another and still remain in America
Speaker 2: and move to the state that has less regulation with
Speaker 2: the government. Is gives you more freedom, and you've got
Speaker 2: that competition between states, You've got that federal system that
Speaker 2: was meant to be the case, that was how the
Speaker 2: country was created. Let the states compete, and if your
Speaker 2: state is being oppressive, you can go to a neighboring
Speaker 2: state and love there.
Speaker 3: That's the whole idea.
Speaker 6: Federalism is the answer, no doubt.
Speaker 1: You've got two things going for us right now in
Speaker 1: the country that haven't happened in a long time. One
Speaker 1: is a willing President Donald Trump who actually believes everything
Speaker 1: that all four of us have just said, which is
Speaker 1: a beautiful thing, and without that it wouldn't be possible.
Speaker 2: The more I butt know President Trump, the more I
Speaker 2: like him. Frankly, I love the guy. He's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's full bore, more than any president we've
Speaker 1: had since the creation of the administrative state.
Speaker 6: So I think that's number one. I Number two is
Speaker 6: thanks Sam.
Speaker 1: Actually in his first term, you've got a Supreme Court
Speaker 1: that six to three vehemently agrees with everything we've just said.
Speaker 6: Yes, and so I think it's possible. Yeah, it's actually possible.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: In fact, if it's not possible now, it'll never be possible.
Speaker 3: This is our shot.
Speaker 2: This is the best handed cause we're ever going to have,
Speaker 2: and if we don't take advantage of this best hand
Speaker 2: of cause is never going to happen.
Speaker 3: So we're going to do it.
Speaker 5: I agree that whatever, yeah, now ur an effort, and
Speaker 5: I do think you're right. With the first administration of
Speaker 5: President Trump, and Lesson's learned through that administration, and now
Speaker 5: in the second administration, the stage is set and he
Speaker 5: knows how to aggressively tackle a lot of these issues
Speaker 5: that have plagued us for years. And folks asked me, oh,
Speaker 5: Trump's first one hundred days, what is that going to
Speaker 5: be like?
Speaker 4: And I'm like, forget the hundred days, folks.
Speaker 5: It's going to happen a lot faster than that, and
Speaker 5: he needs to continue to be aggressive. And we all
Speaker 5: know there's going to be bumps along the way. Of
Speaker 5: course there are, because we're moving at the speed of
Speaker 5: relevance here.
Speaker 4: But we've got to.
Speaker 5: Get in there and make an impact so that our
Speaker 5: constituents can actually see the benefit because we've got a
Speaker 5: tough mid cycle or mid presidential year election coming up
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty six, and we cannot lose the House
Speaker 5: or the Senate because then the president will be dead
Speaker 5: in the water and we just need to move out.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that's really the people will judge the performance
Speaker 2: and whether actually we've got things done and whether things
Speaker 2: are better off and in two years, and I think
Speaker 2: if people feel like, yeah, they're better off, the country
Speaker 2: is working better, they feel, is the reward for hard
Speaker 2: work is there, that their their paychecks going further than
Speaker 2: it used to, that that their stand up living is better,
Speaker 2: Their mortgage is lower, the credit card bills lower, the
Speaker 2: prices at the at the stores are the same, haven't
Speaker 2: risen dramatically. Then I think there's no problem. We will
Speaker 2: win the next election. The people will reward that. So
Speaker 2: I think that's that's what needs to happen. And if
Speaker 2: I think if it does happen, there will be a
Speaker 2: Republican win in the mid terms, and which is usually
Speaker 2: which is unusual. But I think if we make these
Speaker 2: goals happen, I think it will actually have an increased
Speaker 2: majority in the House of Senate and be to continue to,
Speaker 2: as we would say, make America great and even greater.
Speaker 6: So love it the case.
Speaker 1: The blanket that Dylan, you and I have talked about this,
Speaker 1: Mike Lee, you and I have talked about this, might
Speaker 1: as well just say it here as well.
Speaker 6: Is when in doubt push it to the states.
Speaker 1: Right, if there's some doubt about Okay, we're not sure
Speaker 1: about this regulation.
Speaker 6: You got a whole nuclear energy framework at the Federal level.
Speaker 6: You have an entire one in each.
Speaker 1: Of the fifty states, same thing for spending or some
Speaker 1: other program. Are people going to really suffer if this
Speaker 1: is taken away? Federalism is the answer. Just push it
Speaker 1: to the states. And I think that's a big part
Speaker 1: of obviously what I'm looking to do in next But
Speaker 1: it's governors across the state whatever. Let them bear the
Speaker 1: load of what the federal government needed, because that's actually
Speaker 1: what the founder's envisioned in the first place. Mike, you've
Speaker 1: been a crusader for this since day one, now, that
Speaker 1: is right.
