Speaker 1: And we're going to be signing a very important deal today.
Speaker 2: It's DOGE, and I'm going to ask Elon to tell
Speaker 2: you a little bit about it. Acolytes of Elon Musk,
Speaker 2: working in the Department of Government Efficiency are currently gutting
Speaker 2: the US government, with Elon Musk claiming he'll find savings
Speaker 2: of up to two trillion dollars the deficit.
Speaker 3: So we've got a two twellion dollars deficit and if
Speaker 3: we don't do something about this deficit, country's going bankrupt.
Speaker 2: Department by department, DOGE staff, mostly young men from the
Speaker 2: tech world, are sacking federal workers and gaining access to
Speaker 2: some of the government's most sensitive information. Victoria Elliott is
Speaker 2: a reporter for Wired covering platforms and power. She's been
Speaker 2: tracking the Silicon Valley figures for reshaping the US government
Speaker 2: and finding out what it means for the future of
Speaker 2: her country. From Schwartz Media, I'm Daniel James. This is
Speaker 2: seven am. It's Monday, March seventeen, and this is part
Speaker 2: one of a two part interview Victory. You've been following
Speaker 2: the workings of the Department of Government Efficiency al Maustage
Speaker 2: as it's been gutting the US government. Can you paint
Speaker 2: me a picture of what's been happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, first things first, is that what we
Speaker 1: think of as DOGE used to be the US Digital Service,
Speaker 1: and when Trump was inaugurated, he transformed that into a
Speaker 1: new thing, the US Doage Service.
Speaker 2: We want to get it done.
Speaker 3: This is an order creating and implementing the Department of
Speaker 3: Governmental Efficiency known as DOGE.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's a big one.
Speaker 1: And then within that they created a temporary organization which
Speaker 1: gives them the ability to hire special government employees. So
Speaker 1: those are people brought in unlimited term contracts, generally for
Speaker 1: around one hundred and thirty days, and they not subject
Speaker 1: to the same transparency requirements as regular government employees, and
Speaker 1: sort of the expectation is that they're there for a
Speaker 1: limited duration that can be paid or unpaid, and then
Speaker 1: you know they'll leave. And what it means is that
Speaker 1: you sort of have this whole group mostly made up
Speaker 1: of what appear to be special government employees, going from
Speaker 1: agency to agency, starting with the Office of Personnel Management
Speaker 1: the PM, which is sort of the HR service of
Speaker 1: the government, and the General Services Administration, which handles things
Speaker 1: like its properties and it's it and moving from there
Speaker 1: out into these other agencies accessing their data as these
Speaker 1: organizations are also being asked to reduce their manpower by
Speaker 1: the Trump administration.
Speaker 2: Right, so, who are these DOGE staffers that are being
Speaker 2: brought in and who are the exactly made? Where are
Speaker 2: I from? And how have I recruited?
Speaker 1: So initially with the sort of DOGE strikeforce that we
Speaker 1: first saw, we were really looking at people who were
Speaker 1: connected to Silicon Valley, oftentimes through Musk. So for instance,
Speaker 1: Thomas shed who's at GSA, he worked for Tesla. The
Speaker 1: engineers that we found at the Federal Aviation Administration, they
Speaker 1: came from SpaceX. And then you have some of these
Speaker 1: younger guys who were twenty five and under. Some of
Speaker 1: them came from other tech companies. These young engineers were
Speaker 1: reportedly hand picked by Elon Musk, and the oldest is
Speaker 1: just twenty five years old, and some of them are
Speaker 1: reportedly still in college. Seems like a recent high school
Speaker 1: graduate is determining whether.
Speaker 4: Career civil servants have sufficiently justified their jobs.
Speaker 2: And Elon Musk has helping him. Mrs Young as nineteen
Speaker 2: years old. They're very smart, located, they're like you.
