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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. A less finger pointing.
It'd be great if we could get Mr. Must 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 can get Mr. Mustard just come here and sit here and
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 million, the billion dollars, trillion dollars 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
this. There's 4 1/2 trillion in tax
cuts, but there's only about 1 1/2 trillion proposed in expense
cuts. And those 1 1/2 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 being done. Mr. Musk is operating.
Miss 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 hunt? I think you said 100 people are
working for him. Lloyd, 100 people are working
for Musk. I think he 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 and you know, we we people 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 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 a
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.
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 so supposed to be done
in the dark by some 20 year old kids that we don't know if they
got background checks 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. Recognize, Mr. Thanador, 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 independence standards.
Previously, GAO found that a lack of transparency in DHSOIGS
selection of work topics called into questions the independence
of the organization. What changes?
This is a question for Miss Bernard and Miss 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 DHSOIG.
That is very important for us. We always want to make sure
we're allocating our resources very wisely, especially
recognizing we are overseeing an 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 to commit that the OIG
audits, evaluations, and investigations of the Trump
administration will meet integrity, objectivity and
independence 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 statutory
authority. We will remain independent and
objective and we'll continue to follow our auditing standards
and our work continues unabated as we currently are still
working under our Inspector General, Doctor 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.
Through its high risk list, GAO focused attention on the most
significant challenges facing the government.
Once the challenge is human capital, including skills
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,
you figure out what you want the government or the agencies to do
and how you want to do it, and then you figure out what sort of
staff you need to do it. So obviously it's, it's going to
have some implications, but you know, we, we don't know yet what
exactly those will be. Thank you.
And Miss Lang, I didn't give you any time to respond.
So if you want to take a couple 30 seconds if you like.
No thank. You I.
Think my colleague covered everything.
Thank you, Chair, and I yield back.
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