Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
39:19 Share

You're listening to Comedy Central. From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central, it's America's only source for news. This is The Daily Show with your host, Sean Stewart. We are back from break.

I drew a little picture. We are back. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Daily Show. My name is James Hurd. We have got a show for you tonight. I'm going to be joined later by Rupa Bhattacharya. She is the legal director of all

They know their Bhattacharyyas. Legal director of Georgetown Law Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. I know her as the individual who took over administrating the 9-11's, the Drug Act, Victims Compensation and Healthcare Fund for 9-11 first responders and all the people that live down at Ground Zero and Pennsylvania and the Pentagon. So, deep state. She is deep state. And I'm going to take it to her. But first...

Today the United Nations marked the third anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine by doing the only thing the United Nations can do: passing a non-binding resolution asking Russia to please stop. Please. Take that, Putin! Interesting though, among the countries voting against the resolution were North Korea, Belarus, Russia, obviously, and the United States of America.

They're saying Bruce. But I guess America doesn't want to set the precedent of opposing bloody land grabs. So green and landy. But hey, Century being the good guys in America, you know, whatever. It's not the only thing Donald Trump is busy disrupting these days. As you know, the Doge Project.

The Department of Government Efficiency, headed up by the Nick Cannon of white people, Elon Musk, is in full effect. And it may surprise you, I, for one, happen to be, quite frankly, Doge-curious. I'm actually somewhat Doge-adjacent. So, Mr. President, if you would. We have to solve the efficiency problem. We have to solve the fraud, waste, abuse, all the things that have gone into government.

Yes. Now, if you had woken up from a coma and heard nothing else that this man had said for the last 10 years, you might think to yourself, I like this guy. I, too, believe government needs to be more efficient to weed out waste, fraud and abuse and deliver the necessary services that Americans rely on more agilely. So what do we do first? We pour through the inspector general's reports that have addressed these things, utilize intelligence.

computerishness to excise redundancies in the system? Find ways to more efficiently deliver the government assistance so many Americans rely on? What's first? Elon Musk and his Doge team firing thousands of federal workers. They're trying to cut 10% of the federal workforce, which is 200,000 jobs. Oh, have we determined if those are effective workers? Is it based on performance? Are you going in with a scalpel so that we don't hit any vessels and vital organs?

This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy. Chainsaw! So, straight amputation. We're just amputation. It's like we're treating public servants as some kind of underclass. The DC creature is like an animal infested with ticks and parasites. Our money is lining these swamp creatures' pockets. You know what you call someone who sucks up resources in return for nothing? You call them a parasite.

And that is what the federal workforce has become. These saboteurs, the dead-enders, the DEI undercover agents. The fraudsters, liars, cheaters, globalists, and deep state bureaucrats are being sent back in. Yeah! F*** you! Guy who tests water for appropriate levels of fecal matter? What are we talking about? What?

You know, this is a stark emotional whiplash from looking for efficiencies. But apparently our nation's civil service is now synonymous with waste, fraud and abuse. And MAGA World is celebrating with maximum folksy. The gravy train for a lot of these folks, it's been on biscuit wheels and it's about to run off the dead gum tracks. And it's about time.

First of all, there is no way you actually talk like that. No way. You're a congressman from Tennessee. You didn't spring fully formed out of a primordial cracker barrel. All this here bureaucracy is a Chattanooga choo-choo to a prophet's boil on the flapjacks.

I'm just stringing food words together like nonsense. Other reactions were just creepy. Doge is dishing out spankings like daddy daycare. I don't remember the spanking scene from daddy daycare. Oh, you must mean the gay porn film daddy daycare. I get it, Jesse. I get it.

You were watching the film that answers the question, what would happen if a bunch of dudes f***ed in a daycare? And it just stuck in your head. You know, I gotta tell you, I feel like you can make efficiency recommendations or cuts without necessarily demonizing the people who are only carrying out Congress's wishes. But I feel like that. They don't. Here's Donald Trump's new director of the offices of management and budget on his feelings about everyone who works for him.

