What Effect Will DOGE's 'Sledgehammer' Approach To Downsizing Have?
11:18 Share

This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Forget the frustration of picking commerce platforms when you switch your business to Shopify, the global commerce platform that supercharges your selling wherever you sell. With Shopify, you'll harness the same intuitive features, trusted apps, and powerful analytics used by the world's leading brands. Sign up today for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash tech, all lowercase. That's shopify.com slash tech.

Burger King has a deal for all. Burger King's $5 duo and $7 trio are here. Choose from six tasty options to build your own BK deal. Get two for $5 or three items for only $7. What deal will you create? Your season, the day, your way. Parts of participation vary. U.S. only, no substitutions. Restrictions apply. Additional terms apply. BK.com slash terms.

I was in the analytics of this channel and I noticed something a little bit off. 65% of you listen or watch and are not subscribed to the channel. But 35% of you are and I appreciate you and thank you for subscribing. Now, the other 65% of you that aren't subscribed, I'm going to make you a deal. If you subscribe to the channel right now, I will continue to bring you content that is better every single time.

So it takes you a second to do that. But also you get something out of this, too. Not only do you get my content, but you get content similar to mine that you'd be interested in in your feed because the platforms, they see what you do on their platform. If you like and subscribe here and also leave a comment, you're going to get more stuff like this in your feed, and you're going to love it. Not just for me, but from other creators on the platform. So that's the deal. I make better content every time. And all I ask is for a subscriber real quick.

All right, thanks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There's a lot of back and forth here about a lot of different things. It's hard to figure out what to focus on. I think we all want to try and get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse in government. It's a major problem.

It's going to require us to work together, less finger pointing. It'd be great if we could get Mr. Musk to come in here and outline different ideas he has for cuts, and then we could vote on it through what's called the rescission process. That would be a great thing if we could, Mr. Chairman, I know you're going to take it under advisement, but it would be great if we could get Mr. Musk to just come here and sit here and lay out the different cuts that he thinks that should be made.

to the federal government. I think, you know, there's a lot of back and forth here. Mr. Smucker was talking earlier about the deficits. I mean, we just voted yesterday. You guys voted yes, we voted no on a budget with $6.75 trillion in expenses and only $4.9 trillion in revenues. You voted yesterday for a massive deficit-increasing budget.

In addition, the big, beautiful bill that everybody's talking about is going to increase the federal deficit by even more, $3 trillion, because there's only—there's $4.5 trillion in tax cuts.

But there's only about $1.5 trillion proposed in expense cuts. And those $1.5 trillion in expense cuts can't be made unless you cut Medicaid. And you say, you don't want to cut Medicaid. So that's an additional, even under those rosy scenarios, an additional $3 trillion in deficits. So I don't know what you guys are talking about. You want to cut things, but you won't give us the specifics as to what's going on.

as to what's being done. Mr. Musk is operating. Ms. Van Dyne talked about the witnesses that were here the other day. I asked each of the witnesses specifically, do you know what Mr. Musk is doing? Do you know if the—I think you said 100 people are working for him, Lloyd? 100 people are working for Musk, I think you said? But I mean, did they get background checks? Do we know that? Do you know, Mr.—I'll yield to Mr. Smucker—do you know if they got background checks? No, you don't know. Nobody knows. We don't know if they got background checks.

We don't know what kind of security clearances they have. We don't know what their backgrounds are. I mean, these are simple, basic questions in running a multi-trillion dollar organization. Are the people that you have, and we hear different names about them, but they're young people that are gamers and hackers and computer experts.

We don't know what their backgrounds are. We don't know if they got proper security clearances. We don't know if they have background checks. So we've got a big problem in the federal government. We've got way more in expenses than we have in revenues. It causes deficits. Our deficits are the highest percentage of our GDP that it's been in decades. The proposal, the CR that was passed yesterday, increases the deficit.

The big, beautiful bill that this group is proposing will dramatically increase the deficit. So you say we have to find expenses to cut. We need to go after waste, fraud, abuse. Yes, let's do that. But we don't know...

what the expenses are that they're proposing. They're supposed to come before the Congress and propose specific cuts so that we can judge whether that makes sense. I don't think anybody here supports the idea when they cut the people that oversaw the nuclear stockpile. Nobody thought it was a good idea. Nobody thought it was a good idea when they cut the people that oversee the avian flu. Nobody thought it was a good idea when they cut the people that oversee a measles outbreak.

