Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
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Speaker 3: Child with your.
Speaker 2: Host show Steward.
Speaker 4: Oh, we are back from break our jewel, little cut shirt.
Speaker 1: We are back, Ladies and gentlemen, Women of the deal. Jo.
Speaker 1: Mine is Jonespirh. We have got a show for you tonight.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be joined.
Speaker 4: Later by Rupa Barataria. She is the legal director of all.
Speaker 5: They They know there about a Charias Lego, director of
Speaker 5: Georgetown Laws, an institute for constitutional advocacy and protection.
Speaker 4: I know her as the individual who took over administrating
Speaker 4: the nine elevens of Droga Act, Victims Compensation and health
Speaker 4: care fund for nine eleven first responders and all the
Speaker 4: people that lived down at Ground zero and Pennsylvania the Pentagons.
Speaker 1: So deep state. She is deep state and I am
Speaker 1: going to take it to her.
Speaker 4: The first Today, the United Nations marked the third anniversary
Speaker 4: of the invasion of Ukraine by doing the only thing
Speaker 4: the United Nations can do, passing a non binding resolution
Speaker 4: asking Russia.
Speaker 1: To please stop, please take that putin.
Speaker 4: Interesting, though, among the countries voting against the resolution were
Speaker 4: North Korea, Belarus, Russia obviously, and the United States of America.
Speaker 1: They're saying Bruce, But.
Speaker 4: I guess America doesn't want to set the precedent of
Speaker 4: opposing bloody land grabs.
Speaker 1: So green and landy.
Speaker 4: But hey, century being the good guys in America, you
Speaker 4: know whatever. It's not the only thing Donald Trump is
Speaker 4: busy disrupting these days. As you know, the Doge Project,
Speaker 4: the Department of Government Efficiency, headed up by the nick
Speaker 4: cannon of white people, Elon mush.
Speaker 1: He's in.
Speaker 4: It's in full effect, and it may surprise you, I,
Speaker 4: for one, happen to be quite frankly Doge curious. I'm
Speaker 4: actually somewhat Doge adjacent. So, mister President, if you would, we.
Speaker 1: Have to solve the efficiency problem.
Speaker 6: We have to solve the fraud, waste, abuse, all the
Speaker 6: things that have gone into the government.
Speaker 4: Yes, Now, if you had woken up from a coma
Speaker 4: and heard nothing else that this man had said for
Speaker 4: the last ten years, you might think to yourself, I
Speaker 4: like this guy, I too believe government needs to be
Speaker 4: more efficient to weed out waste, fraud, and abuse and
Speaker 4: deliver the necessary services that Americans rely on more.
Speaker 1: Agilely so what do we do?
Speaker 6: First?
Speaker 4: Report through the Inspector General's reports that have addressed these things,
Speaker 4: utilize computerishness to excise redundancies in the system, find ways
Speaker 4: to more efficiently deliver the government assistant.
Speaker 1: So many Americans rely on what's first?
Speaker 7: Elon Musk and his Doze team firing thousands of federal workers.
Speaker 8: They're trying to cut ten percent of the federal workforce,
Speaker 8: which is two hundred thousand jobs.
Speaker 1: Oh, have we determined if those are effective workers? Is
Speaker 1: it based on performance?
Speaker 4: Are you going in with the scalpels so that we
Speaker 4: don't hit any vessels and vital organs?
Speaker 9: This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy thirds.
Speaker 1: All, so straight amputation. We're just amputation.
Speaker 4: It's like we're treating public servants as some kind of underclass.
Speaker 8: The DC creature is like an animal infested with ticks
Speaker 8: and parasites. Our money is lining these swamp creatures pockets.
Speaker 8: You know what you call someone who sucks up resources
Speaker 8: in return for nothing, You call them a parasite.
Speaker 10: And that is what the federal workforce has become. These saboteurs,
Speaker 10: the dead enders, the DEI undercover agents.
