February 17, 2025 • 26 mins
In this episode, Congressman Marjorie Taylor-Greene discusses the role of the Department of Justice (DOGE) in government efficiency, the need for spending cuts, and the potential impact of AI on federal operations. She emphasizes the importance of legislative oversight to ensure taxpayer dollars are used effectively and addresses concerns about government spending and debt. It's a Numbers Game with Ryan Girdusky is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network. For more visit natpop.substack.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome back to a numbers game with Ryan Grodowski. So,
if you turned on cable news or read a newspaper
the last few weeks, nearly every story straying this White
House has had something to do with Elon Musk and DOGE,
the Department of Government Efficiency. It's important to remember that
DOGE is not actually a government department, So it's not
like the Department of Education or the Interior Department. Most
(00:22):
people don't realize, but it's actually scheduled to end on
July fourth, twenty twenty six. Now, let's examine what DOGE
was created for and what is done. DOGE was created
by an executive order on January twentieth, twenty twenty five,
by President Trump. The executive order states that doge's purpose
is to quote implement the President's DOJ agenda by modernizing
federal technology and software to maximize government efficiency and productivity.
(00:46):
It later goes on to say that DOGE will improve
the IT system, work with agency heads to promote interruptibility
between agency networks and systems, ensure data integrity, and facilitate
responsible data collection and synchronization. Nowhere in the executive order
does DOGE talk about being used as a force to
balance the budget or cancel contracts or like o of
federal workers. It's very clearly a conversation about modernizing and
(01:09):
protecting data to run more efficiency, which is a noble goal,
like the government should try to do that. Yet most
of the conversations surrounding Doge it's about saving money and
stopping inefficient programs. So let's get into the data. Let's
get into the numbers. The US government is currently thirty
six point four trillion dollars in debt, which is a number,
(01:30):
like most people can't think up with thirty six trillion
dollars in debt. It runs a two trillion dollar deficit
every single year. It's not because we don't collect money.
Any taxpayer will tell you we collect money. The federal
government's revenue from taxes is over five trillion dollars a year,
but we spend seven trillion now. According to the Doge clock,
(01:51):
which is a feature from the US deck clock website,
doges estimated savings for the government so far from what
they found is about eighty one billion dollars in waste
fraud abuse. Some analysts say it's like closer to thirty
eight billion, but it's between you know, thirty thirty eight
and eighty one billion, whichever number it is, it's a
lot of money. Pretending like it's not, which some Democrats
(02:14):
are doing, is very stupid, because American taxayers feel like
their money is being wasted on DEI consultants and duplicate programs,
or just showed up being stolen and given to corrupt
oligarchs overseas. But that's your data. That's the hard number.
Thirty six trillion in depth, five trillion taken in through taxes,
seven trillion spent, and two trillion in deficits, with between
(02:36):
thirty eight and eighty one billion dollars in savings from DOGE.
Defenders of these programs such as like USAID, which has
been very heavily unscrutinized by the Doge Committee, I've said
that these programs help promote foreign policy and soft power.
This is Washington d C Speak for you're too stupid
to complain abo how your tax dollars work. So kudos
(02:59):
to anyone looking for bad spending and wasteful and duplicate programs.
This isn't really really important work. However, it's not enough
to balance our budget. It's not even close it's currently
less than half of one percent of the federal deficit.
This is far below the two trillion dollar number that
Elon Musk originally said he hoped Doge could find and
(03:21):
cut from the government. As a millennial who vaguely remembers
the last time he balanced the budget in two thousand
and one, this is frustrating. Bill Clinton actually said in
two thousand he expected to pay down the entire US
debt by twenty twelve because we're running surpluses in the
late nineties and early two thousands, and then of course
we had the Warren terror warre in Iraq, the Bush
(03:42):
tax cuts, Obamacare, cash for clunkers, so on, and so forth.
Administration after administration, and we're in the situation we're in now.
Doge hit a controversy even before it began, first with
the exiting of co chairman of ac Raamaswami. He left
before the administration started. This is after he said a
series of tweets saying that Americans were lazy and unsuccessful
(04:02):
because they let their kids idolize athletes and have sleepovers.
Sources close to me have told me that Doge was
looking for him to get out way before, way before
this actually came out, these tweets came out. He wasn't
what you considered an extremely active participant. You know when
you're like a little you're like a kid and your
little brother wants to play a video game that you're playing,
(04:25):
so but he's terrible, so you give him like a
remote that's not plugged in to the game and tell
him that he's like playing. That was allegedly the relationship
between Elonofek. That's what my sources have told me. Since
starting though in January, Doge's staff has gained access to
many federal departments, taking data, including sensitive data, offering buyouts
to federal workers so they could retire early. They've closed
(04:47):
excess office space or looking to close excess office space,
and canceling contracts that they thought were wasteful. There's a
lot of noise around Doge. The Democrats don't have a
singular message because and that's a real problem for the
Democratic Party if you've paid attention the last few message
for the last few years. But they're very angry about
the accessing data. That the staffers were very young, The
(05:10):
Dough staffers are very young. Some of the Dog staffers
have written very spicy takes on social media that they've
raised concerns about that accessing this federal data and canceling
these contracts is illegal. I want to focus specifically on
the data aspect because a lot of the other stuff
is just political noise. It's not actually relevant that one
of the people who's nineteen wrote something spicy on Twitter
(05:30):
seven months ago, like that doesn't actually matter, but the
accessing federal data could matter. Musk and the Trump administration
said that they had quote read only access to all
the federal data, but reporters had wired so that at
least one dough staffer had the ability to change the
code of the Treasury Department's payment system. Democrats have said
(05:50):
that the staffers were attempting to cut off payments to
programs that were against President Trump's agenda without an Act
of Congress. Federal judge in New York has blocked Doge's
access to the sense of data and the Treasury Department,
while a different federal judge in Washington has declined to
block doge's access to data in the Labor Department. That
Ladder judge did express those concerns that seffrs had not
been properly trained about handling sensitive data. The Washington Post
(06:13):
reported quote Dojes associates have been feeding vast tropes of
government records and databases into artificial intelligence tools, looking for
unwanted federal programs and trying to determine which human work
can be replaced with AI, machine learning tools, or even robots.