We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work. Mission accomplished! Because these workers are the worst. A hive of scum and villainy. Star Wars reference. Mostly scum and villainy. Just not the workers you know.

Let me tell you a story about Chris. He's going to get dozed. And this guy's not a DEI consultant. This guy's not a climate consultant. I finally found one person I knew that got dozed and it hit me in the heart. We just need to be a little bit less callous with the way, Harold, we talk about dozing people. Do you watch your f***ing show?

Yes, you certainly want to be callous, like referring to someone losing their livelihood as being a child being spanked at daycare. But I guess that's just the price of efficiency. Doge is dropping force-guided bombs into the thermal exhaust port that is the Death Star of our bureaucracy. I f***ing love Star Wars. I just love the film. But...

Doge is Jedi-level shit, man. The FDA is looking to rehire around 300 people. The Trump administration will reverse staffing cuts to the 9-11 health fund. Hundreds of workers at the National Nuclear Security Administration fired, then nearly all rehired days later. The Veterans Affairs Department reinstated terminated employees, and the USDA is rescinding termination letters sent to people working on the response to bird flu. Mm-hmm.

When I said you were criminal parasites, I obviously wasn't referring to... I have the bird flu. Come back to work. Please. But that's fine. Staffing is only part of the Doge mission. There's other crazy shit we could cut.

We don't need to be wasting money on ridiculous items like seeing how fast shrimp can run on treadmills. 1.5 million to see the effect of yoga on goats. A million dollars to study Mexican ducks in their wetland facilities. Studies on the effect of meditation on parrots. Nearly a million to study if cocaine makes Japanese quail more sexually promiscuous.

I'm going to go with yes on that last one. I feel that I, not a scientist, can very confidently state pre-experiment, if you are a Japanese quail with an eight ball, you are getting your cloaca sucked. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. That may be the most favorite thing I've ever said on this show. No, that's...

Now, obviously, that list of programs, some of them are being presented to seem even more ridiculous, and some of those were completely invented out of thin air. But the point is, why are we spending money on things that seem obviously stupid? Even though a government-funded study on Gila monsters is how we ended up with Ozempic. By the way, quick pitch, weight gain also would be solved by Japanese quail cocaine. LAUGHTER

It's really the Star Wars of drugs, okay? No downsides. You'd be having your cloacas sucked in no time. All right, but... Even if this project of Doge is animated by malice for administrators and is seemingly rash and occasionally cutting off critical government functions out of haste, the savings alone will be worth it. On the Doge website, they posted $16 billion saved just in canceled contracts.

Interesting, if true. A closer look shows big problems. For example, Doge claimed axing a single immigration and customs contract saved $8 billion. Turns out that contract was worth a maximum of $8 million. The Wall Street Journal estimates the actual amount saved at not $16 billion, but closer to $2.5 billion.

monster hasn't lied about saying something is 16 when it's really two and a half billion inches that's not true either

See, it seems that Doge is struggling a bit to get its footing. From made-up claims about $50 million of taxpayer money going for gauze and condoms, to billions in Social Security payments to dead people, a claim that turned out to not be real, despite what you've heard. We have millions and millions of people over 100 years old because they're obviously fraudulent or incompetent. But if you take all of those millions of people off Social Security, all of a sudden we have...

A very powerful Social Security with people that are 80 and 70 and 90 but not 200 years old. True! You can't argue with that if only it were happening. But it's not happening. We're not paying millions and millions of dead people Social Security money. And even if there was a 200 year old man walking around, he wouldn't need Social Security. He'd still be in college. Guys, I'm going to tell you something.

Cutting money shouldn't be this hard. I'm starting to think that we as a country don't understand where the real waste, fraud and abuse in our system really is. Maybe the savings we gleaned from cutting VA nurses and iguana STD studies isn't where the real money is.

