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0:00
Elon Musk is a funny guy. You
0:04
can tell because his favorite cryptocurrency
0:06
is based on a cute dog, Ashiba
0:08
Inu, which inspired the Doge meme,
0:10
which inspired Dogecoin. I'm sorry if I'm
0:12
losing you, the point is it's
0:14
Elon's fave. In 2021, he hosted Saturday
0:16
Night Live and plugged it over
0:18
and over. He
0:25
also said he would fund a
0:27
moon mission entirely with Dogecoin and
0:29
incessantly tweeted about the crypto and
0:31
for a minute Tesla was accepting
0:34
Dogecoin in 2022 investors got tired
0:36
of the antics and sued Elon
0:38
Musk for manipulating the price of
0:40
the coin they lost Elon won
0:42
and then Kamala lost so Elon
0:44
won again and now our future
0:47
president has rewarded Musk's loyalty with
0:49
an entire government agency named for
0:51
his favorite meme coin and as
0:53
you've probably heard it's called the
0:55
Department of Government Efficiency or on
0:58
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more at ACLU .org. This
2:14
is Today Explained. The first thing you
2:16
need to know about the Department of
2:19
Government Efficiency is that Trump's put two
2:21
people in charge of it, so it's
2:23
off to a great start. Elon is
2:25
one of them, the other is Vivek
2:27
Rameswamy, no relation. We asked Vox's Dylan
2:29
Matthews to help us understand what they
2:32
intend to do, but first we asked
2:34
him where he stands on the federal
2:36
government. Any
2:39
sufficiently large organization is going to
2:41
have inefficiencies and there are definitely inefficiencies
2:44
in federal spending. But almost
2:46
everything that the federal government
2:48
spends money on is pretty
2:50
noncontroversial, which is why we
2:53
keep spending money on it.
2:56
But that's not how Elon and
2:58
Vivek feel. No. It's no
3:00
secret that it is a fourth
3:02
branch of government, the administrative
3:04
state that makes most of the
3:06
rules that creates a federal
3:09
bureaucracy that's hampering our economy. If
3:11
a current trend of strangulation
3:13
by overregulation is not turned around,
3:15
we will never get to
3:17
Mars. It just will be illegal.
3:19
I mean, they're private sector
3:21
guys, right? Like, they're all about
3:23
arguing that old sectors are
3:25
inefficient and need to be disrupted.
3:27
How much do you think
3:29
we can rip out of this
3:31
wasted $6 .5 trillion Harris -Biden
3:33
budget? Well, I think we can
3:35
do at least two trillion.
3:37
Yeah! I'm skeptical.
3:39
There's an old saying in Washington
3:41
that the U .S. federal government
3:44
is an insurance company that
3:46
has an army attached to it.
3:48
And I think this is
3:50
a good way to broadly think
3:52
about what it spends money
3:54
on. And
3:58
how much does this insurance company...
4:00
with an army attached to it You say
4:02
say they want to eliminate 2
4:04
trillion of the budget how many
4:06
trillions is the budget trillions is the
4:08
budget? So in year year 2023,
4:11
we spent 6.1 we spent
4:13
$6 .1 trillion things. Of that,
4:15
a various things. 700 that,
4:17
a little under 700
4:19
billion just was interest, so that's
4:21
just debt we had, and we had
4:23
to pay interest on it. So for for
4:25
actual programs for people, it's more
4:27
like 5 .4 trillion. So 2 trillion
4:29
out of that. that over a
4:31
third, it's a really, really big
4:33
number. Okay, and so a
4:35
huge a of it is just of service, but
4:38
what is the actual
4:40
spending? What's the largest share?
4:42
the of that share
4:44
trillion. six-ish biggest single share
4:47
is social security. That's
4:49
1 .3 trillion. That's benefits
4:51
for retirees. for
4:53
retirees, survivors, with disabilities
4:56
that they've paid into, that and
4:58
so 1 .3 out of out
5:00
of 6. .1 trillion. And that's that's the
5:02
biggest single program, and it's
5:04
one that Trump has promised
5:06
not to cut. and will
5:09
always protect your your security. And
5:11
when you think about about what this
5:13
Doge outfit wants to do, not they're
5:15
not talking about getting rid of
5:17
social security, are they? are they? No, they're
5:19
very insistent that they're not and
5:22
that they're and trying to aim
5:24
for social security and Medicare, which
5:26
is the second biggest program. which is the
5:28
are big programs for seniors. We're
5:30
not touching Medicare. We wanna keep
5:32
Medicare. We're not touching social security.