Everything that can be machine automated will be machine automated.
So one person speaking to the Post, that raises a
(06:35):
question in my head, this is what I'm concerned about.
Whose AI company are they replacing the workers? Because the
government doesn't own an AI system. That doesn't exist, there's
no federal AI system. It contracts out to other AI companies,
and tech companies have investing billions and billions of dollars
into smarter, faster, and possibly one day self learning AI.
(06:57):
That's like the goal of a lot of tech billionaires
is to have self learning AI. The US has no
comprehensive federal laws governing AI. There are none. While there
are some guidelines in the federal agencies, there's no giant
oversight as to what AI should be doing. It could
be doing that could be a good thing for if
you're an AI investor, a bad thing if you're concerned
(07:19):
with certain issues around AI and how would either a
replacing workers or how it could possibly be interfering in
our lives. That being said, if it's going to replace
our federal workforce with artificial intelligence, if this is the
goal of Doge, whose AI company are we using? Where
are we bidding this for? Because it's not coming from
(07:40):
within the company, within the government. We're not building our
own is it Elon Musks He recently just put a
ninety seven point four billion dollar bid to buy the
assets of a nonprofit that controls open Ai. According to
The New York Times, he's been very interested in building
an AI company. This is something worth asking as we
plunge headfirst into our new world. I think it could
(08:02):
be a real problem when it comes to Doge is
that Democrats and Republicans are really talking past each other
at this moment. Republicans are rightfully concerned about spending because
we are spending way too much, way too much deficit,
way too much debt. They're completely and totally right and
looking past bloated federal agencies to take out the waste
(08:23):
as a noble cause. And while some Democrats are trying
to score political points against Donald Trump, who's enjoying the
most faveriable prole ratings of his entire career. Many are
right to have concerns with this data. But while they're
looking at it from the question of Doge holding a
Social Security number and income record, no one really, I mean,
that's not the real concern. What I'm worried about is
(08:43):
the future of the government brought to us by our
tech overlords. Whose AI company is going to be running
our federal agencies, because it's not one that we've built,
it's not one that comes from within the government, is
one that is contracted from out the government. And if
the people having this access to this quote unquote possibly
read only files or if they're changing coding, if they're
(09:05):
the ones getting access for their companies, that is extremely,
extremely problematic. Hey, we'll be right back after this. I
am beyond excited to have my guests this week, someone
who can talk a lot about Doge. My guest, Congressman
Marjorie Taylor Green from the Great State of Georgia's represents
the fourteenth district since twenty twenty one. Representative Green is
(09:29):
the chairwoman of the Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee. Congressman
thank you for being here, having to be on So
my first first question is very straightforward, how does your
caucus work with DOGE.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Well, I'm on the subcommittee Doge Committee, which is on oversight,
so it's not in caucus.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Right, Sorry, that's what I'm gonna say.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah, Yeah, caucuses are more like clubs and right, sorry
about that. Yeah, So this is this, this is a committee,
and what we will be doing is we'll be doing
the important work in Congress to make DOGE actually effective
from the legislative branch of the government. And I think
this is an incredibly important thing to do because if
(10:16):
DOGE is only functioning in the executive branch, that means
and we're going to have every single Obama and Biden
appointed judge coming out and blocking the important work that
they're trying to do. We're going to have, you know,
through Democrats filing all kinds of lawsuits trying to stop
Elon Musk and Doge, and in any future Democrat administration
(10:41):
can virtually go through and undo everything that's been done
with their executive orders.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
So you're trying to get some of the stuff done
in the legislature where there will be bills to kind
of reduce the spending as well as which I think.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
You're so yes, We've got to do. We've got to
pass bills, get them into law, we have got to
put them in our funding appropriations. We've got to do
everything we can. Congress has got to get on board
with DOGE because the American people voted for it. President
Trump campaigned on it the last few months of his campaign.
(11:15):
It was one of the biggest pieces. And this is
what the American people want, and Republicans need to make
sure we deliver.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
So I think that a lot of Republicans when it
comes to DOJ, they're very interested in the type of
ways our tax dollars are being used. So you have
things like one hundred million dollars for DEI training for teachers,
nine million dollars in a contract for quote Central American
Gender Assessment Services. I don't know what that actually means.
What has been your opinion on the finding so far?
