Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Elon Musk
Podcast. This is a show where we discuss
the critical crossroads, the Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The
Boring Company and Neurolink. I'm your host, Will Walden.
OK. Appreciate you.
Thank you. I now recognize the gentleman
from Texas, Mr. Cloud. Thank you, Madam Chair.
For far too long, DC politicians have gotten away with measuring
their personal value and worth by how much of other people's
money they give away. And for far too long they self
righteously have opined that the spending was for altruistic
purposes, given out of care and compassion.
For far too long, they've been more concerned with looking like
they cared than having enough care and concern to actually do
the due diligence to ensure that the tax dollars were being used
wisely and effectively. And for far too long, those of
us who've worked to uncover waste, fraud and abuse have had
to deal with what amounts to an unconstitutional 4th branch of
permanent bureaucracy that has too often worked to ignore,
obfuscate, delay, and frustrate our efforts to bring
transparency and oversight. Over the last few weeks, the
Doge effort has begun to uncover not only how massive the waste,
fraud and abuse is, but also the extent at which DC politicians
and too many obstinate bureaucrats have coordinated
It's great what is essentially the largest money laundering
scheme in history. And while Americans have been
working to make ends meet, they have been using taxpayer dollars
to fund unnecessary, egregious, and even evil things here at
home and around the world. Thankfully, Indoge, we have a
president bringing the leadership needed and a focused
effort along with the talent, technology, tools and
transparency to this waste, fraud and abuse.
And to those who would stand opposed to this effort, I would
just point out, while it's understandable to find waste,
fraud and abuse that has grown and metastasized in this
government even over decades, certainly accelerated over the
last few years to continue to protect it is corruption.
I want to thank the chair for beginning this war on waste on
this side of Pennsylvania Ave. and bringing together this
committee. This effort is so important as
we work to relieve the Americans people of this burden of waste,
fraud and abuse. Mr. Taco, you mentioned in your
written statement and talked about it in your your statement
at the beginning that this waste, fraud and abuse is a
national security threat. And certainly one of the
challenges facing us. It is a national security,
security threat is our fiscal situation.
And so we have got to find ways to find savings to the American
people in order to strengthen the bring confidence to the bond
markets to, to put our country on a fiscal footing and, and to
reverse the curse, so to speak, that we are placing on our our
children and our grandchildren. You mentioned a couple threats,
though you mentioned internal threats.
You said that these cases involve government employees,
individuals entrusted with administering benefits who
instead of using their positions to approve fraudulent claims,
override security controls, or even sell sensitive claim
claimant information for profit. Now, this is not every federal
employee for sure, but within the context of people who are
trying to give their best effort, we have an internal
threat. But you also mentioned
transnational fraud rings, terrorist organizationals,
nations, nation states, North Korea, nuclear weapons programs
funded by our tax dollars, China, Nigeria, Iran, Romania,
Russia, not our friends necessarily that are being
funded by taxpayer dollars. Could you give us some examples
of how this is happening? Got it.
Yeah. So when you think about what
happened during the pandemic, $1 trillion was stolen, 70% of that
money went overseas. And I can give you some examples
in a Western state, they had more people applying for
unemployment insurance benefits and they had individuals over
18. The people that were stealing
the money from Romania were using it to facilitate other
fraud schemes that include fentanyl, that include doing
things to impact our democracy on the insider thread, right?
The the first thing you have to say, and my dad was a public
servant, is 99% of people that work in the public sector are
honest, hard working individuals.
But there are some. And what you need is data and
technology to root that out. There were examples during the
pandemic, there were some examples even of last week where
people got into the Medicaid system in a southern in a
western state and stole $50 million in less than four
months. So you have to have these
controls in place, right? These aren't individuals
stealing Mr. Cloud. These are organized criminal
groups, both domestic and transnational.
That as you mentioned, taxpayers are being forced to fund the
demise of our own country. Mr. Winston, I wanted to ask you
because there's a lot of talk about reconciliation right now.
You mentioned Medicaid and what could be done to to bring a
pretty substantial amount of savings.
And this is without affecting those who truly need Medicaid
and and for what the the purpose of the program was extended for
now. That the gentleman's time is
expired. Did hopefully.
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