Speaker 6: The fraudsters, liars, use globalists and deep state bureaucrats are
Speaker 6: being sent backing, Yeah.
Speaker 1: You.
Speaker 4: Guy who tests water for appropriate levels of fecal matter?
Speaker 1: What are we talking about?
Speaker 4: What you know? This is a stark emotional whiplash from
Speaker 4: looking for efficiencies. But apparently our nation civil service is
Speaker 4: now synonymous with waste, fraud and abuse, and magaworld is
Speaker 4: celebrating with maximum folksy.
Speaker 3: The gravy train. For a lot of these folks, it's
Speaker 3: been on biscuit wheels.
Speaker 1: It's about to run off the dead gum tracks, and
Speaker 1: it's about town.
Speaker 4: First of all, there is no way you actually talk
Speaker 4: like that. No way, you're a congressman from Tennessee. You
Speaker 4: didn't spring fully formed out of a primordial cracker barrel. Oh,
Speaker 4: this help burocra see is a shot uga chook shoo.
Speaker 1: To a props boil on the flapjacks.
Speaker 4: I'm just stringing food words together like nonsense.
Speaker 1: Other reactions were just creepy.
Speaker 10: Those just dishing out spankings like Daddy Daycare.
Speaker 4: I don't remember the spanking scene from Daddy Daycare. Oh
Speaker 4: you must mean the gay porn film Daddy Daycare. I've
Speaker 4: got it, Jesse, I get it. You were watching the
Speaker 4: film that answers the question what would happen if a
Speaker 4: bunch of dudes in a daycare?
Speaker 1: And it's just stuck in your head.
Speaker 4: You know, I gotta tell you, I feel like you
Speaker 4: can make efficiency recommendations or cuts without necessarily demonizing the
Speaker 4: people who are only carrying out Congress's wishes.
Speaker 1: But I feel like that they don't.
Speaker 4: Here's Donald Trump's new Director of the Offices of Management
Speaker 4: and Budget on his feelings about everyone who works for him.
Speaker 3: We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected when they
Speaker 3: work up in the morning.
Speaker 1: We want them to not want to go to.
Speaker 4: Work mission accomplished, because these workers are the worst, a
Speaker 4: hive of scumming villainy.
Speaker 1: Star Wars reference mostly scum and villainy, just not the workers.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 10: Let me tell you a story about Chris. He's gonna
Speaker 10: get dozed. And this guy's not a DEI consultant. This
Speaker 10: guy's not a climate consultant. I finally felt one person
Speaker 10: I knew that got doze, and it.
Speaker 1: Hit me in the heart.
Speaker 10: We just need to be a little bit less callous
Speaker 10: with the way, Harold, we talk about dozing people.
Speaker 1: Do you watch your show.
Speaker 4: Yes, you certainly want to be callous, like referring to
Speaker 4: someone losing their livelihood as being a child being spanked
Speaker 4: at daycare.
Speaker 1: But I guess that's just the price of efficiency.
Speaker 4: Doze is dropping force guided bombs into the thermal exhaust port.
Speaker 1: That is the death star of our bureaucracy.
Speaker 4: I love Star Wars, I just love the far but
Speaker 4: Dozes Jedi level shit man. The FDA is looking to
Speaker 4: rehire around three hundred people. The Trump administration will reverse
Speaker 4: staffing cuts to the nine to eleven Health Fund.
Speaker 8: Hundreds of workers at the National Nuclear Security Administration fired,
Speaker 8: then nearly all will rehired days later.
Speaker 7: The Veterans Affairs Apartment reinstated terminated employees, and the USDA
Speaker 7: is rescinding termination letters sent to people working on the
Speaker 7: response to bird flu.
Speaker 4: When I said you are criminal parasites, obviously wasn't referring
Speaker 4: to I have.
Speaker 1: The bird flu. Come back to work, please. But that's fine.
Speaker 4: Staffing is only part of the Doge mission. There's other
Speaker 4: crazy shit we could cut.
