How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted $6.5 trillion Harris Biden budget? Well, I think we can do at least 2 trillion. Yeah. Yes. 2 trillion. [00:00:15] Your money is being wasted and the Department of Government deficiency is going to fix that. Ooh. Yikes. Okay. Not only has Doge failed to cut anywhere near $2 trillion from the federal budget, [00:00:31] but federal spending. Spending has actually increased during Trump's first 100 days, according to a new CBS analysis. So they found that despite repeated promises to cut spending, President Trump's federal government has spent about $220 billion more [00:00:48] in his first 100 days compared to the same time period last year. So take a look at this graph from CBS. This shows day by day cumulative spending in Trump's first 100 days in office, and CBS reports the government is now spending more day to day than was [00:01:05] spent in nine of the last ten years. The exception was 2021, when the government was spending trillions to fight the coronavirus pandemic and prevent an economic disaster. Okay, John, but let's be fair. Not all of this can just be blamed on Donald Trump and this administration. [00:01:23] Some of the largest persistently rising costs can be attributed to things like military and veterans benefits, health care, social security and servicing of the massive national debt. But those persistently rising costs make Ellen's initial claim that he could [00:01:39] cut $2 trillion from the federal budget that much more ridiculous. I just feel like when he says things like $2 trillion, no one even knows how much money that is. It just sounds good. But it's a it's like a crazy big number. You can't wrap your head around that much money. Meanwhile, Doege is claiming that they have saved [00:01:57] the federal government $160 billion. But the evidence for that just is not there. Here is CBS data journalist John Kelly to show you. We looked at the that the claims that the Department of Government Efficiency has made. [00:02:13] The department has a website where they give the site, they cite the numbers and and those numbers, you know, only about 40%, less than 40% of what has been claimed as saved is itemized in a way that you can really check into it. [00:02:30] So even the conservative leaning American Enterprise Institute estimates that Doge has only cut $80 billion. And even if the $160 billion figure was accurate, that's still just a tiny slice of overall federal spending. More from CBS, who say the advertised savings represents less than 2% [00:02:49] of a full year's national budget. That's akin to a family of with $10,000 in monthly spending, trimming its bills by just $200 a month. So what Doge has done is dismantle agencies including US aid, [00:03:05] HUD, FDA, CFPB, education, and the FDA. They've also terminated 120,000 federal employees, but that might end up backfiring. Who knew? Because an independent analysis by the partnership for Public Service, [00:03:22] a nonpartisan nonprofit, also reported recently that the disruptions caused by the DOJ's cuts may have cost taxpayers $135 million. Very, very cool job well done. Elon Musk, thank you very much. So, John, you know, we always knew that the Doge initiative was let's say it was [00:03:41] ambitious at best but dishonest at worst. And I'm going to say that they've been leaning more towards that dishonest side a little bit more. And I'm trying to be nice here, because even with all of Elon's claims of complete transparency, the agency has long been dogged. [00:03:58] I can't tell if that was an intentional pun or not, but he was dogged by reports that the numbers on the Doge Cost Saving Tracker website don't actually reflect the actual figures, and even after Doge was made aware of the discrepancies. They did not edit their numbers on their website. [00:04:14] So what I'm concerned about now is that, you know, like it's fun to celebrate this sort of like and I told you that they were lying to you moment. But first of all, where is all the money going? We can account for a lot of it, but unfortunately, I feel like this is just going to give Doge and the Trump administration even [00:04:31] more of a justification to do the things that they've already said they want to do, like cut programs like Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, and that military and veteran spending all in the name of government efficiency. And I feel like people don't know the difference anymore between efficient [00:04:47] spending and just spending on things that people actually want and need and really depend on. Right. So trying to run a more efficient government isn't supposed to mean the same thing as cutting entire programs and departments. So do you think that this is where that's headed? [00:05:03] Do you think that, you know, maybe you're more optimistic than I am, but I am worried about this. I mean, it's possible Elon Musk is getting bored and he moved out of the white House and everything. Maybe he won't even want to be doing this in six months. But, yeah, I mean, it's it's in a bad spot right now and it'll probably get worse. [00:05:19] I mean, everything is, you said that, you know, at worst, it's dishonest. I think at first it's dishonest. The intent was dishonest and corrupt. You should not trust a single word that comes out of Elon Musk's mouth in advance of a project while it's going on. [00:05:36] In retrospect, he is the world's biggest liar right up there on the S plus tier with Donald Trump. And it's just