5:35
One thing that was unusual about
5:37
Donald Trump both in 2016 and
5:39
2024 is he promised he promised not to
5:41
cut them Paul you had Paul
5:43
Ryan. serious about them. serious plans to
5:45
cut them. Do you consider it possible
5:47
to arrive at a fiscal policy
5:50
and plan that reduces the deficit without
5:52
touching Medicare or Social Security or military
5:54
spending? No, you can't. It's just
5:56
a mathematical impossibility. so Trump And so be
5:58
this wanted to be this of thing. Republican
6:00
who wouldn't threaten these programs. The
6:02
reason that people like Paul Ryan
6:05
wanted to cut them is that
6:07
together they make up about a
6:09
third of the overall budget, and
6:11
it's just very hard to make
6:14
serious cuts while declaring them off
6:16
limits. If you do not tackle
6:18
the drivers of our debt, which
6:20
are entitlements, you cannot balance the
6:23
budget in the future and pay
6:25
down the debt. It's just not
6:27
possible. And just to help people
6:30
understand the full picture here, what
6:32
are we spending on Medicare as
6:34
a country? So 2023 we spent
6:36
839 billion. So less than sort
6:39
of security, but a lot. And
6:41
sort of security is increasing in
6:43
its costs just because the population
6:45
is aging. More people are retired
6:48
and taking benefits. Medicare is growing
6:50
both because of that and because
6:52
medical costs tend to grow quicker
6:55
than other costs. And so it's
6:57
smaller than Social Security now. It
6:59
might overtake Social Security as we
7:01
get new treatments. We get new
7:04
kinds of surgeries, new ways to
7:06
extend people's lives that are great,
7:08
but cost money. Okay, so now
7:10
we're into the hundreds of billions
7:13
of dollars of expenditures. You mentioned
7:15
that debt service was in this
7:17
company. What about defense spending? Isn't
7:20
that a huge chunk? Where does
7:22
that fall in? Defense spending is
7:24
huge. That was $800.5 billion in
7:26
2023. So just behind Medicare in
7:29
terms of total expenses. But almost
7:31
no Republican wants to cut it
7:33
outright. And so they might talk
7:35
about, you know, finding areas of
7:38
waste, defense contractors that charge 30
7:40
bucks for a wrench, that kind
7:42
of thing. But it's unlikely to
7:45
be a major target. Okay, so
7:47
then what are we talking about?
7:49
So we've gone through, you know,
7:51
Social Security, Medicare, Defense, debt service,
7:54
things that sound sort of untouchable
7:56
or not really of much interest
7:58
to Trump, Elon, and Vivaic. What's
8:00
left? I think the biggest category
8:03
is programs for poor people bluntly.
8:07
So the most important here is
8:09
Medicaid, which is our program for
8:11
people in poverty and many disabled
8:14
people. That's about $116 billion in
8:16
federal money. It's a federal state
8:18
program, so states kick in a
8:21
lot on top of that. But
8:23
that's the next biggest chunk after
8:25
sort of security Medicare defense. And
8:28
it's historically been a big target
8:30
of cut proposals. when Trump was
8:32
trying to repeal and replace Obamacare
8:35
in 2017, most of Obamacare is
8:37
an expansion of Medicaid. And so
8:39
what he was talking about were
8:42
very serious Medicaid cuts. And I
8:44
would expect something similar. His budget
8:46
chief is this guy named Russ
8:49
Fott. who has been putting out
8:51
budgets sort of during the Biden
8:53
years of what he wants to
8:56
do, and those budgets include a
8:58
third cut to Medicaid. He wants
9:00
to slash the whole program by
9:03
a third. I don't know if
9:05
Trump is going to go that
9:07
far, but his own budgets last
9:10
time around included very serious Medicaid
9:12
cuts, and I would expect the
9:14
same this time around. And after
9:17
Medicaid, we spend about 450 billion
9:19
on where it's called income security
9:21
programs. These are things like food
9:24
stamps, tax credits like the child
9:26
tax credit and the earned income
9:28
credit. Broadly, a lot of programs
9:31
that support low-income people's incomes. It
9:33
also includes some things for veterans,
9:35
which are unlikely to be cut.
