Peter Welch Rips Into Trump And Elon Musk Over DOGE, Calls It A 'Colossal Failure'
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Hi everyone and welcome back to the Elon Musk podcast. I'm your host, Will Walden. And if you're new here, this is a show all about Elon Musk and his groundbreaking work that he's doing with his various companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and of course, X. And before we dive into today's episode, I wanted to share a quick insight from our show's analytics. It turns out that 45% of you listening right now are subscribed to the show and thank you for that. But

but that means that 55% of you are not. So I'm offering you a deal. I promise to do everything in my power to keep bringing you the latest and most interesting news about Elon Musk every single day and about his companies if you'll do me one favor and hit the subscribe or follow button on your podcast platform right now. That's it. Pretty simple and straightforward. It takes just a second for you, but it makes a huge difference for the show. I'd like to speak about Doge.

The verdict is in. It's been a colossal failure. It's done immense damage to many of our institutions and inflicted immense pain on innocent people. Also, it's not going to be successful in its stated goal of reducing spending and wasteful spending. But before I do, let me just say

What all of us know, every single person in this United States Senate is all in when it comes to attacking waste, fraud and abuse. Every single one of us knows that we should kick the tires on every program that we have in federal government and look to see how we can make it be more efficient. And there may be even some programs where we say, you know what, it's purpose to serve, it's time to move on.

So those of us who are being critical of Doge are just looking at what Doge is doing, but not at all quarreling with the notion that every one of us, Republican and Democrat and independent, has a responsibility to be the best stewards of taxpayer money that we can be. But here's my problem with Doge. They're not looking in the right places.

You know, there is so much ripoff that is going on. Let's just a couple of examples in our health care system. UnitedHealthcare is rigging the system on Medicare Advantage programs. Our seniors, we want them to have the health care that they need. But they set up these billing systems where they paid nurses and forced doctors essentially to overanalyze and overreact.

prescribe and overstate what medical conditions were. And this was not to help the senior on a Medicare Advantage program.

This was to pad their bottom line and make billions of dollars. And of course, I'm referring to the study, the series of articles that was in the Washington, pardon me, the Wall Street Journal that documented the ripoffs and what I think were corrupt practices by UnitedHealthcare. Where's those?

All that money is just wasted. It's gone into the pockets of executives at UnitedHealthcare. It's gone into shareholder payouts and dividends. But it hasn't gone into improving healthcare for seniors. Or another one, the pharmacy benefit managers. They are ripping us off so bad. And we had a bipartisan bill with enormous Republican support and Democratic support to curb the rip-offs in the PBM industry.

That was in our final budget deal last year. It got derailed. Why? Elon Musk.

He was against it. And he gave the word that this has got to go down. And the thing blew up. And we don't have the PBM reform that both sides of the aisle knew was necessary, something that was going to save hundreds of billions of dollars for American taxpayers and allow us to reinvest in health care and make things better. So my first question with Doge is, why don't you look where the money is, where the ripoffs are?

instead of just sending out emails overnight telling people they're fired, whose performance has been absolutely exemplary. So that's the core question I have about Doge. Why are you leaving these practices that we know are really corrupt and a rip-off, untouched, unexamined, and allowing them to continue when it is hammering

taxpayers and citizens. We have work to do on saving money, and we have places where it's absolutely essential we act. Doge is blind to all of those situations, and that's disgraceful, especially when you've got Elon Musk as the person who sabotaged our effort for PBM reform.

The second thing is there's a basic question if you're going to go about examining a program. You can ask hard questions. You can look under the hood. How is it working? How is it not working? Where do we have too many personnel? Where can we actually improve the practices and the performance by some reforms? Doge is not doing that. It literally is not doing that. It has not even taken a day, an hour,

to come up with a plan of how to examine the various programs that they're engaging with. What they're doing is firing people. People are waking up in the morning, they're getting an email that says, "Due to your poor performance, you're gone."

Now, this is a situation that obviously is incredibly cruel. You're working at the Department of Agriculture. You're working at the NIH. You're working on a USAID program. And life is going on. And suddenly you get this email out of the blue that it clearly is a mass email, but has a very specific impact on you, your life, your livelihood, and your hopes and dreams. I mean, that is just a savage, savage way

to treat people who have been working in our various governmental agencies. And it has enormous impact on our communities. You know, some of the examples, by the way, Doge is picking on veterans, literally. Thousands of veterans have been fired. The VA,

has announced the dismissal of more than 1,000 employees. That includes researchers working on cancer treatments, opioid addictions, prosthetics, and burn pit exposure. So the issue here was not how do we help them do that job better? Where are the ways that we can economize? The procedure is you're gone. That's it.