it's top to bottom here. I mean, we'll I want to go back to that extra 220 billion that they're spending, including jacking up the military budget by $150 billion. [00:05:51] As you talk about the need to tighten our belts or whatever. But but all of this is just a massive lie, like so I understand why people are taking these. The revelation that they've cut less than they said they would is potentially a good thing, because from our point of view, the cuts have been so chaotic that if they [00:06:07] were bigger, that would be worse, right. But then but then we even cede ground by saying like, okay, well, I guess they've cut 160 or maybe 80, but that's only a small slice. But even that is giving them too much. Like believing that every cut is good is as dishonest, I think, as believing [00:06:27] that every tax is bad or whatever. It just doesn't make sense. Like if we if we say, okay, well, I guess they've cut $80 billion. It's not much, but it's something. Yeah, but but what is it like if I aim to lose 60 pounds and I don't quite hit it, but I do lose five, but I do so by hacking off my foot. [00:06:45] That's not good. Like I'm not better off as a result of that. I mean, I guess on the on the chart, I've lost weight, but I needed that foot. Now, I don't know what to do with my other shoe, and I feel like that's the position America is in. We needed those programs. I don't care that it's only $80 billion. [00:07:01] I care that it's $80 billion of children's cancer research and the National Weather Weather Service and our ability to respond to pandemics and on and on and on. The IRS, for instance, all of these things, the cuts, whatever cuts they are, are utterly corrupt in their motivations. [00:07:17] And so that's all bad. The extra spending. BS. I think that you're a little bit right to point out that some of that is naturally increasing costs, although the fact that the the budget jumped up so much in one year doesn't feel like a natural evolution of these costs to me, and also the naturally evolving costs, [00:07:33] military and veterans benefits. Well, we could have been dialing back some of the military spending for years and years, but his movement has never allowed that. So I am going to blame him. And the ideological, you know, movement that he's a part of on that a little bit, servicing the massive national debt, he said he would get rid of the national debt in his first term. [00:07:48] Instead, he added like $8 trillion to it. So I am going to blame him for quite a bit of the cost to service the debt. And I'll give him credit on Social Security. He would like to reduce how much we have to pay into it by cutting it massively. So I will give him credit on that. And that was obviously very sarcastic. [00:08:05] Yeah. And you know, not to beat your analogy to death, but now without your foot, you're going to have a lot harder time losing the extra weight in the first place, right? Like you've already handicapped yourself. And that's exactly what I feel like Doge has done to our government. We are running less efficiently Sufficiently. [00:08:20] Without all these people in positions. We've lost a lot of experts. We've lost a lot of expertise, a lot of these departments. We're really going to find out in the next coming months and years how well we can actually function without them. I know personally I live along the Gulf Coast. [00:08:35] I'm not looking forward to hurricane season this year because, you know, we don't have our weather people anymore. You know, like, I don't know how they think things are supposed to run. And I don't know why people believe that this is how an efficient government is supposed to run like this. Doesn't make any sense to me. And then on top of that, now you have Elon Musk, who has a reportedly packed up all [00:08:55] of his stuff and moved out of the white House or Mar a Lago, wherever he was. Who knows what he's about to go do, but he's going to go try and save his his his tanking business right now. How is Doge going to be run now? We don't really know. Allegedly, Elon Musk was never in charge of it to begin with, you know, so there [00:09:11] was always a lot of mystery surrounding Doge and their operations, even though, again, they preach full transparency. But here we are now. And, you know, we have we're bleeding departments. We're were bleeding, experts were bleeding. People who have been in these government positions for decades sometimes. [00:09:29] Right. And we're going to all have to figure out how to get along without them. And this is not efficiency, because a lot of times whenever you you lose a lot of those people, you end up having to pay a lot more, either in time or money to compensate for those losses. [00:09:45] So it's not looking great. So any final thoughts before we go to break John. Yeah, I agree that it's not looking great. And I think this already looks chaotic and dishonest and corrupt right now. And as people, you know, lose access to those services, as you say, [00:10:01] as the natural disasters start to hit. And we have just, you know, government failure piling up on government failure like that is just going to contribute to the perception that the government doesn't even work to the limited extent that it used to. And I think that that is both going to hurt regular people and also hurt the Republicans as we move towards the midterms. [00:10:19] Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets its wings. Totally not true, but it does keep you updated on our live shows.