Let me see if I can noodle. You know what? Let me join Doge. I'm going to see if I can noodle some ideas here. I want to get down some certain ideas. I want to do again. There you go. I got that. Let's see what I can do here. This is my wannabe an accountant starter kit. So I got it off of Amazon for $5,000. My accountant told me not to get it.

So we're looking to save taxpayers some money. And I know, let me think, we got the studies that are done. Oh, how about we just take $3 billion in subsidies we give to oil and gas companies that already turned billions in profits. How did that pay? Oh, wait, how about we just close down the carried interest loophole on hedge funds? That's $1.3 billion a year. Oh, how about we just close down the carried interest loophole on hedge funds?

We stopped the $2 trillion we've given to defense contractors to build a fighter jet that blows when everybody knows the next war is going to be fought with drones and blockchain, whatever that is. Holy shit! I can't believe it. I just saved us billions of dollars in 11 seconds. Just call me Big Balls. I'm sorry. I'm being told that that nickname is already taken.

Well, can I get a Doge nickname? Disturbingly low-hanging balls, really? You've never heard of Gra- How would you even know that? Oh, I'm sorry. But see, this is where the real money is.

The real money, the money our free market-ish system uses to prop up corporate profit at the expense of the taxpayer. Pharmaceutical companies get everything from our government. Tax breaks, research grants, patent extensions worth billions of dollars. And what do we the people get for it? The highest drug prices in the Western Hemisphere. And for some reason, the possibility of an infection in our perineum.

Why would you take a drug that would give you an infection in your perineum? And why are they telling us about it at dinnertime?

But you know what's so horrible about our system now? And the corruption that lays within it. We're so f***ing numb to it, we actually tout tiny cracks in that exploitation as victory. President touting the first ever negotiations with pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of 10 drugs. And today, I'm proud to announce that Medicare has reached agreement with all manufacturers on all 10 drugs selected in the first round of negotiations.

Can it be? The companies we subsidize with billions of dollars are allowing us the privilege to negotiate the price of 10 of their drugs? And 10 is all of them, right? It would be embarrassing if it was a small drop in the bucket and that the American people didn't expect that we should negotiate for all their f***ing drugs because we've already paid for it with our subsidies. I'll be going to the hospitals.

What we do with pharmaceutical companies is like the worst Shark Tank deal in history. Well, we're asking for billions of dollars of your money. Oh, what do we get, 10% of your company? No. Do we get a discount? No. What do we get? Have you checked your perineum? We live in the upside down. And don't blame the corporations. They are profit-seeking psychopaths that need the lowest wages and the cheapest raw materials to drive their highest profits.

But why do we, the taxpayers, subsidize their psychopathy? That's the waste, fraud, and abuse in our system. That's it. That's what we should be going after. Not the fantastical, over-generous terrorist condom allowances. In another program, $50 million plus another $50 million for condoms for Hamas. You know about that?

$100 million for condoms. Condoms. Does everybody know what a condom is? You're delivering this speech in an elementary school? Why wouldn't they know what condoms are? Look, capitalism is by definition exploitative. It's how it operates. That's fine. But then government's role should be to ease the negative effects on Americans of that exploitation, not subsidize that treachery with our money.

We're getting f***ed at a ditty party and they're making us buy the baby oil. I want Doge to work. I want better efficiencies. I want to get rid of the alphabet agencies that don't do enough. Make the Pentagon pass an audit. But we are doging in the wrong place if we want to really change the system.

Companies like Walmart, McDonald's make billions of dollars in taxpayer-subsidized profits, yet many of their hardworking employees need taxpayer-subsidized public assistance. Airlines get billions in bailouts that they use in stock buybacks and bonuses, but if you're on food assistance, you're not allowed to buy hot food with it, because apparently heated entrees are for winners. We are subsidizing the very system that makes workers' lives harder in the first place.

All in the name of freedom and liberty. But the greatest restriction of freedom in this country isn't DEI and pronoun pressure. It's f***ing poverty and struggle. And the government's role... I'm... You bastard! The government's role should be to end the corruption that enables that exploitation. That's what the Democrats should be doing! Every day!