Speaker 2 (11:45):
I think they're outrageous. I share the same outrage that
the American people, do, you know, think about it like this, Ryan,
here we are, we're coming up on April fifteenth, and
many small business owners, many Americans, you know, single moms,
all kinds of people right now are pulling together their
financial paperwork where they're going to get ready to file
(12:05):
their taxes and once again pay the federal government a
bunch of money that they have worked so hard to earn.
And at the same time that that part of the
year is approaching that deadline to pay taxes to the
federal government, here's people learning about ridiculous expenditures of their
(12:26):
hard earned tax dollars, and we're thirty six trillion dollars
in debt. The American people should not only be outraged,
they should be furious. Now it's too much to even comprehend.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Now. Elon Musk originally said he was hoping to cut
two trillion dollars using dog I think I think Congress
does need to get involved in order to hit that amount.
You know, in terms of huge spending cuts, are you
I mean, has any of your fellow members sat there
and said that they want to institute these kinds of
spending cuts to make government more efficient.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Yeah, Actually, it's what we're arguing about. That's what's taking
us so long with our reconciliation budget is we are
trying very hard to figure out how to make cuts
and It's not going to happen overnight. This is something
that's really going to have to be dialed in because
you have to understand, not only do we have to
(13:20):
cut spending, we also have to pass President Trump's Tax
Cuts and Savings Law. We have to put that back
into law because it expires this year. But we're also
adding more tax cuts on top of that. No tax
on tips, no tax on social Security, no tax on overtime.
And President Trump is supporting salt. So these are more
(13:42):
tax cuts that are going to take place on top
of spending cuts, and we just have to make sure
that we've got the numbers right to be able to
deliver on those promises right now.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Democrats have used Elon Musk as a punching bag in
the last couple of weeks, specifically around concerns over federal data,
and some of Republican colleagues of yours have some letters
to constituents saying that they're concerned, what is your opinion
and what is the opinion of the subcommittee when it
comes to oversight, when it comes like handling sensitive data.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Well, you know, it's really ridiculous that the Democrats have
decided to basically make the new bad guy, the man
that is getting involved in trying to save America from
our death fil basically into thirty six million dollars in debt.
It's important to talk about the compounding interest in our debt.
(14:39):
This year alone, the compounding interest is going to be
bigger than our military budget, which is close to nine
hundred billion dollars. So for the Democrats to decide that
they're they're going to make the bad guy, and they're
going to go out there and protests in front of
the Department of Education and the Department of Commerce, and
they're going out there and saying, we're going to to
(15:00):
defend the unelected bureaucrats, We're defending the government. We want
to keep spending this money. Elon Musk is bad. He
is evil. I think that is music to my ears
because I really want to win the midterms Ryan, and
I think the Democrats are definitely going down the wrong
path for making a big fuss over cutting spending.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah, I mean, the image of Chuck Schumer and Maxine
Water is raising their canes in the air.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Not exactly, And think about it. On top of that,
you bring up them, they've been in Congress probably longer
than me and you have been alive, and they're responsible
for the debt, and so it's just laughable. They're just
providing us whenever ending campaign ads that will definitely be beneficial.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
I wonder, though, if there are Democrats on the subcommittee
who do worry about things like you know, Musk has
Musk has not it still runs his businesses and he's
technically got a government employee, and if there's any kind
of conflict of interest around that, is that something that
subcommittee would be interested in picking up or at least
(16:10):
we're viewing and seeing and saying, here's some oversight, here's
some guardrails, because I think that the concern over guardrails
has really reached, at least in the media, a very
very very big concern in some people. Some people have concerned.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
About Oh, I think guardrails are important. That's why the
Oversight Committee we investigated the Biden crime family, right, there
were no guardrails, but in place at all we can
we can look at many Democrats and their connections and
how they make money. I mean, we're looking at like
USAID for example, has funded so many NGOs, has funded
(16:47):
has basically rode alongside the CIA with regime change, in
foreign wars. They have funded many organizations that George Soros
is literally aligned with and running, and we know that
money makes its way back into Democrat campaign offers. I
don't think that there's I don't have any concerns about
(17:08):
Elon Musk. You know they're talking about, Oh, Elon Musk
has people social security numbers. Well, the richest man in
the world is really not going to go out and
set up some account with your grandma's Social Security number.
He just doesn't need to do that.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
So no, I agree. I think the worry over social
security numbers is very kind of a low iq to argument.
It's a very dumb down argument to scare people because
it doesn't really make any sense. And I also think
that we need to reframe what titles are. If only
if you're an NGO, but only all your money comes
from the government, you're not really an NGO.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Well, you're not even a business, just a federally funded program.
It's a handout. Basically, it's kind of like welfare giving
somebody that has three degrees, a master's degree, a PhD.
So they are lit really the product of Marx's Marxism
and Communism and universities and then they go out and
(18:07):
client tell mom and dad that they got our mom
and mom or dad and dad that they got a job.