9:38
But that broad category of income
9:40
supports report people has been a
9:42
major target as well. And food
9:45
stamps in particular, Trump tried to
9:47
cut repeatedly last time and are
9:49
likely to be a major target
9:52
again this time. So I would
9:54
say they're not politically easy things
9:56
to cut because advocates report people.
9:59
whole Democratic Party are going to
10:01
fight you two to nail on
10:03
this, but they're historically easier to
10:06
cut than Social Security or Medicare
10:08
or defense spending. And so I
10:10
think they're likelier to be top
10:13
targets. And
10:17
if the space man and
10:20
the young man figure out
10:22
some, you know, huge cuts
10:24
to welfare programs in the
10:27
federal government, do they have
10:29
the power to slash spending?
10:32
I do not think that the
10:34
White House on its own has
10:36
the power to cut federal spending.
10:39
Congress has the power of the
10:41
purse. Traditionally, the way this has
10:43
always worked is that the president
10:45
will put in a budget request
10:47
outlining what he wants the budget
10:50
to look like. Congress will completely
10:52
ignore that and pass of what
10:54
they want to pass, and then
10:56
what ultimately is enacted is much
10:58
closer to what Congress wants than
11:01
what the president wants. However, Russ
11:03
fought, the budget director who Trump
11:05
recently reappointed, has been pretty vocal
11:07
that he thinks the president has
11:09
what's called an impoundment power or
11:12
the power to refuse to spend
11:14
money that Congress has appropriated. If
11:17
they're right, and if they assert
11:20
this power and it goes all
11:22
the way to the Supreme Court,
11:24
then Trump on his own would
11:26
have the power to just ignore
11:28
spending bills from Congress. And if
11:30
he, say, wanted to cut Medicaid
11:33
by some number of billions of
11:35
dollars, he could just withhold spending
11:37
for the programs that he doesn't
11:39
want to fund there. That would
11:41
be a quite radical expansion of
11:43
presidential power. I bring it up
11:46
only because senior members of Trump's
11:48
team have been very vocal that
11:50
they think he has this power,
11:52
but it will require a pretty
11:54
dramatic assertion of authority. a
11:56
very long court
11:59
battle before anything
12:01
like that comes
12:03
up. up. So what
12:05
do you think that means for Doge
12:07
and their goal to cut cut two trillion? They are not
12:09
are not going to cut $2 trillion. I
12:12
will bet any amount any If
12:14
Elon wants to of set up
12:16
a crypto deal with me a say
12:18
with bet $5 million five I for
12:20
sure don't have, sure don't have, bet
12:23
you $5 million million dollars that we're going
12:25
to pass two $2 trillion annual
12:27
spending cuts, I will sign
12:29
that and take out whatever loan
12:31
shark loans because I will win
12:33
that bet. win that bet. I
12:36
think they will come up
12:38
with a of of smaller appropriations
12:41
that they are are wasteful or ill
12:43
-advised. They'll come up with government
12:45
contracts that they think are for
12:47
too much too much money or I
12:49
will say this for I will say
12:51
this for Elon a he does
12:53
have a lot of experience with
12:55
government procurement through SpaceX. through I
12:58
would guess that the of
13:00
of cuts going to to be
13:02
looking at is in the
13:04
tens of billions rather than
13:06
hundreds or trillions. one thing I've learned that
13:08
I thing I have learned
13:10
is that to felt like I
13:12
was able to predict what Joe Biden would do. I
13:14
was I felt like I was able to predict what
13:17
Barack Obama would do. do. I felt like I was
13:19
able to predict what Paul Ryan would do. I
13:21
have been wrong again and
13:23
again about what Donald Trump
13:25
will do in his team.
13:28
so Trump will do in his team. And so
13:30
while rolling out, I'm rolling out, a
13:32
wide range of possibilities here.
13:34
of possibilities here. You
13:42
can read Dylan Matthews I certainly do.
13:44
When we're back on when we're back on
13:46
today who is a glass a glass half
13:48
full of guy guy when it comes
13:50
to cutting $2 trillion. Support
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just in time for
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the holidays, terms and
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conditions to apply. Chris
17:51
Edwards is with Cato, which means
17:53
he's a a which means he'd
17:55
love to see to trillion dollars,
17:57
or probably even more, even more
17:59
from - the federal budget. He's super
18:01
into the concept of Doge, but
18:03
he says he would add another
18:06
E at the end of the
18:08
name. So I asked him how
18:10
he'd pronounce that. Do I say
18:12
Doge double E perhaps? Doge double
18:14
E. You know, the Elon Musk
18:16
and Vivek Ramoswami, you know, they
18:18
proposed their Department of Government efficiency.