President Trump and Elon Musk fired around 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration. These are folks who safeguard nuclear weapons. Now, it was so embarrassing that even Musk had to acknowledge it was a mistake, and those people are now back on their job. But what it does, I think very clearly, is show how there's nothing about a plan that

to execute a thoughtful way to save taxpayer money. It's just shoot first and aim later. 4,000 employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. You know, by the way, that's incredibly important. These are all things that affect red states and blue states. This has no...

political orientation on one side or the other because the impacts of these are going to be felt by the farmers in Indiana just as they're going to be felt by the farmers in Vermont. Another example, it's really pretty cruel and I just don't understand this. We have farmers across the country, but I've spoken to farmers in Vermont who entered into contracts with the federal government under the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act.

And what the deal was is the farmer agreed, like, say, to install solar panels or create a buffer zone between cattle grazing in a stream bed or to change the tillage practices to try to improve the soil. And I get it that President Trump and Mr. Musk are against the Inflation Reduction Act.

And they have a right to do everything they possibly can to try to reverse that policy. So this is not about their right to use executive authority. But here's what I don't understand. How do you stiff farmers who went out and borrowed money because they had a contract, they agreed to do certain things around their farm, and then they get an email saying, just kidding, we're not going to, we the federal government, are not going to honor our contract.

And I'm thinking of one farm in my own town of Norwich, Vermont, where folks did borrow the money. And it was they did the work. And it was in anticipation of the federal government keeping its part of the bargain and coming through with the cash that it had agreed to. And they're told, no, we're not doing it anymore. You know, I know, Mr. President, that you're like me when it comes to keeping your word. You give your word, you keep your word.

The folks you represent, the folks I represent, that's what they do. That's what they expect. But we have Doge saying, well, that doesn't apply to us because we want to, quote, save money. That's just flat out disgraceful and unacceptable. FEMA, you know, FEMA is absolutely essential to help folks respond to a catastrophic event. We need reform in FEMA, and I want to work with colleagues in order to do that.

But when that disaster comes, you know, a fire in Hawaii or California, floods in Vermont or North Carolina, hurricanes down south or drought, the response from FEMA is essential because the local community doesn't have the infrastructure in place to provide that immediate emergency assistance that folks need for saving lives and keeping themselves together during that immediate storm event.

And we're hearing those in the present want to just abolish FEMA. You know, we have to be there for one another when it's our community that is affected by a catastrophic event where our citizens, the folks we represent, to whom we have a real duty, it's no fault of their own. They're on the receiving end of Mother Nature. And it's always been the tradition in the Senate that we help one another on that. That's not a partisan deal.

Doge is hammering us on that. You know, and the people who get hurt, it's the everyday people that we represent that are working hard, are struggling each month to pay their bills. They're anxious about the safety of their kids. They're anxious about

inflation. They're anxious about meeting the challenges of daily life, and they want to make a contribution to strengthen in their community as well as their family. And they're getting hammered. And I mentioned two among them are the 6,000 veterans who've been fired by Doge across the federal workforce. I mean, that just astonishes me. How do we say to a veteran who showed up to serve us

and protect our country and to whom we claim we have great respect and allegiance by sending them an email that says you're fired with no explanation, no sit down, no face to face, just contempt for the value of what they contribute and how hard they're working. I do not understand that. I just don't.

You know, even in a tough business environment where some of our employers have to make tough decisions because they just know that the business can't handle, their business can't handle the workforce that they have and they may have to make, you know, against their desires, some reductions in force. Our employers will sit down with folks face to face. Here's what we can do. Let's work out a plan. We know you need health care.

And Doge just dispenses with that when it has no plan. So the cruelty, the cruelty of this is so abhorrent to me. You know, we as a society really, despite whatever our differences are, have to have some mutual respect. And it's so essential to people that they have meaningful work. And if we're going to make adjustments, we have to have a plan to include them. And where Doge says, we don't have to do that.