Speaker 1: They're very smart thing. Others of them came from interning
Speaker 1: with SpaceX, another from Pallenteer, which is run by Peter Teel,
Speaker 1: who is a close Musk ally. He runs Palenteer, which
Speaker 1: is a big a company that has billions of dollars
Speaker 1: in government contracts, particularly with the military. And then outside
Speaker 1: of Musk and his companies and the companies of his allies,
Speaker 1: we're also seeing, you know, now as things have progressed,
Speaker 1: more and more lawyers who are sort of more traditionally
Speaker 1: Trump alined, people like people from the Heritage Foundation, which
Speaker 1: is a conservative think tank, you know, people who are
Speaker 1: backed by those entities. So DOUGE is technical staff, and
Speaker 1: then on top of that, what we're now seeing is
Speaker 1: sort of an expansion of its legal heft.
Speaker 2: Talk to me about the excess that these staff as
Speaker 2: have been receiving to do this task of cutting government waste,
Speaker 2: as the administration would put it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So what we do know is that they are
Speaker 1: getting into very sensitive systems. And so, for instance, at
Speaker 1: the Treasury, we knew that one of the DOGE members,
Speaker 1: Marco Ales, had access to really sensitive payment systems and
Speaker 1: Treasury for those who are not in the US, you
Speaker 1: know that controls like you know, getting your tax refunds
Speaker 1: Social Security. We're looking at about six trillion dollars worth
Speaker 1: of payments process through that system every year, and ultimately,
Speaker 1: like having someone in that system means they could have
Speaker 1: theoretically turned that off.
Speaker 4: We also have some breaking news this morning. We've talked
Speaker 4: earlier in the show about USAID. It's uncertain fate. We've
Speaker 4: just confirmed an email went out early this morning to
Speaker 4: staff saying do not come in. Headquarters will be closed
Speaker 4: this morning. You have to work remotely where and Elon
Speaker 4: Musk is saying in his face is last night so
Speaker 4: that Donald Trump agreed with him to shut down the
Speaker 4: entire agency.
Speaker 1: One of the big things that you know, we can
Speaker 1: already see is with USAID. You know, that is an
Speaker 1: agency that is created by and funded by Congress, that's
Speaker 1: already been determined, people have voted on, and that's what
Speaker 1: our budget is for. And the idea that DOGE could
Speaker 1: go in basically shut off payments for that and shutter
Speaker 1: the agency that has manifold effects and that changes people's lives.
Speaker 1: There are people in other parts of the world who
Speaker 1: will not receive medicine, will not receive food because the
Speaker 1: US is not sending money that it had promised to.
Speaker 2: Send coming up after the break. Job cuts won't save
Speaker 2: a trillion dollars? So what else is in the firing line? Hi?
Speaker 5: Ruby Jones. Here, seven Am tells stories that need to
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Speaker 2: Let's talk about the wave of government layoffs and cuts
Speaker 2: that have been undertaged as part of this DOGE project.
Speaker 2: What have we seen so far in terms of cuts
Speaker 2: to employees and government layoffs.
Speaker 1: Well, we've seen a lot of riffs production enforces. All
Speaker 1: the agencies were required to send in riff plans for
Speaker 1: how they're going to cut staff. So even if the
Speaker 1: riff hasn't happened yet, there are major plans to cut
Speaker 1: staffing in government. And then of course we saw the
Speaker 1: buyout offer, which you know told people you know, if
Speaker 1: you agree to take a buyout, you'll get paid through September,
Speaker 1: et cetera, which is I think particularly difficult because that's
Speaker 1: something that Musk also did when he took over Twitter,
Speaker 1: and as it turned out, a lot of former Twitter
Speaker 1: employees had to fight tooth and nail for that agreement
Speaker 1: to be honored after they left. And then on top
Speaker 1: of that, you know, we're seeing thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: federal workers leave because this is demoralizing because even if
Speaker 1: they are maybe not being targeted right now with reductions,
Speaker 1: they don't want to work in this environment or they feel,
Speaker 1: you know, morally uncomfortable working in this environment. So I
Speaker 1: think we're seeing a massive reduction in the federal workforce
Speaker 1: at a rate that we probably haven't seen, at least
Speaker 1: not that I can remember in my lifetime.