Nobody thought those were good ideas. I don't think anybody here is going to think it's a good idea when they're cutting thousands and thousands and thousands of employees at Social Security so that when people start calling up Social Security and they can't get their calls answered, and then you guys are going to say, look at that. I told you it was broken, but you want to cut 10,000 employees out of the 54,000 that are there. And then there's going to be an argument like there's been in the past to privatize Social Security.

So let's just work together. Let's say we all want to try and balance the budget. We all want to get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse.

To do that, we have a process and procedure in place for the federal government. You can't do it through impoundment. That's been ruled by the courts, and there's laws specifically passed by Congress that you can't do it that way. You have to go through the rescission process. So to come and make a proposal, "I want to cut this. I want to cut that. I want to cut this. I want to cut that. This doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense." And then we decide yes or no based upon those individual things.

It's a process that you're supposed to go through. It's not supposed to be done in the dark by some 20-year-old kids that we don't know if they got background sex or not. So let's all work together and try and accomplish our common goals of trying to make our country a better place. Thank you. I yield back. I recognize Mr. Thanedar. You are recognized. Thank you, Chair. And thank you to our guest here. The inspector generals play a crucial role

in combating waste, fraud and abuse, and promoting efficiency and effectiveness in government programs and operations. However, they must adhere to integrity, objectivity and independent standards. Previously, GAO found that a lack of transparency in DHS OIG's selection of work topics

called into question the independence of the organization. What changes, this is a question for Ms. Bernard and Ms. Lang, what changes has the OIG made to ensure transparency when selecting work proposals and how does the agency ensure it is targeting the highest risk areas at DHS?

Thank you so much for the question and thank you for recognizing the importance of inspectors general. At DHS OIG, that is very important for us. We always want to make sure we're allocating our resources very wisely, especially

recognizing we are overseeing a department with 22 components, over 260,000 employees worldwide. It's very important that we allocate our resources to address the highest risk. So I am really proud of our risk-based approach to make sure we are helping DHS accomplish its most critical mission areas and its most critical challenges.

So we do have a recurring and repeatable framework for that. It encourages staff to consider project ideas from multiple sources internally and externally. My question here is, will you commit that the OIG's audits, evaluations, and investigations of the Trump administration will meet integrity requirements

objectivity and independent standards and help ensure DHS operates within the law. Yes, I can assure you we will continue conducting our oversight work in accordance with our statutory authority. We will remain independent and objective and will continue to follow our auditing standards. And our work continues unabated as we currently are still working under our Inspector General, Dr. Kafari.

Thank you. And my question to Mr. Curry is, for over 100 years, GAO has played a crucial role in enhancing the effectiveness of government programs and ensuring taxpayer money is well spent. Over the past 20 years, GAO work has resulted in about $1.45 trillion in financial benefits and over 30,000 programs and operational benefits.

This episode is brought to you by Indeed. When your computer breaks, you don't wait for it to magically start working again. You fix the problem. So why wait to hire the people your company desperately needs? Use Indeed's sponsored jobs to hire top talent fast. And even better, you only pay for results. There's no need to wait. Speed up your hiring with a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply.

Uh-oh. The last cookie. You can get a new box of cookies in as fast as an hour with Walmart Express Delivery. Are you my guilty self-conscious? No, I'm the voice offering you promo code EXPRESS for free delivery on your first order. Hey! Who ate my cookies? You mean these cookies? Order now. Welcome to your Walmart. Promotion valid for first express delivery order. $50 minimum subject to availability. Restrictions apply.

Through its high-risk list, GAO focused attention on the most significant challenges facing the government. One such challenge is human capital, including skill shortage, a challenge DOGE does not seem to appreciate as it purges civil servants. What are the consequences of reducing the federal workforce using a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel?

Well, you're correct. Many of the high-risk areas, and there's over 30 of them across all of the federal government that we've identified, are on the list because of some sort of staffing or capacity challenge. That means that either they don't have the right number of people to perform the mission or they don't have the right skills. So typically what you do is you figure out what you want the government or the agencies to do and how you want them to do it, and then you figure out what sort of staff

you need to do it. So obviously, it's going to have some implications, but we don't know yet what exactly those will be. Thank you. And Ms. Lange, I didn't give you any time to respond. So if you want to take 30 seconds, if you like. No, thank you. I think my colleague covered everything. All right. Thank you, Chair. And I yield back.

Hey, thank you so much for listening today. I really do appreciate your support. If you could take a second and hit this subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening on right now, I greatly appreciate it. It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never miss an episode. And each episode is about 10 minutes or less to get you caught up quickly. And please, if you want to support the show even more, go to patreon.com slash stage zero.

And please take care of yourselves and each other. And I'll see you tomorrow.