Every day at 5 p.m. sharp, the Democrats should go live on Facebook and do the people's audit. Find the absurdities and the remedies in our exploitative system. Get someone like AOC or Jasmine Crockett or Chris Murphy or anybody that doesn't sound like they're complaining why there's no more frozen yogurt at the cafeteria in the villages. I'm sorry. You have no riz.

And we need something more than shouting. We need to do something constructive to anchor our hopes. A new acronym for a new age. It's not MAGA. It's something more like Make America Not Governed in Obviously Negative... I'm kidding! No vigilantes! But do something. When we come back, Rupa Bhattacharya will be joining us. Don't go away. My guest tonight

A distinguished lawyer, served more than 25 years in federal government, including a special master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. Please welcome to the program, Rupa Bhattacharya. Rupa! There we go. Hi. Rupa, it is so nice to see you again. Thank you. You too. You and I met in 2016.

You had just... Please explain. You became the, what's called the special master or the special paymaster of the 9-11 Victims' Compensation Fund. That's right. Through DOJ. Through DOJ. I was appointed by Attorney General Loretta Lynch at the back end of the Obama administration and then served for six years through the Trump administration and part of the Biden administration. And your job was to take this program that had been appropriated by Congress...

and translate that legislation into action. That's right. And basically my job was to make sure that those who were injured by the September 11th attacks, mostly because they were at the sites and breathing in the toxic dust, got the compensation that they deserved. So you were... If I may, and I don't... Look, um...

And obviously, I don't mean to just paraphrase or those things. You were a parasite on the system. Yes, apparently. What do you think when you hear that kind of talk about those in the government that are there to try and faithfully execute what...

The legislation has already appropriate. Honestly, it just makes me sad. I spent my entire career in federal government until I left in 2022 and throughout all administration across party lines and through all of it, every single person that I worked with agencies across the government, their only goal is to administer the programs that Congress passed and that the executive branch wants administered according to its rules and its processes. That's what we do. That's our job.

And I was blown away so I you were trying to do your job and I showed up in your office one day with a gentleman by the name of John feel from the feel-good foundation who had lobbied very intensely to get it done and we just showed up and you were so gracious to us and you showed us around the office and I was so impressed with the way that you had approached it with such compassion, but also a toughness and you had a mantra that

on your and I know I feel like an idiot because I'm sure it's like a managerial like hang in there poster and you should be like yeah, it's a dumb thing that I put up but it was a mantra. Do you remember what I'm talking about I do what did it say it was our guiding principles. Yes, the the way that we ran the program was we wanted to be fair to claimants faithful to the statute and accountable to the taxpayer.

It makes me so angry, I want to smash another mug. Oh, wow, this thing's really coming out. Sorry. You know, in the commercial break, I had a lightsaber battle with one of the crew members, and that's how I... And you did it. The program itself had very little waste, fraud, and abuse because your mandate was to make sure that the people who got it

who should get it got it and the people shouldn't get it didn't get that was my job. So this week or last week I hear they're just cutting 20% of the staffs of people and the victims compensation was one of those offices.

It was the World Trade Center Health Program, which is our sister program. That's the one that administers health care to people. That's the one that administers health care to people. So it's actually even more important because it provides these responders and survivors who worked at the World Trade Center site, at the Pentagon, at Shanksville, who are now sick with the health care that they need. Eighty five thousand people who worked at one of the sites or who lived in Manhattan have been certified with one or more 9-11 related conditions. And

And so the cuts that were made were indiscriminately made to cut almost 20% of the staff of the health program, which would have been devastating. And what are, in practical terms, and you know the people love a good conversation about administration and...