And it's really a federal funded handout. So we just
as a people need to look at it and go,
we're thirty six trillion dollars in debt. What can we
afford and what can we not afford? Yeah, we can't
afford these these federal handouts for these so called.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Ng its you're listening to it's a numbers game with
Ryan Gradowsky. We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
There was a.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Story in the Washington Post about the fact that they
are looking to possibly people indage are looking to change
the costs and way we do government work with replacing
some human workers with AI. What is your opinion of
replacing workers with federal workers with AI? Do you have
(18:56):
one or is that something of the subcommittee could look
at as a possible, you know, way to change up
and reduce spending. Is obviously AI is much cheaper than
people are.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yeah, it definitely is. I support President Trump and the
federal buyouts for federal workers, and I think that has
been a wise decision. We have to reduce the federal
workforce it's the largest employment in the employer in the
entire country. I think AI can be incredibly helpful. It's
definitely being used in the private sector, from everything of
(19:32):
replacing say, for example, and employees at fast food restaurants,
all the way down to being able to replace construction
workers by printing homes literally building homes. So I think
AI is definitely a solution that we'll be looking at,
and it'll just depend on you know, I don't nail
(19:52):
down always on a broad issue, just depends on how
to solve the problem.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Yeah, no, I agree with you, and I don't want
to give you fedical because I think that's just that's
when reporters use that gotcha questions. I don't want to
give you hypothetical. I just I think that it's a
good question because the federal government doesn't own an AI company,
so everything will be contracted out, and I just you know,
when it comes to all of our federal information, all
of our federal data, I think that having some oversight
(20:19):
over which is what you're on, oversight over these private
companies and AI basically running parts of our federal government
is just worthy of doing. What is your goal, like,
what is your if you could have, if the whole
world had to listen, Margine Taylor Green or the whole
subcommittee of the whole Congress, what it would be your
goal that DOAGE would do by the time it ends
(20:40):
in July fourth, twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
I think the most important thing DOAGE can do is
effectively reduce the size of the federal government and reduced
the spending. It's just so overgrown. It is incredibly massive,
and it really doesn't serve the American people. We also
have to streamline it, especially in the payment processing centers.
(21:05):
This is where all the checks get sent out from
various departments. For example, my hearing on Wednesday on Medicaid
and Medicare, we investigated improper payments and so we looked
in deeply at how hundreds of billions of dollars can
be saved literally by stopping checks from going to dead people,
(21:25):
going to foreign countries, criminal rings that have used Americans
ID and used their stolen their data to create accounts,
and they're literally stealing our money and it's being sent overseas.
This can all be stopped by literally algorithms in our
payment processing departments. And you know, those are the things
(21:49):
we got to do. It's modernization. These are the things
that you do in your private business that makes your
business run more efficient, which increases your revenue and increases
your profit. And so my goal with doged would be
to transform the federal government to be run like a
very successful business and serve its customer, which is the
(22:11):
American people, versus a failing business that's on the verge
of bankruptcy, which is what we are right now.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Right, yeah, no, and it's it's when I've said this
at the beginning of the show. In two thousand, we
were expected to pay off our entire national debt by
twenty twelve, and so obviously that didn't happen, and much
happened in reverse. So I think anything to remedy that
situation at this point would make it happen. And you know,
a lot of Democrats in the media are pushing the
(22:38):
idea that ultimately any kind of reduction in government spending
is going to come with an enormous amount of pain.
Yet there is over fifty billion dollars in medicaid for
all that they just discovered in the Wall Street Journal.
There's all these you know NGOs, as we've talked about,
is there a way to reduce the size and spending
(22:59):
a government without middle America or or middle income people
or lower income people and seniors really being so heavily
impact that they feel the pain. Because we've talked about
having Social Security, no tax social Security, no tax on tips,
tax cuts that help the middle class. You know, what
would you say to the two progressives who say any
(23:20):
cut and spending is going to eventually hurt working class people.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
That's just an absolute lie. Cutting spending is going to
help middle class and low income Americans because it's going
to lower inflation. And so if we lower inflation, that
means grocery costs are going to go down, Electricity costs
are going to go down, the price that the gas
pump is going to go down, and then we're going
(23:45):
to be helping the most vulnerable Americans. No tax on
Social Security is actually the most common sense thing that
we can do for our grandparents. They should never be
paying taxes on these Social Security checks anyways. This is
money that's already been tax This is money that they
should be paid right back, and they shouldn't have to
pay Uncle Sam again, who clearly isn't good with handling
(24:08):
their hard earned money. We're going to be helping those
single moms and people that are really struggling by cutting
the deficit. Growing the economy, which is another very important
piece to this, growing the economy, passing President Trump's Tax
Cuts and Jobs Act, and making sure that we passed
(24:31):
his new tax priorities as well well.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Congressman, I want to thank you so much for being
on here. I really hope that the Subcommittee takes a
look at, especially as we move towards AI over any
kinds of conflicts of interest or which kind of companies
get it. Because the the nation doesn't own an as system,
we're going to contract it out. But I think that
the work that Doge Committee is doing to reduce government
spending is of the utmost necessary because we are going
(24:56):
to be in a in a default very very very soon.
Thank you so much for being here. I really really
appreciate your time. Where can people go to read what
you're doing, what you're working on on Doge?
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Oh? Yeah, thank you so much. Ryan. They can go
to my government website, which is green dot House dot gov.
Green has any on the end. They can subscribe to
my newsletter. That's something that they'll get monthly. They can
also follow on my social media at Rep MTG at
Rep MTG and also our newly formed Doge Committee social
(25:32):
media as well. So those are all the places they
can follow along, and I hope they do. Where You're
going to be doing very great work and I'm looking
forward to it well.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
I can't wait to see what you guys exposed as
far as bad government spending and some of the fireworks
and those subcommittee hearings. Thank you so so much. I
appreciate you being on. Thanks Ryan, Thank you Congressman Margor
Taylor Green for being the show. Was a great episode.