And this isn't just about Elon Musk being a multi-billionaire, no matter what happens, it's not going to really affect him. It's about Elon Musk treating people with what I think is the utmost cruelty. You are gone. You are gone. Such disrespect for people who work hard in the VA, work hard in the NIH, work hard in the Department of Agriculture, work hard in the Department of Treasury.

So that element of this we should all be shocked at.

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Our Small Business Administration office has been a real help to Vermonters, very effective. One employee there got a performance review. This is shortly after the performance review. In a very short period of time, you have established yourself as an invaluable asset. That was the performance review. The next day, February 7th, she was fired because the email said,

Quote, your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment at the agency. So arbitrary, so unfair, so Elon Musk-like. We have a scientist at the Department of Agriculture, Caitlin Morgan, Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems at the Ag Research Services Flood

pardon me, Ag Research Services Food Systems Center. She was fired despite glowing performance reviews. What we have with Doge is an assertion that they're seeking out to cut waste fraud and abuse. Who's to argue? There's not a person here that wants to vote in favor of waste fraud and abuse. But the reality is they do have a plan. It's not to look at each agency and then make adjustments so that

the agency at the end of the operation will be fit for purpose and better able to do its job. They have a very simple plan: kill the headcount, reduce the headcount, fire people. That's it. That's the plan. All right? So we're going to be left with a decimated FEMA, a decimated Department of Agriculture, a decimated National Institute of Health, and then who's going to put it back together again? And this brings me back to the cruelty of a guy like Musk.

He doesn't have to worry about that. That's not his concern. Tesla's doing fine. SpaceX is doing fine. You know, things are great for him. But they won't be great not just for the people whose jobs have been savagely terminated. It'll be bad for the cancer research that scientists are doing.

It'll be bad for our Vermont farmers who now find themselves deeply in debt because the federal government stiffed them. It'll be bad for our FEMA response to the next community in our country that gets hit hard by a natural disaster. So we've got to wake up here and be honest about what's going on with DOGE. We do agree

We do agree, I believe, Republicans and Democrats, that we've got to kick the tires on programs in government. And it's everything from food programs to commodity programs to the Defense Department. And we may have some fierce debates about what the priorities are and what we think is important and what we don't think is important. But that's got to be an on-the-level debate. What Musk has done is just said, hey, leave it to me.

Let me send out a bunch of emails. Let me fire a lot of people in a lot of agencies. Let's move fast and break things, and it'll come back together. It doesn't work that way.

You know, you destroy the foundation of your house, just like if you destroy the foundation of a governmental program like FEMA or like the National Institute of Health. It just doesn't come back overnight because the organizations that we're trying to build, institutions that are so essential to the well-being of our country, those often take generations to create. It takes the commitment, the service, the dedication,

and hard work of Americans of all kinds in all states. This guy, Musk, is just destroying it all and cavalier about it and contemptuous to the rest of America about what he's doing. We can pay the price. So it's wrong what they're doing and how they're doing it. And my view, Mr. President, is that

We do, in fact, have an opportunity here because both sides are quite willing to come to the table and ask these questions. How can we do it better? But, you know, if we came to the table and we asked how could we do it better,

We would be looking at the long-term function. How do we have FEMA work better? How do we have our NIH work better? How do we assess grants better? How do we have our small business administration be more effective in helping our young entrepreneurs? We'd be asking those questions. And the other thing we would be doing, I believe this because I have such respect for all of my colleagues here, we care about how it affected people.

And we might have to make some tough decisions because this program could be cut. This one might have to be expanded. But we wouldn't just send off an email telling people to get lost. We wouldn't just be sending off an email to a farmer who just went to the bank and got a loan based on the credit of the United States of America promising to contribute a grant.

We'd be considerate of that. DOGE isn't. In my view, we should all be outraged at the cruelty with which DOGE is operating. It's cruel to the institutions that are important for each of our states, and it's cruel to the people who've been doing this work in good faith for so long. So, Mr. President, we've got to speak up and acknowledge that DOGE is destructive.

We can embrace the effort to address waste, fraud and abuse. We can embrace the opportunity to streamline and save money, make things work better. But we can never abandon our commitment to the people of this country who work so hard. We can never abandon in a cavalier way the veterans to whom we have an immense debt of obligation. So Mr. President,

Doge is pretty dumb and pretty cruel and pretty destructive the way it's operating under Elon Musk. I yield back.

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