Speaker 10: We don't need to be wasting money on ridiculous items
Speaker 10: like saying how fast shrimp can run on treadmills?
Speaker 4: One point five million to see the effect of yoga
Speaker 4: on goats.
Speaker 10: A million dollars to study Mexican ducks in their wetland facilities.
Speaker 11: Studies on the effect of meditation on parrots, nearly a.
Speaker 10: Million to study of cocaine makes Japanese quail more sexually promiscuous.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go with yes on that last one.
Speaker 4: I feel that I, not a scientist, can very comfortently
Speaker 4: state pre experiment.
Speaker 1: If you are a Japanese quail with an eight.
Speaker 4: Ball, you are getting your cloiqu assuct.
Speaker 1: Oh, that may be the most favorite thing I've ever
Speaker 1: said on this show. No, that's.
Speaker 4: Now obviously that list of programs, some of them are
Speaker 4: being presented to seem even more ridiculous, and some of
Speaker 4: those were completely invented out of thin air. But the
Speaker 4: point is, why are we spending money on things that
Speaker 4: seem obviously stupid, even though a government funded study on
Speaker 4: HeLa monsters is how we ended up with ozepic. By
Speaker 4: the way, quick pitch weight gain also would be solved
Speaker 4: by Japanese quail cocaine. It's really the Star Wars of drugs.
Speaker 4: Cocaine no downsides.
Speaker 1: You'd be having your cloacas sucked in no time. All right.
Speaker 4: But even if this project of DOGE is animated by
Speaker 4: malice for administrator and is seemingly rash and occasionally cutting
Speaker 4: off critical government functions out of.
Speaker 1: Haste, the savings alone will be worth it.
Speaker 4: On the doe's website, they posted sixteen billion dollars saved
Speaker 4: justin canceled contracts.
Speaker 1: Interesting if true.
Speaker 11: A closer look shows big problems. For example, DOZE claimed
Speaker 11: acting a single immigration and customs contracts saved eight billion dollars.
Speaker 11: Turns out that contract was worth a maximum of eight million.
Speaker 9: The Wall Street Journal estimates the actual amount saved at
Speaker 9: not sixteen billion, but closer to two and a half.
Speaker 4: Who much does asn't lied about saying something is sixteen
Speaker 4: when it's.
Speaker 1: Really two and a half a billion inches that's not
Speaker 1: true either.
Speaker 4: See it seems that DOGE is struggling a bit to
Speaker 4: get its footing from made up claims about fifteen million
Speaker 4: dollars of taxpayer money going for gosen condoms to billions
Speaker 4: in Social Security payments to dead people, a claim that
Speaker 4: turned out to not be real.
Speaker 1: Despite what you've heard, we.
Speaker 6: Have millions and millions of people over one hundred years old.
Speaker 6: Is there obviously fraudulent or incompetent. But if you take
Speaker 6: all of those millions of people off Social Security, all
Speaker 6: of a sudden we have a very powerful social security
Speaker 6: with people that are eighty and seventy and ninety, but
Speaker 6: not two hundred years old.
Speaker 4: True, you can't argue with that if only it were happening.
Speaker 1: But it's not happening.
Speaker 4: We're not paying millions and millions of dead people's social
Speaker 4: Security money. And even if there was a two hundred
Speaker 4: year old man walking around, he wouldn't need Social Security.
Speaker 4: He'd still be in Congress. Guys, I'm going to tell
Speaker 4: you something. Cutting money shouldn't be this hard. I'm starting
Speaker 4: to think that we as a country don't understand where
Speaker 4: the real waste, fraud and abuse in our.
Speaker 1: System really is.
Speaker 4: Maybe the savings we gleaned from cutting VA nurses and
Speaker 4: iguana STD studies isn't where the real money is. Let
Speaker 4: me see if I can noodle, you know what, let
Speaker 4: me join doh, I'm gonna see if I can noodle
Speaker 4: some ideas here.
Speaker 1: I want to get down some certain ideas.
Speaker 4: I want to do a get there we go.