Speaker 7: That is the whole reason I ran to this job
Speaker 7: fifteen years ago. The fact is that people of our
Speaker 7: country are upset. They're upset about our government because it
Speaker 7: manages things poorly. And what a lot of people are
Speaker 7: starting to grasp is that it's not just a matter
Speaker 7: of changing from the red team to the blue teament
Speaker 7: back to the red team and making sure you've got
Speaker 7: better personnel on there, because better personnel won't make those
Speaker 7: same mistakes and won't fund the stupid studies about the
Speaker 7: drunk Gerbils on a treadmill. The point is it's poorly
Speaker 7: run because when the US government is doing all kinds
Speaker 7: of things that it's not supposed to be doing that
Speaker 7: should be left to the states or to the people,
Speaker 7: in the words of the Tenth Amendment, it becomes very poor,
Speaker 7: very bad at doing you things that it is supposed
Speaker 7: to do. You can't be good at running the Pentagon
Speaker 7: and at making sure that traffic lanes lines of commerce
Speaker 7: are open.
Speaker 6: When you are.
Speaker 7: Doing all kinds of things that the federal government wasn't
Speaker 7: built to do, we're using it as the wrong tool.
Speaker 7: There are very few things that the federal government currently
Speaker 7: does that the federal government is itself uniquely whipped and
Speaker 7: constitutionally authorized to do. That's what we've got to get
Speaker 7: back to, and that's why this is going to be
Speaker 7: a painful, radical transformational change in many circumstances, but it's
Speaker 7: going to be a huge relief to the American people.
Speaker 7: Once we get through the initial shock, and once we
Speaker 7: get through this stage where the media is telling us
Speaker 7: that the sky is going to fall, dogs and cats
Speaker 7: living together in the streets, apocalyptic stuff, once they realize
Speaker 7: that's not true, they're going to feel this huge burden lifted.
Speaker 6: That's what we want.
Speaker 7: We want a better future for America. We can't get
Speaker 7: to absolutely turning to our founding documentary.
Speaker 2: Exactly, I couldn't agree with you more. And I'm actually
Speaker 2: pretty optimistic that, well, we're going to make it happen.
Speaker 2: It's going to this is I thing's gonna happen. So
Speaker 2: the progress is good so far, and if it keeps accelerating,
Speaker 2: then I think it's going it's gonna be awesome. Like
Speaker 2: the cost of excess regulation on economic growth and prosperity
Speaker 2: is like really underestimated. Like if you basically don't even
Speaker 2: permit allow people to do things like make it illegal,
Speaker 2: you can't the builders can't build. America is a nation
Speaker 2: of builders, but we need to give the builders permission
Speaker 2: to build. And that's really what deregulation is all about,
Speaker 2: just letting people do things.
Speaker 1: Deregulation and meritocracy go hand in hand. Actually, there are
Speaker 1: two sides of the same coin. And you want to
Speaker 1: actually measure Dog's success is not just the deficit reduction.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's the sole metric, although it's a
Speaker 1: really important one, and bringing down the national debt and
Speaker 1: the interest payment costs as a consequence, that's really important.
Speaker 1: But actually a lot of these benefits of delivering economic
Speaker 1: growth won't be measured in this year's deficit reduction, but
Speaker 1: will be measured in long run GDP growth, long run
Speaker 1: economic growth, wrong run prosperity in the country.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I think that's equally important.
Speaker 2: I actually I'm optimistic that we'll see a material impact
Speaker 2: in FY twenty six, which starts in October. A lot
Speaker 2: of stuff I think what will make significant gains in
Speaker 2: twenty five. I've got Government Financial Year twenty five which
Speaker 2: ends in September. But I think the sort of metric
Speaker 2: we're tracking startup style or just and we're going to
Speaker 2: be posting more and more detail on the dough website
Speaker 2: and dough handle on X is just in so people
Speaker 2: can see in detail. This is where where we're seeing
Speaker 2: the delta and spending between current spending and Government Financial
Speaker 2: Year twenty five, which or twenty six, which starts in October.
Speaker 3: And that number is really we think it's at.
Speaker 2: This point over a billion dollars day, maybe two billion,
Speaker 2: maybe approaching three. And I think we can I think
Speaker 2: we can take a trillion dollars out of the deficit
Speaker 2: next year. Obviously this is going to require strong support
Speaker 2: from the President, but thus far that we certainly have
Speaker 2: that and also support of the Congress and support and also.
