Tom Suozzi Expresses Concern About Musk’s DOGE Team

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During Wednesday’s House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) discussed the lack of knowledge surrounding Musk's DOGE team.

Transcript

00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There's a lot of back and forth here about a lot of different

00:07things. It's hard to figure out what to focus on. I think we all want to try and get rid

00:12of waste, fraud, and abuse in government. It's a major problem. It's going to require

00:17us to work together, less finger-pointing. It would be great if we could get Mr. Musk

00:21to come in here and outline different ideas he has for cuts, and then we could vote on

00:26it through what's called the rescission process. That would be a great thing if we could, Mr.

00:31Chairman, I know you're going to take it under advisement, but it would be great if we could

00:33get Mr. Musk to just come here and sit here and lay out the different cuts that he thinks

00:37that should be made to the federal government. I think, you know, there's a lot of back and

00:41forth here. Mr. Smucker was talking earlier about the deficits. I mean, we just voted

00:45yesterday, you guys voted yes, we voted no, on a budget with $6.75 trillion in expenses

00:53and only $4.9 trillion in revenues. You voted yesterday for a massive deficit-increasing

01:02budget. In addition, the big beautiful bill that everybody's talking about is going to

01:07increase the federal deficit by even more, $3 trillion, because there's only, there's

01:12$4.5 trillion in tax cuts, but there's only about $1.5 trillion proposed in expense cuts,

01:20and those $1.5 trillion in expense cuts can't be made unless you cut Medicaid, and you said

01:24you don't want to cut Medicaid. So that's an additional, even under those rosy scenarios,

01:28an additional $3 trillion in deficits. So I don't know what you guys are talking about.

01:33You want to cut things, but you won't give us the specifics as to what's being done.

01:38Mr. Musk is operating. Ms. Van Dyne talked about the witnesses that were here the other

01:42day. I asked each of the witnesses specifically, do you know what Mr. Musk is doing? Do you

01:48know if the, I think you said 100 people are working for him, Lloyd? 100 people are

01:52working for Musk, I think you said? But I mean, did they get background checks? Do we

01:57know that? Do you know, I'll yield to Mr. Smucker, do you know if they got background

02:01checks? No, you don't know. Nobody knows. We don't know if they got background checks.

02:06We don't know what kind of security clearances they have. We don't know what their backgrounds

02:10are. I mean, these are simple, basic questions in running a multi-trillion dollar organization.

02:17Are the people that you have, and you know, we hear different names about them, but they're

02:23young people that are gamers and hackers and computer experts. We don't know what their

02:29backgrounds are. We don't know if they got proper security clearances. We don't know

02:34if they have background checks. So we've got a big problem in the federal government. We've

02:41got way more in expenses than we have in revenues. It causes deficits. Our deficits

02:47are the highest percentage of our GDP that it's been in decades. The proposal, the CR

02:55that was passed yesterday increases the deficit. The big beautiful bill that this group is

03:01proposing will dramatically increase the deficit. So you say we have to find expenses to cut.

03:08We need to go after waste, fraud, abuse. Yes, let's do that. But we don't know what the

03:16expenses are that they're proposing. They're supposed to come before the Congress and propose

03:21specific cuts so that we can adjudge whether that makes sense. I don't think anybody here

03:27supports the idea when they cut the people that oversaw the nuclear stockpile. Nobody

03:32thought it was a good idea. Nobody thought it was a good idea when they cut the people

03:36that oversee the avian flu. Nobody thought it was a good idea when they cut the people

03:41that oversee a measles outbreak. Nobody thought those were good ideas. I don't think anybody

03:47here is going to think it's a good idea when they're cutting thousands and thousands and

03:51thousands of employees at Social Security so that when people start calling up Social

03:55Security and they can't get their calls answered and then you guys are going to say, look at

04:00that, I told you it was broken, but you want to cut 10,000 employees out of the 54,000

04:04that are there. And then there's going to be an argument, like there's been in the

04:07past, to privatize Social Security. So let's just work together. Let's say we all want

04:14to try and balance the budget. We all want to get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse. To

04:19do that, we have a process and procedure in place for the federal government. You can't

04:24do it through impoundment. That's been ruled by the courts and there's laws specifically

04:28passed by Congress that you can't do it that way. You have to go through the rescission

04:32process. So to come and make a proposal, I want to cut this, I want to cut that, I want

04:37to cut this, I want to cut that, this doesn't make sense, that doesn't make sense, and then

04:41we decide yes or no based upon those individual things. It's a process that you're supposed

04:46to go through. It's not supposed to be done in the dark by some 20-year-old kids that

04:52we don't know if they got background checks or not. So let's all work together and try

04:56and accomplish our common goals of trying to make our country a better place. Thank

04:59you. I yield back.

05:01Mr. Neal. Thank you. I move to strike the last word, Mr. Chairman. I want to recognize

05:04Ms. Chu first of all for a unanimous consent request.

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Transcript

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