Please like and subscribe and listen every week the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome back to a numbers game with Ryan Grodowski. So,
if you turned on cable news or read a newspaper
the last few weeks, nearly every story straying this White
House has had something to do with Elon Musk and DOGE,
the Department of Government Efficiency. It's important to remember that
DOGE is not actually a government department, So it's not
like the Department of Education or the Interior Department. Most
(00:22):
people don't realize, but it's actually scheduled to end on
July fourth, twenty twenty six. Now, let's examine what DOGE
was created for and what is done. DOGE was created
by an executive order on January twentieth, twenty twenty five,
by President Trump. The executive order states that doge's purpose
is to quote implement the President's DOJ agenda by modernizing
federal technology and software to maximize government efficiency and productivity.
(00:46):
It later goes on to say that DOGE will improve
the IT system, work with agency heads to promote interruptibility
between agency networks and systems, ensure data integrity, and facilitate
responsible data collection and synchronization. Nowhere in the executive order
does DOGE talk about being used as a force to
balance the budget or cancel contracts or like o of
federal workers. It's very clearly a conversation about modernizing and
(01:09):
protecting data to run more efficiency, which is a noble goal,
like the government should try to do that. Yet most
of the conversations surrounding Doge it's about saving money and
stopping inefficient programs. So let's get into the data. Let's
get into the numbers. The US government is currently thirty
six point four trillion dollars in debt, which is a number,
(01:30):
like most people can't think up with thirty six trillion
dollars in debt. It runs a two trillion dollar deficit
every single year. It's not because we don't collect money.
Any taxpayer will tell you we collect money. The federal
government's revenue from taxes is over five trillion dollars a year,
but we spend seven trillion now. According to the Doge clock,
(01:51):
which is a feature from the US deck clock website,
doges estimated savings for the government so far from what
they found is about eighty one billion dollars in waste
fraud abuse. Some analysts say it's like closer to thirty
eight billion, but it's between you know, thirty thirty eight
and eighty one billion, whichever number it is, it's a
lot of money. Pretending like it's not, which some Democrats
(02:14):
are doing, is very stupid, because American taxayers feel like
their money is being wasted on DEI consultants and duplicate programs,
or just showed up being stolen and given to corrupt
oligarchs overseas. But that's your data. That's the hard number.
Thirty six trillion in depth, five trillion taken in through taxes,
seven trillion spent, and two trillion in deficits, with between
(02:36):
thirty eight and eighty one billion dollars in savings from DOGE.
Defenders of these programs such as like USAID, which has
been very heavily unscrutinized by the Doge Committee, I've said
that these programs help promote foreign policy and soft power.
This is Washington d C Speak for you're too stupid
to complain abo how your tax dollars work. So kudos
(02:59):
to anyone looking for bad spending and wasteful and duplicate programs.
This isn't really really important work. However, it's not enough
to balance our budget. It's not even close it's currently
less than half of one percent of the federal deficit.
This is far below the two trillion dollar number that
Elon Musk originally said he hoped Doge could find and
(03:21):
cut from the government. As a millennial who vaguely remembers
the last time he balanced the budget in two thousand
and one, this is frustrating. Bill Clinton actually said in
two thousand he expected to pay down the entire US
debt by twenty twelve because we're running surpluses in the
late nineties and early two thousands, and then of course
we had the Warren terror warre in Iraq, the Bush
(03:42):
tax cuts, Obamacare, cash for clunkers, so on, and so forth.
Administration after administration, and we're in the situation we're in now.
Doge hit a controversy even before it began, first with
the exiting of co chairman of ac Raamaswami. He left
before the administration started. This is after he said a
series of tweets saying that Americans were lazy and unsuccessful
(04:02):
because they let their kids idolize athletes and have sleepovers.
Sources close to me have told me that Doge was
looking for him to get out way before, way before
this actually came out, these tweets came out. He wasn't
what you considered an extremely active participant. You know when
you're like a little you're like a kid and your
little brother wants to play a video game that you're playing,
(04:25):
so but he's terrible, so you give him like a
remote that's not plugged in to the game and tell
him that he's like playing. That was allegedly the relationship
between Elonofek. That's what my sources have told me. Since
starting though in January, Doge's staff has gained access to
many federal departments, taking data, including sensitive data, offering buyouts
to federal workers so they could retire early. They've closed
(04:47):
excess office space or looking to close excess office space,
and canceling contracts that they thought were wasteful. There's a
lot of noise around Doge. The Democrats don't have a
singular message because and that's a real problem for the
Democratic Party if you've paid attention the last few message
for the last few years. But they're very angry about
the accessing data. That the staffers were very young, The
(05:10):
Dough staffers are very young. Some of the Dog staffers
have written very spicy takes on social media that they've
raised concerns about that accessing this federal data and canceling
these contracts is illegal. I want to focus specifically on
the data aspect because a lot of the other stuff
is just political noise. It's not actually relevant that one
of the people who's nineteen wrote something spicy on Twitter
(05:30):
seven months ago, like that doesn't actually matter, but the
accessing federal data could matter. Musk and the Trump administration
said that they had quote read only access to all
the federal data, but reporters had wired so that at
least one dough staffer had the ability to change the
code of the Treasury Department's payment system. Democrats have said
(05:50):
that the staffers were attempting to cut off payments to
programs that were against President Trump's agenda without an Act
of Congress. Federal judge in New York has blocked Doge's
access to the sense of data and the Treasury Department,
while a different federal judge in Washington has declined to
block doge's access to data in the Labor Department. That
Ladder judge did express those concerns that seffrs had not
been properly trained about handling sensitive data. The Washington Post
(06:13):
reported quote Dojes associates have been feeding vast tropes of
government records and databases into artificial intelligence tools, looking for
unwanted federal programs and trying to determine which human work
can be replaced with AI, machine learning tools, or even robots.