Speaker 3: Hopefully support from the judiciary as well.
Speaker 2: But it's basically the goal in the nutshells is pretty straightforward,
Speaker 2: is we have a two trillion dollar deficit, which is
Speaker 2: far an access to economic growth. If we can get
Speaker 2: that depthit in half from two trillion to one trillion,
Speaker 2: and we can get the economic growth to match that
Speaker 2: one trillion growth in the money's play, that means there
Speaker 2: will be no inflation and also that interest rates will drop,
Speaker 2: credit card interest down, mortgage interest down, car payment interest down,
Speaker 2: and prices at the store stay the same. That is
Speaker 2: a great outcome for people, and I think I think
Speaker 2: we can do it.
Speaker 6: People say it's unrealistic now, and people say its unrealistic.
Speaker 1: It's the funniest part about this is just the hard
Speaker 1: number here and the four of us here know the answer,
Speaker 1: but people who are listening it might just be maybe
Speaker 1: eye opening. Where like, how much money did the federal
Speaker 1: government actually spend last year? Not the mumbo jumbo, not
Speaker 1: discretionary this and not just like how much the federal
Speaker 1: government spent.
Speaker 6: Last year it was about seven trillion. It's just under
Speaker 6: seven trillion dollars?
Speaker 1: How much did we spend in this like ancient time
Speaker 1: period known as twenty nineteen, right, not.
Speaker 6: That long this year twenty ninetey, not that long ago.
Speaker 1: Remember twenty nineteen four and a half less than four
Speaker 1: and a half four point four to five less than
Speaker 1: about four and a half trillion ninety that's two and
Speaker 1: a half trillion right there.
Speaker 6: Yes, so if you just go back to twenty nineteen, that's.
Speaker 1: Two and a half trillion exactly, which is insane actually
Speaker 1: that they think that's impossible, as twenty nineteen was not
Speaker 1: that long ago, and you nobody thought that they were
Speaker 1: exactly apocalyptic healthscape underway in twenty nine was pretty cool, actually,
Speaker 1: I like twenty.
Speaker 2: Nineteen nineteen was not some nightmares healthscape exactly. In fact,
Speaker 2: we got and Mike thinks we're just fine in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 4: Mike can vouch for this too, though.
Speaker 5: What we saw with COVID as we were pushing all
Speaker 5: those dollars out the door, they started a lot of
Speaker 5: programs with those dollars, and people just continue to expect
Speaker 5: those dollars to come, even though we're way beyond COVID, Yes,
Speaker 5: way beyond COVID.
Speaker 2: So often people will say you can produce stu sit
Speaker 2: that much because what about all the entitlement spending is
Speaker 2: the sort of guaranteed spending. But here's the thing, and
Speaker 2: especially during COVID as you're into, there was actually a
Speaker 2: massive growth, a massive increase in the amount of fraud
Speaker 2: and waste in entitlements with like fake people like collecting
Speaker 2: Social Security, like bogus payments to medicare. It is the
Speaker 2: level of fraud is actually staggering and just cutting back
Speaker 2: on that.
Speaker 3: And by the way, it's not just even US fraud rnks.
Speaker 2: I don't think if people realize this, But there's the
Speaker 2: esmens I've seen are between one hundred and two hundred
Speaker 2: billion dollars in foreign fraud drinks. There are professional foreign
Speaker 2: fraud rings operating that are taking somewhere between one hundred
Speaker 2: and two hundred billion dollars a year of US tax
Speaker 2: para money.
Speaker 3: Out of the country. And a lot of people realize
Speaker 3: that it is.
Speaker 2: And so the fraud in this in that case isn't
Speaker 2: even going to American fraudsters.
Speaker 3: It's going to in other countries.
Speaker 4: Come on, I sent that example to you the other day.
Speaker 5: Sat down with a friend of yours works in ID technology,
Speaker 5: and he showed me that video of a deep fake
Speaker 5: where it was a Chinese scammer trying to receive US
Speaker 5: federal government benefits out.
Speaker 4: It's outrageous, But.
Speaker 5: So much of that money the Chinese scammers are taking
Speaker 5: out of the pockets of our taxpayers.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I mean there's really there's American entitlements are
Speaker 2: being defrauded by people not even in the US and
Speaker 2: for many other countries because the fraud controls are so
Speaker 2: weak on the entitlements programs. The due diligence is so
Speaker 2: bad that it's actually possible to operate hundreds, if not thousands,
Speaker 2: of fake people and get entitlements said to you that
Speaker 2: you then take the money out of the country, out
Speaker 2: of the United States.
