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, Neurolink, and of course, X.
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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 a 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
the 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 its purpose is, service. 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 RIP
off that is going on. Let's just a couple of examples.
In our healthcare system, United Healthcare is rigging the system
on Medicare Advantage programs. Our seniors, we want them to
have the healthcare that they need, but they set up these
billing systems where they paid nurses and forced doctors
essentially to over over analyze and over prescribe and over
state 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, that series of
articles that was in the Washington, or pardon me, the
Wall Street Journal that documented the RIP offs and what
I think were corrupt practices by United Healthcare.
Where's Doge? All that money is just wasted.
It's gone into the pockets of executives at United Healthcare.
It's gone into a 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 it was going to save
hundreds of billions of dollars for American taxpayers and allow
us to reinvest in healthcare and make things better.
So my first question with Doge is why don't you look where the
money is, where the RIP offs 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 in 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 all of those situations.
And that's disgraceful, especially when you've got Elon
Musk is 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 in 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 e-mail 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 e-mail out of the blue that it clearly is a
mass e-mail 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 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 1000 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 it? 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 to execute
a thoughtful way to save taxpayer money.
It's just shoot 1st and aim later. 4000 employees at the US
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 like 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
in the 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 e-mail saying, just kidding, we're not going to we
the federal government, and they're 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 Doe saying, well, that doesn't apply to us because
we want to quote, save money. That's 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 for reform in FEMA.
And I'm work, I want to work with colleagues in order to do
that. But when that disaster comes,
you know, with 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,
immediate emergency assistance that folks need for saving lives
and, and, and, and keeping themselves together during that
immediate storm event. And we're hearing those in the
president 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 too, among them are the 6000 veterans who've
been fired by DOGE across the, the, the federal workforce.
I mean, that it, that it 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 e-mail 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 got to you need healthcare and those 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 Doe says we are, 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 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, you
know, and give a few examples of people in Vermont.
But I know I'm like every single member of the US Senate, we can
give examples of people in the states we represent.
Our Small Business Administration office has been a
real help to Vermonters. Very, very effective.
One employee there got a performance review.
This is shortly after 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 e-mail
said quote you have 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 are 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 things are 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 up.
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 have, 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 in cavalier about it and
in 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, in 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 e-mail telling people to get
lost. We wouldn't just be sending off
an e-mail to a farmer who just went to the bank and got a loan
based on the credit of the 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 in in, in in abuse.
We can embrace the opportunity to streamline and save money,
make things work better. But we can never abandoned our
commitment to the people of this country who work so hard.
We can never abandoned 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. Hey, thank you so much for
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