Speaker 2: So Himes will tripping the headcamt site because Dige is
Speaker 2: promising the cut one, potentially two trillion dollars from the
Speaker 2: federal budget, and where else will Dodge fond the sightings
Speaker 2: that they're promising.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the thing. Two trillion dollars is more than
Speaker 1: the entire discretionary budget in twenty twenty three, and by
Speaker 1: that I mean the budget ballparks around seven trillion dollars,
Speaker 1: and most of that is locked in. It is entitlement spending,
Speaker 1: so Medicare, Medicaid, social Security, it's interest on debt, and
Speaker 1: some of its military spending. Everything else, whether that's USAID,
Speaker 1: the Department of Energy, or the National Institutes of Health,
Speaker 1: every other government service is in that one point seven
Speaker 1: trillion of discretionary funds. So initially Musk said they were
Speaker 1: going to try and put two trillion. It's now down
Speaker 1: to one trillion. But even then, you're not going to
Speaker 1: get into that without doing things like cutting social Security,
Speaker 1: cutting retired people's benefits. And there's a reason that Musk
Speaker 1: has now recently sort of started floating language around how
Speaker 1: maybe those sort of benefits need to be curtailed.
Speaker 3: Which is most of the federal spending is entitlements. So
Speaker 3: that's like the big one to eliminate is that that's
Speaker 3: the sort of half trillion, maybe sixcess seven hundred.
Speaker 2: Billion a year.
Speaker 1: A thing that I think a lot about is, you know,
Speaker 1: Musc will go on Twitter and be like, oh, we
Speaker 1: were spending five million dollars on you know, insert name
Speaker 1: of project. That sounds really stupid or wasteful right, five
Speaker 1: million dollars, But five million dollars compared to seven trillion
Speaker 1: dollars is nothing. Foreign aid, for instance, constitutes less than
Speaker 1: one percent of the US budget, less than one percent.
Speaker 1: It's like going to the airport with an overstuffed bag
Speaker 1: and when they tell you I'm so sorry your bag
Speaker 1: is overweight, you say, I'll just take out my underwear.
Speaker 1: It will make no difference. You will still pay that
Speaker 1: overcharge fee and you will not have underwear. Giving people
Speaker 1: the raw numbers in that way is misleading, because of course,
Speaker 1: any normal American who makes sixty five thousand dollars a
Speaker 1: year is going to think wasting five million dollars on
Speaker 1: some country that they've never been to feel stupid. But
Speaker 1: you know, for someone like Musk, who is a centi
Speaker 1: billionaire who has hundreds of billions of dollars, even for him,
Speaker 1: five million dollars is nothing. He could say, he could
Speaker 1: fund that whole program. So I think it's really misleading,
Speaker 1: and I think that's all sort of part of the game.
Speaker 2: This is part one of that interview with WAD reporter
Speaker 2: Victoria Elliott. In part two, we find out the reel
Speaker 2: end game for Doje and Ela Musk.
Speaker 1: Musk has spent several years talking about how quote unquote
Speaker 1: unelected bureaucrats are the problem. But for someone like Musk
Speaker 1: and many other people in Silicon Valley many other rich people,
Speaker 1: those unelected bureaucrats are also the people that enforce rules.
Speaker 1: They tack them, they investigate them when their companies do
Speaker 1: something wrong. Musk and people like him benefit from these
Speaker 1: agencies being gutted, specifically because they no longer have the
Speaker 1: power to keep businesses like his in check.
Speaker 2: Part two is in your feed right now. Look for
Speaker 2: what happens to America if DODE succeeds. I'm Daniel James.
Speaker 2: This is seven am. Thanks for listening.