Speaker 3: This is happening as we speak. It's utterly insane.
Speaker 2: So this is why I'm actually quite optimistic that trillion
Speaker 2: dollars can be saved just by addressing waste forraorden abuse.
Speaker 2: While it's a lot of work, I don't think this
Speaker 2: is some insurmountable task. I am confident it can be done,
Speaker 2: and we'll do everything in our power to make it happen.
Speaker 2: And I think that'll be if we succeed, and I hope,
Speaker 2: I would like to ask for the support of the
Speaker 2: American people because we're going to get a lot of opposition.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you from what I remember most from
Speaker 2: one of the things I remember from the PayPal days
Speaker 2: was that who complains the loudest is the fraudsters. Okay,
Speaker 2: so like the so when somebody is trying to come
Speaker 2: thraward of PayPal, where we would see the most amount
Speaker 2: of righteous indignation, like it would be like immediate, over
Speaker 2: the top righteous indignation was from the fraudsters, not from
Speaker 2: honest people, because honest people are like, I think there's
Speaker 2: something wrong with my account. I guess, I wonder what's wrong,
Speaker 2: let me inquire, and but the fraustess will come at
Speaker 2: you immediately. This is it's like a tell that someone's
Speaker 2: actually doing fraud because the level of faux outrage is
Speaker 2: way over the top. So we're going to get a
Speaker 2: lot a lot of people claiming with fake outrage, claiming
Speaker 2: that they're a single mother with kids just trying to
Speaker 2: feed it. Meanwhile, it's like some dude operating a fraud
Speaker 2: ring out of another country. Actually, that's what the kind
Speaker 2: of thing we'll see. So really, I would like to
Speaker 2: ask for the support of the American people in pursuit
Speaker 2: of this goal. And bear in mind that we're going
Speaker 2: to see some pretty outrageou stuff from the frauds as
Speaker 2: we crack down on fraud. They're going to be the
Speaker 2: loudest complainers to anyone in America listening to this. Your
Speaker 2: support in pursuit of this goal is very much appreciated.
Speaker 4: Thank you, absolutely, and thank you Elon and Fifake.
Speaker 5: I think we've got a ways to go, but I'm
Speaker 5: glad it's rolling along. And this just been the most
Speaker 5: aggressive effort really to downsize or write size our government
Speaker 5: since probably at least the Reagan Revolution. So just excited
Speaker 5: to be part of it, and half the support of
Speaker 5: the American people as we move through and make them
Speaker 5: squeal and wash to DC.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks to dj T, Thank you Elon, and you
Speaker 1: keep kicking ass and went in doubt send to the States.
Speaker 8: We'll take care of it there, exactly, all right, cool,
Speaker 8: Thank you, Thank you Senator necessarily for perhaps one day,
Speaker 8: Senator Romswami, Governor, Yeah, that's and and everyone who tuned in,
Speaker 8: And once again I'm asking for your support for for
Speaker 8: a noble goal and please help in any way you can.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's like the small things that happen on the
Speaker 2: side that is, the sort of small, thankless tasks that
Speaker 2: actually will result.
Speaker 3: The dog is gonna win.
Speaker 2: Dose will win if millions of people support it in
Speaker 2: ways that I wouldn't even know how they supported it,
Speaker 2: but just that you did, and people the unknown soldier.
Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely, And hey, Elan, before we all break out here,
Speaker 5: I do want to acknowledge the I've founded the Senate
Speaker 5: Doge Caucus on my side of the Roadtanda. We've got
Speaker 5: some great co chairs over in the House as well,
Speaker 5: with Pete Sessions and Aaron Bean and Blake Moore. They
Speaker 5: have got now I think over one hundred members of
Speaker 5: Congress that have joined the Doge Caucus, and we've got
Speaker 5: eighteen and climbing in the United States Senate as well.
Speaker 5: You and the President and Vivek have all really gotten
Speaker 5: everybody to come together, and I'm just really grateful that
Speaker 5: we have an outlet and are able to do this.
Speaker 4: Thank you all so much.
Speaker 2: That sounds good, and we'll be doing this this every week,
Speaker 2: so I look forward to having members from the House
Speaker 2: and other contributors and try to keep the people informed
Speaker 2: of the progress.
Speaker 3: And I think it'll be very interesting to follow along.
Speaker 3: So thank you. Thanks everyone, Thanks so much, you long,
Speaker 3: Thanks nice well the Long