18:20
Well, to solve the $2 trillion
18:22
federal deficit problem, we not only
18:25
need more efficiency, we need elim
18:27
elimim eliminations. So while people might
18:29
envision the federal government and it's
18:31
the two million federal civil servants
18:33
we have working more efficiently, that's
18:35
great and fine, they do need
18:37
to work more efficiently. We also
18:39
need to eliminate programs. You seem
18:42
to believe that there are eliminations
18:44
here. They may not get us
18:46
to two trillion, but if you
18:48
pull a bit from here and
18:50
pull a bit from there, you're
18:52
going to start making progress. Tell
18:54
us where you want to pull
18:56
from. Well, Trump unfortunately has said
18:58
he wouldn't cut the two biggest
19:01
programs in the federal budget, Social
19:03
Security and Medicare. He's probably not
19:05
going to cut defense either because
19:07
his party traditionally supports big defense
19:09
spending. So those are the three
19:11
biggest programs in the federal budget.
19:13
So what else can you cut?
19:15
Well, the next biggest pot of
19:18
money in the federal budget is
19:20
aid from the federal government to
19:22
state and local governments. That's $1.1
19:24
trillion of spending every year. So
19:26
this is aid for highways. K-12
19:28
education, Medicaid, housing, community development, that
19:30
sort of stuff. I think that
19:32
stuff can be cut. I think
19:34
it should be cut. I think
19:37
state governments can pick up the
19:39
slack. State governments are actually in
19:41
a very strong budget position these
19:43
days with large rainy day funds.
19:45
So I think the federal government
19:47
can and should cut this flow
19:49
of money from the federal government
19:51
down to state governments. So then
19:54
the states can, you know, can...
19:56
can respond as they please they
19:58
can raise taxes they can cut
20:00
others state governments are required to
20:02
balance their budgets. So that's a
20:04
good thing. The federal government will
20:06
cut the subsidies, then state governments
20:08
can handle the fallout and figure
20:11
out how they want to reorganize
20:13
their budgets. How
20:16
much would these cuts be felt
20:18
by people across the country, by
20:20
voters, by Americans? You know, cuts
20:22
to housing, community development, highways? I
20:24
mean, I realize that states have
20:26
their own budgets and can fund
20:29
these things, but not all states
20:31
are created equal. Not all states
20:33
have surplus funds to use to
20:35
pick up the slack for the
20:37
federal government, right? No, that's right,
20:39
and every state would respond in
20:42
a differential source of ways. Diversity,
20:44
I think that's a good thing.
20:46
You know, if the federal government
20:48
cut a welfare program, like public
20:50
housing, you know, New York might
20:52
decide to fund its own public
20:54
housing, but say Texas might decide,
20:57
hey, we're going to privatize our
20:59
public housing. but I think that
21:01
those differential kind of responses by
21:03
the states would be a good
21:05
thing. I think that when the
21:07
federal government cuts aid to the
21:10
states, it should phase it in
21:12
over, say, five years to give
21:14
state legislatures the time to plan,
21:16
you know, how they're going to
21:18
respond and whether they're going to
21:20
cover the funding for these programs
21:23
themselves. But, you know, currently the
21:25
federal government has 1,300 different federal
21:27
aid to state programs. This is
21:29
a massive web of programs that
21:31
has grown particularly since the 1960s.
21:33
I don't think these programs have
21:35
worked particularly well. They're extremely bureaucratic
21:38
when you involve two or three
21:40
levels of government in funding programs.
21:42
I think we'd have a much
21:44
more efficient government at all levels
21:46
if we got the federal government
21:48
out of these properly state activities.
21:52
We know you libertarians love
21:54
to eliminate programs. Are you
21:56
envisioning a United States that
21:58
maybe doesn't have? that
22:01
support public housing? Maybe doesn't have,
22:03
you know, a federally funded transit
22:06
or maybe doesn't have a corporation
22:08
for public broadcasting. Is that what
22:10
you'd really like to see? I
22:13
would like to see that, and
22:15
over the last century, power has
22:18
become centralized in Washington. In my
22:20
view, for no particular reason, and
22:22
I'll give you a story about
22:25
that, Sean, so I grew up
22:27
in Canada. Canada is a high-income
22:30
democracy. It's a much more decentralized
22:32
Federation than United States. In rough
22:34
terms, government spending in United States
22:37
is two-thirds federal and one-third state.