Everything that can be machine automated will be machine automated.
So one person speaking to the Post, that raises a
(06:35):
question in my head, this is what I'm concerned about.
Whose AI company are they replacing the workers? Because the
government doesn't own an AI system. That doesn't exist, there's
no federal AI system. It contracts out to other AI companies,
and tech companies have investing billions and billions of dollars
into smarter, faster, and possibly one day self learning AI.
(06:57):
That's like the goal of a lot of tech billionaires
is to have self learning AI. The US has no
comprehensive federal laws governing AI. There are none. While there
are some guidelines in the federal agencies, there's no giant
oversight as to what AI should be doing. It could
be doing that could be a good thing for if
you're an AI investor, a bad thing if you're concerned
(07:19):
with certain issues around AI and how would either a
replacing workers or how it could possibly be interfering in
our lives. That being said, if it's going to replace
our federal workforce with artificial intelligence, if this is the
goal of Doge, whose AI company are we using? Where
are we bidding this for? Because it's not coming from
(07:40):
within the company, within the government. We're not building our
own is it Elon Musks He recently just put a
ninety seven point four billion dollar bid to buy the
assets of a nonprofit that controls open Ai. According to
The New York Times, he's been very interested in building
an AI company. This is something worth asking as we
plunge headfirst into our new world. I think it could
(08:02):
be a real problem when it comes to Doge is
that Democrats and Republicans are really talking past each other
at this moment. Republicans are rightfully concerned about spending because
we are spending way too much, way too much deficit,
way too much debt. They're completely and totally right and
looking past bloated federal agencies to take out the waste
(08:23):
as a noble cause. And while some Democrats are trying
to score political points against Donald Trump, who's enjoying the
most faveriable prole ratings of his entire career. Many are
right to have concerns with this data. But while they're
looking at it from the question of Doge holding a
Social Security number and income record, no one really, I mean,
that's not the real concern. What I'm worried about is
(08:43):
the future of the government brought to us by our
tech overlords. Whose AI company is going to be running
our federal agencies, because it's not one that we've built,
it's not one that comes from within the government, is
one that is contracted from out the government. And if
the people having this access to this quote unquote possibly
read only files or if they're changing coding, if they're
(09:05):
the ones getting access for their companies, that is extremely,
extremely problematic. Hey, we'll be right back after this. I
am beyond excited to have my guests this week, someone
who can talk a lot about Doge. My guest, Congressman
Marjorie Taylor Green from the Great State of Georgia's represents
the fourteenth district since twenty twenty one. Representative Green is
(09:29):
the chairwoman of the Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee. Congressman
thank you for being here, having to be on So
my first first question is very straightforward, how does your
caucus work with DOGE.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Well, I'm on the subcommittee Doge Committee, which is on oversight,
so it's not in caucus.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Right, Sorry, that's what I'm gonna say.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah, Yeah, caucuses are more like clubs and right, sorry
about that. Yeah, So this is this, this is a committee,
and what we will be doing is we'll be doing
the important work in Congress to make DOGE actually effective
from the legislative branch of the government. And I think
this is an incredibly important thing to do because if
(10:16):
DOGE is only functioning in the executive branch, that means
and we're going to have every single Obama and Biden
appointed judge coming out and blocking the important work that
they're trying to do. We're going to have, you know,
through Democrats filing all kinds of lawsuits trying to stop
Elon Musk and Doge, and in any future Democrat administration
(10:41):
can virtually go through and undo everything that's been done
with their executive orders.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
So you're trying to get some of the stuff done
in the legislature where there will be bills to kind
of reduce the spending as well as which I think.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
You're so yes, We've got to do. We've got to
pass bills, get them into law, we have got to
put them in our funding appropriations. We've got to do
everything we can. Congress has got to get on board
with DOGE because the American people voted for it. President
Trump campaigned on it the last few months of his campaign.
(11:15):
It was one of the biggest pieces. And this is
what the American people want, and Republicans need to make
sure we deliver.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
So I think that a lot of Republicans when it
comes to DOJ, they're very interested in the type of
ways our tax dollars are being used. So you have
things like one hundred million dollars for DEI training for teachers,
nine million dollars in a contract for quote Central American
Gender Assessment Services. I don't know what that actually means.
What has been your opinion on the finding so far?
Speaker 2 (11:45):
I think they're outrageous. I share the same outrage that
the American people, do, you know, think about it like this, Ryan,
here we are, we're coming up on April fifteenth, and
many small business owners, many Americans, you know, single moms,
all kinds of people right now are pulling together their
financial paperwork where they're going to get ready to file
(12:05):
their taxes and once again pay the federal government a
bunch of money that they have worked so hard to earn.