And paperwork in practical terms. What does that mean? Does that mean people wouldn't be able to access the program? They wouldn't be able to sign up for the program. They wouldn't be able to make their appointments. They wouldn't get their medications. What would it mean? All of those things. It means that people who are going to sign up for medical monitoring over 140,000 people are monitored. 10,000 people tried to sign up for monitoring last year.

um those applications wouldn't get processed or they would be delays in processing them there would be delays in certifying the conditions as 911 related which means that there would be delays in getting them health care and delays in getting their compensation from the vcf which depends on those certifications right it means that additional conditions couldn't be determined as potentially eligible because the studies that would have funded that were being

taken away, it means that the oversight of the program, which is largely run through contractors... The actual people looking for fraud. The actual people looking for fraud. They got cut, too. Got cut, too. What are we doing? For God's sakes. And then they were rehired. And then they were rehired, what, two days later? About a week later, thanks to the intervention of the New York congressional delegation. Shout-out definitely to Representative Andrew Garbarino of Long Island. Thank you.

By the way, for those of you in Long Island, come to Garbarino's, a fantastic Italian restaurant overlooking Long Island Sound. But Senator Schumer and Jill O'Brien were also instrumental. Schumer and Jill O'Brien have been on it. Jill O'Brien especially had been on it forever. And Hillary Clinton, when it first started, was an incredible advocate for it. But the reason why I wanted to talk about it is because it's a very specific program. But in the specificity of it, I think there's something universal here.

There's a ton of programs out there right now that don't have Republicans in a congressional delegation, you know, trying to fight for it. And they're gone.

Yeah, if you don't have I mean, it's a sad commentary, right, that the only reason that program was saved is because there are Republicans who are willing to go to the president and ask him to reinstate it. And thankfully, and I'm grateful that he did. But not every program has that constituency. And we shouldn't live in a world where the only programs that get saved are the ones where Republicans are willing to reinstate.

to put their stamp of approval on it. Right, as long as it demonstrates fealty to the leadership or anything along those lines. When you were administrating, what are the frustrations within government? Is it...

What makes it so difficult for government to be agile? Is it are there too many regulations? Is there too much paperwork? Do we need a moonshot to simplify things? Because I think I would love the idea of more efficiency and a less adversarial role. It seems like any government program that's going to help people. And I know this from the PAC Act. Any government program that's going to help people is adversarial.

that the people become adversarial with the people trying to get the money. So we certainly tried not to be adversarial. That was not our goal. But I think one of the things that sort of gets lost in all this conversation about efficiency is that part of the reason government is inefficient, part of the reason that bureaucracies exist, is because we are trying so hard to make sure that there isn't waste, fraud, and abuse in our programs.

The reviews and the processes and the things that seem to take a long time that sort of hang us up are there for a reason. They're there because we want to make sure that we are being appropriate stewards of the public's money. Right. And that we're handling these programs responsibly. Is it too much sometimes? Maybe. But the way to solve it isn't just to go in and indiscriminately cut people out.

I wonder, let me pitch this. Is there a way if we were to make, because, you know, there are tons of people that qualify for food assistance who don't claim those benefits because it's difficult. There's a lot of hoops you have to jump through and all those things. If the government didn't use waste, fraud and abuse as a default, made that money simpler to get, like what it was in the pandemic...

and then bolstered the money on the back end searching for fraud? Because it seems like we're making the 3% or 5% of fraud. We're making the 95% pay a price for that. Is there a different way to jigger those programs

make them easier to access, and bolster the fraud watchdog on the back end of it? So I'll say two things. First of all, there are very, very routine and rigorous processes in place at all federal agencies to try to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse. There are the inspector generals, the VCF underwent the inspector general. Well, there were the inspector generals. There were the inspector generals.

There's the Government Accountability Office. OMB does a budget process to make sure that money is being appropriately allocated to the right programs. And there's annual fiscal audits. So every step of the way, there is something happening to try to make sure. But those programs, all of that process only runs if you have the staff there to do it. You need staff who understands the programs, who can answer questions, who has expertise.

The second thing I would say is that if you're going to eliminate inefficiencies in programs, the people you have to talk to are the people who are running the programs. That's what I did when I started at the VCL. I mean, we, okay, so that's five minutes of clothesline. I disagree with you a little bit. Whenever I have a situation like that, I rely on teenage boys. I find them judicious and hormonally balanced.