22:39
Canada is the flip. Canada is
22:41
only one-third federal and two-thirds provincial.
22:44
As an example of that, Canada
22:46
has no federal department of education.
22:49
And on international test scores, Canadian
22:51
students do substantially better than American
22:53
students. So I don't believe you
22:56
need to centralize some of these
22:58
activities to have well-functioning government. And
23:01
I think Canada, it's not a
23:03
great model for some things. I
23:05
think the current Prime Ministers had
23:08
lots of problems. However, I think
23:10
the basic governmental structure of being
23:13
a decentralized Federation is a good
23:15
model for us to look at.
23:17
And you heard Dylan say that
23:20
the one thing he's always expecting
23:22
with Trump, and let's say now,
23:25
Doge, is the unexpected. Does the
23:27
unexpected factor here mean that these
23:29
business-minded drain the swamp? let's
23:32
go to Mars types, could actually pull
23:35
something out of the bag to get
23:37
rid of these programs to even maybe
23:39
eliminate things that have so far seemingly
23:42
been political third rails in this country.
23:44
There is a tradition of Congress putting
23:46
together big fancy blue ribbon commissions writing
23:49
big reports and the reports end up
23:51
on shelves collecting dust. That is true.
23:53
However, the debt problem is much bigger
23:56
than it was 10 years ago. I
23:58
think something that's changed as well is
24:00
the threat of inflation. You know, we
24:03
found out during this last election how
24:05
incredibly unpopular boats of inflation are. And
24:07
you know, Republicans have spent the last
24:10
two years blaming all the inflation on
24:12
Biden spending. When you spend trillions of
24:14
dollars, you cause inflation. and staying warm.
24:17
This could not be a more challenging
24:19
problem confronting America. Only three in ten
24:21
Americans Approve the way that Joe Biden
24:24
is handling inflation. Only three. Whether or
24:26
not, you know, you buy that as
24:28
an economic argument, I think going ahead,
24:31
Republicans will be scared that if the
24:33
deficits are too big and the spending
24:35
is too large, they risk a bout
24:38
of inflation leading up to the midterms.
24:40
I think they should be scared of
24:42
that, and I do think that that...
24:45
should be an impetus for them to
24:47
make start making some spending reforms to
24:49
encourage financial markets that you know there
24:52
will be a problem to this massive
24:54
these massive deficits in Washington. So I
24:56
think there is a political opening here.
24:59
Presidents have their most legislative leverage in
25:01
their first year and I think they
25:03
need to start cutting in the first
25:06
year again in order to ward off
25:08
inflation. as well as to actually, you
25:10
know, get something done before the midterms
25:12
get too close on the political calendar.
25:15
Before we go, I would love to
25:17
ask you what you think of all
25:19
the corporate welfare that is going directly
25:22
to Elon Musk to fund programs like
25:24
SpaceX. Well Yolom Musk is an interesting
25:26
example of someone and he can't deny
25:29
his incredible entrepreneurial success, but it is
25:31
also true that he's got a lot
25:33
of corporate welfare over the years both
25:36
at the level and at local
25:38
level. local of the
25:40
problems with our
25:43
giant government giant octopus
25:45
tentacles into everything these
25:47
days is that
25:50
every business gets subsidized
25:52
and it's hard
25:54
to run a business
25:57
without hard to run to
25:59
Washington and pleading
26:01
for subsidies. and pleading for
26:04
know, that is true
26:06
that is true about wish, I
26:08
wish you know know, he's
26:11
got a great
26:13
car company there. He
26:15
should wean himself
26:18
off those federal subsidies.
26:20
Your money being wasted
26:22
and the department of Government
26:25
Dificion is gonna
26:27
fix to fix that. Chris
26:39
Edwards, Cato Institute Sean Ramosferm today our
26:41
show today was produced by produced
26:43
by She was edited by edited
26:45
by Amana mixed by Patrick Boyd
26:48
and Rob and and we
26:50
were fact we by Kim by
26:52
Kim Eggleston. mañana. Maniana. Amazon
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