And at the same time that that part of the
year is approaching that deadline to pay taxes to the
federal government, here's people learning about ridiculous expenditures of their
(12:26):
hard earned tax dollars, and we're thirty six trillion dollars
in debt. The American people should not only be outraged,
they should be furious. Now it's too much to even comprehend.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Now. Elon Musk originally said he was hoping to cut
two trillion dollars using dog I think I think Congress
does need to get involved in order to hit that amount.
You know, in terms of huge spending cuts, are you
I mean, has any of your fellow members sat there
and said that they want to institute these kinds of
spending cuts to make government more efficient.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Yeah, Actually, it's what we're arguing about. That's what's taking
us so long with our reconciliation budget is we are
trying very hard to figure out how to make cuts
and It's not going to happen overnight. This is something
that's really going to have to be dialed in because
you have to understand, not only do we have to
(13:20):
cut spending, we also have to pass President Trump's Tax
Cuts and Savings Law. We have to put that back
into law because it expires this year. But we're also
adding more tax cuts on top of that. No tax
on tips, no tax on social Security, no tax on overtime.
And President Trump is supporting salt. So these are more
(13:42):
tax cuts that are going to take place on top
of spending cuts, and we just have to make sure
that we've got the numbers right to be able to
deliver on those promises right now.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Democrats have used Elon Musk as a punching bag in
the last couple of weeks, specifically around concerns over federal data,
and some of Republican colleagues of yours have some letters
to constituents saying that they're concerned, what is your opinion
and what is the opinion of the subcommittee when it
comes to oversight, when it comes like handling sensitive data.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Well, you know, it's really ridiculous that the Democrats have
decided to basically make the new bad guy, the man
that is getting involved in trying to save America from
our death fil basically into thirty six million dollars in debt.
It's important to talk about the compounding interest in our debt.
(14:39):
This year alone, the compounding interest is going to be
bigger than our military budget, which is close to nine
hundred billion dollars. So for the Democrats to decide that
they're they're going to make the bad guy, and they're
going to go out there and protests in front of
the Department of Education and the Department of Commerce, and
they're going out there and saying, we're going to to
(15:00):
defend the unelected bureaucrats, We're defending the government. We want
to keep spending this money. Elon Musk is bad. He
is evil. I think that is music to my ears
because I really want to win the midterms Ryan, and
I think the Democrats are definitely going down the wrong
path for making a big fuss over cutting spending.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah, I mean, the image of Chuck Schumer and Maxine
Water is raising their canes in the air.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Not exactly, And think about it. On top of that,
you bring up them, they've been in Congress probably longer
than me and you have been alive, and they're responsible
for the debt, and so it's just laughable. They're just
providing us whenever ending campaign ads that will definitely be beneficial.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
I wonder, though, if there are Democrats on the subcommittee
who do worry about things like you know, Musk has
Musk has not it still runs his businesses and he's
technically got a government employee, and if there's any kind
of conflict of interest around that, is that something that
subcommittee would be interested in picking up or at least
(16:10):
we're viewing and seeing and saying, here's some oversight, here's
some guardrails, because I think that the concern over guardrails
has really reached, at least in the media, a very
very very big concern in some people. Some people have concerned.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
About Oh, I think guardrails are important. That's why the
Oversight Committee we investigated the Biden crime family, right, there
were no guardrails, but in place at all we can
we can look at many Democrats and their connections and
how they make money. I mean, we're looking at like
USAID for example, has funded so many NGOs, has funded
(16:47):
has basically rode alongside the CIA with regime change, in
foreign wars. They have funded many organizations that George Soros
is literally aligned with and running, and we know that
money makes its way back into Democrat campaign offers. I
don't think that there's I don't have any concerns about
(17:08):
Elon Musk. You know they're talking about, Oh, Elon Musk
has people social security numbers. Well, the richest man in
the world is really not going to go out and
set up some account with your grandma's Social Security number.
He just doesn't need to do that.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
So no, I agree. I think the worry over social
security numbers is very kind of a low iq to argument.
It's a very dumb down argument to scare people because
it doesn't really make any sense. And I also think
that we need to reframe what titles are. If only
if you're an NGO, but only all your money comes
from the government, you're not really an NGO.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Well, you're not even a business, just a federally funded program.
It's a handout. Basically, it's kind of like welfare giving
somebody that has three degrees, a master's degree, a PhD.
So they are lit really the product of Marx's Marxism
and Communism and universities and then they go out and
(18:07):
client tell mom and dad that they got our mom
and mom or dad and dad that they got a job.