And I like to let them loose in an organization and just go, "Have at it, boys!" It must be so incredibly frustrating to see that. 'Cause I'm also, like, I was very frustrated at the fights that had to occur to get people who had earned benefits, benefits. And I imagine that's... And to see how easily corporate interests

have infiltrated our process through lobbying. You know, the tax code isn't complex because working class people made it that way. You know, the regulations aren't complex and difficult to do because small businesses want that. That's all the result of corporate lobbies because they know how to game the system. How do we stop that part from infiltrating the part that you want to do?

So that's a really good question that I wish I had an answer to. I'm not sure that I do. What I do know is that

We have especially in the context of the 9/11 programs the BCF the World Trade Center health program we have seen over and over and over again these responders who are sick go back to the Hill over and over and over to try to keep these programs funded. It's happening again happening again. This Wednesday, you know, yes this Wednesday they're going to reintroduce some legislation

To get funding. Right. The World Trade Center health program is facing a crisis. It's still a few years out. And so that makes it hard for Congress to focus on it. But the fact of the matter is, is that if you don't know whether you're not you're going to be funded a few years from now, you have to make decisions today about how many people you take into the program because you need to make the money sure that the money lasts.

I had this exact same problem in 2018 when we reauthorized the VCF. I had to cut awards by 50% because we didn't. In the middle of it. I remember that. Because we didn't have enough money and it was thanks to you and thanks to a number of people. To get all those people, they were tireless and many of them were very, very sick. The responders and the survivors. To give you a sense of what that is, in the middle of the

The VCF funding and the victims compensation. If your cancer had just been if you had the unlucky occurrence of having a cancer diagnosed in 2021 or 2019, when the funded lost money, you wouldn't have gotten the full benefit because they had to resource guard.

But that's what's happening. You had to resource go. It must have been heartbreaking. But that is exactly what is happening to the World Trade Center health program right now. And Dr. Howard, who was a Trump appointee, who was reappointed to his position in the last part of the Trump administration, is going to have to make decisions very soon about how many people he can continue to allow into the program if they don't re-up the funding. And so members of Congress, including New York delegations, are reintroducing that bill. Don Berrino!

Wednesday. It's it's already been agreed to twice and then strapped twice once in 2022 and once just in December when the funding bill fell apart from an omnibus bill they're going to sneak it into like a transportation bill or something so hopefully this time around.

You know, these responders and these survivors, many of them have PTSD, many of them have very severe health conditions. To have to go up again and again and again to ask for this funding is just unconscionable. And again, this isn't just this program. This is happening across government, and this is what we talk about when this system must be torn down. The idea that people who need the funding, that's what government exists to provide. It doesn't exist to provide funding

smoother road for McDonald's. It exists to provide for people, and it's got to change. And so I really appreciate you being on the show. And we're going to see, hopefully we can get that. Rupa Bhattacharya, ladies and gentlemen. We're going to take a quick break. Hey, everybody! That is our show for this evening. But before we go, we're going to check in with your host for the rest of this week, Desi Lydic. Desi! Woo!

What are you going to be covering for the people? Well, John, I'll tell you what I won't be covering. President Trump wasting government resources to check in on the gold at Fort Knox. What a nothing burger. I mean, there is no need to investigate or count it or do an inventory on Vault 84C. Unhinged. Unhinged. What?

Vault 84C? Why 84C? What are you, a f***ing cop? No, I... All the gold is there, John. Every last bar. Was that the sound of a gold bar falling out of your pocket? Yes. Yes.

Yes, it was. But I brought that gold bar from home. All right. Desi Lydic, everybody. Here it is, your moment of zen. We're also going to Fort Knox because we want to see if the gold is still there. Wouldn't that be terrible? We open up this Fort Knox. It's got... It's just solid granite that's five feet thick. The front door, you need six musclemen to open it up. I don't even think they have windows.

Wouldn't that be terrible if we opened it up and there was no gold there?