And it's really a federal funded handout. So we just
as a people need to look at it and go,
we're thirty six trillion dollars in debt. What can we
afford and what can we not afford? Yeah, we can't
afford these these federal handouts for these so called.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Ng its you're listening to it's a numbers game with
Ryan Gradowsky. We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
There was a.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Story in the Washington Post about the fact that they
are looking to possibly people indage are looking to change
the costs and way we do government work with replacing
some human workers with AI. What is your opinion of
replacing workers with federal workers with AI? Do you have
(18:56):
one or is that something of the subcommittee could look
at as a possible, you know, way to change up
and reduce spending. Is obviously AI is much cheaper than
people are.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yeah, it definitely is. I support President Trump and the
federal buyouts for federal workers, and I think that has
been a wise decision. We have to reduce the federal
workforce it's the largest employment in the employer in the
entire country. I think AI can be incredibly helpful. It's
definitely being used in the private sector, from everything of
(19:32):
replacing say, for example, and employees at fast food restaurants,
all the way down to being able to replace construction
workers by printing homes literally building homes. So I think
AI is definitely a solution that we'll be looking at,
and it'll just depend on you know, I don't nail
(19:52):
down always on a broad issue, just depends on how
to solve the problem.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Yeah, no, I agree with you, and I don't want
to give you fedical because I think that's just that's
when reporters use that gotcha questions. I don't want to
give you hypothetical. I just I think that it's a
good question because the federal government doesn't own an AI company,
so everything will be contracted out, and I just you know,
when it comes to all of our federal information, all
of our federal data, I think that having some oversight
(20:19):
over which is what you're on, oversight over these private
companies and AI basically running parts of our federal government
is just worthy of doing. What is your goal, like,
what is your if you could have, if the whole
world had to listen, Margine Taylor Green or the whole
subcommittee of the whole Congress, what it would be your
goal that DOAGE would do by the time it ends
(20:40):
in July fourth, twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
I think the most important thing DOAGE can do is
effectively reduce the size of the federal government and reduced
the spending. It's just so overgrown. It is incredibly massive,
and it really doesn't serve the American people. We also
have to streamline it, especially in the payment processing centers.
(21:05):
This is where all the checks get sent out from
various departments. For example, my hearing on Wednesday on Medicaid
and Medicare, we investigated improper payments and so we looked
in deeply at how hundreds of billions of dollars can
be saved literally by stopping checks from going to dead people,
(21:25):
going to foreign countries, criminal rings that have used Americans
ID and used their stolen their data to create accounts,
and they're literally stealing our money and it's being sent overseas.
This can all be stopped by literally algorithms in our
payment processing departments. And you know, those are the things
(21:49):
we got to do. It's modernization. These are the things
that you do in your private business that makes your
business run more efficient, which increases your revenue and increases
your profit. And so my goal with doged would be
to transform the federal government to be run like a
very successful business and serve its customer, which is the
(22:11):
American people, versus a failing business that's on the verge
of bankruptcy, which is what we are right now.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Right, yeah, no, and it's it's when I've said this
at the beginning of the show. In two thousand, we
were expected to pay off our entire national debt by
twenty twelve, and so obviously that didn't happen, and much
happened in reverse. So I think anything to remedy that
situation at this point would make it happen. And you know,
a lot of Democrats in the media are pushing the
(22:38):
idea that ultimately any kind of reduction in government spending
is going to come with an enormous amount of pain.
Yet there is over fifty billion dollars in medicaid for
all that they just discovered in the Wall Street Journal.
There's all these you know NGOs, as we've talked about,
is there a way to reduce the size and spending
(22:59):
a government without middle America or or middle income people
or lower income people and seniors really being so heavily
impact that they feel the pain. Because we've talked about
having Social Security, no tax social Security, no tax on tips,
tax cuts that help the middle class. You know, what
would you say to the two progressives who say any
(23:20):
cut and spending is going to eventually hurt working class people.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
That's just an absolute lie. Cutting spending is going to
help middle class and low income Americans because it's going
to lower inflation. And so if we lower inflation, that
means grocery costs are going to go down, Electricity costs
are going to go down, the price that the gas
pump is going to go down, and then we're going
(23:45):
to be helping the most vulnerable Americans. No tax on
Social Security is actually the most common sense thing that
we can do for our grandparents. They should never be
paying taxes on these Social Security checks anyways. This is
money that's already been tax This is money that they
should be paid right back, and they shouldn't have to
pay Uncle Sam again, who clearly isn't good with handling
(24:08):
their hard earned money. We're going to be helping those
single moms and people that are really struggling by cutting
the deficit. Growing the economy, which is another very important
piece to this, growing the economy, passing President Trump's Tax
Cuts and Jobs Act, and making sure that we passed
(24:31):
his new tax priorities as well well.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Congressman, I want to thank you so much for being
on here. I really hope that the Subcommittee takes a
look at, especially as we move towards AI over any
kinds of conflicts of interest or which kind of companies
get it. Because the the nation doesn't own an as system,
we're going to contract it out. But I think that
the work that Doge Committee is doing to reduce government
spending is of the utmost necessary because we are going
(24:56):
to be in a in a default very very very soon.
Thank you so much for being here. I really really
appreciate your time. Where can people go to read what
you're doing, what you're working on on Doge?
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Oh? Yeah, thank you so much. Ryan. They can go
to my government website, which is green dot House dot gov.
Green has any on the end. They can subscribe to
my newsletter. That's something that they'll get monthly. They can
also follow on my social media at Rep MTG at
Rep MTG and also our newly formed Doge Committee social
(25:32):
media as well. So those are all the places they
can follow along, and I hope they do. Where You're
going to be doing very great work and I'm looking
forward to it well.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
I can't wait to see what you guys exposed as
far as bad government spending and some of the fireworks
and those subcommittee hearings. Thank you so so much. I
appreciate you being on. Thanks Ryan, Thank you Congressman Margor
Taylor Green for being the show. Was a great episode.
Please like and subscribe and listen every week the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Gill Alexander
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