Speaker 1: I got that. Let's see what I happen to Here
Speaker 1: is my want to be an accountant starter kit.
Speaker 4: So I got it off Amazon for five thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: My accountant told me not to get it. So we're
Speaker 4: looking to save taxpayers some money and I know.
Speaker 1: Let me think we got the studies that are done.
Speaker 4: Or oh, how about we just take three billion dollars
Speaker 4: in subsidies we give to oil and gas companies that
Speaker 4: already turned billions in profits.
Speaker 1: How long did that take? Oh?
Speaker 4: Wait, how about we just closed down the carried interest
Speaker 4: loophole on hedge funds.
Speaker 1: That's one point three billion dollars a year.
Speaker 4: Oh how about we stopped the two trillion dollars we've
Speaker 4: given the defense contractors to build a fighter jet that
Speaker 4: blows when everybody knows the next war is going to
Speaker 4: be fought.
Speaker 1: With drones and blockchain whatever. That is? Holy shit, I
Speaker 1: can't believe it.
Speaker 4: I just saved us billions of dollars in eleven seconds.
Speaker 1: Just call them it big.
Speaker 4: Balls, right, I'm sorry, I'm being told that that nickname
Speaker 4: is already taken. Well, can I get a doge nickname?
Speaker 4: Disturbingly low hanging balls?
Speaker 1: Really? Oh you've never heard of how would you even
Speaker 1: know that? Oh? I'm sorry, but see this is where
Speaker 1: the real money is.
Speaker 4: The real money, the money our free market ish system
Speaker 4: uses to prop up corporate profit at the expense of
Speaker 4: the taxpayer. Pharmaceutical companies get everything from our government, tax breaks,
Speaker 4: research grants, patent extensions worth billions of dollars, and what
Speaker 4: do we the people get for it? The highest drug
Speaker 4: prices in the Western hemisphere, and for some reason, the
Speaker 4: possibility of an infection in our paraneum. Why would you
Speaker 4: take a drug that would give you an infection in
Speaker 4: your paraneum? And why are they telling us about it
Speaker 4: at dinner time? But you know what's so horrible about
Speaker 4: our system now.
Speaker 1: And the corruption that laid went in it, We're so
Speaker 1: fecking numb to it.
Speaker 4: We actually touted tiny cracks in that exploitation as.
Speaker 8: Victory presidents, touting the first ever negotiations with pharmaceutical companies
Speaker 8: to lower the cost of ten drugs.
Speaker 12: And today I'm proud to announce some Medicare has reached
Speaker 12: the agreement with all manufacturers on all ten drugs selected
Speaker 12: in the first round of negotiations.
Speaker 1: Oh can it.
Speaker 4: Be the companies we subsidized with billions of dollars car
Speaker 4: allowing us the privilege to negotiate the price of ten
Speaker 4: of their drugs, and ten is all of them? Right,
Speaker 4: It would be embarrassing if it was a small drop
Speaker 4: in the bucket, and that the American people didn't expect
Speaker 4: that we should negotiate for all their facking drugs because
Speaker 4: we've already paid for them with our subsidies.
Speaker 1: I'll be going to the What we do in pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: companies is like the worst shark tank deal in fing history.
Speaker 4: Well, we're asking for billions of dollars of your money.
Speaker 4: Oh what do we get ten percent of your company?
Speaker 4: Now do we get a discount? Now what do we get?
Speaker 4: Have you checked your perineum?
Speaker 1: We live in the.
Speaker 4: Upside down, and don't blame the corporations. They are profits
Speaker 4: seeking psychopaths that need the lowest wages and the cheapest
Speaker 4: raw materials to drive their highest profits. But why do we,
Speaker 4: the taxpayers, subsidize their psychopathy. That's the waste, fraud and
Speaker 4: abuse in our system.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 4: That's what we should be going after, not the fantastical
Speaker 4: over generous terrorist condom allowances.
Speaker 6: In another program, fifty million dollars plus another fifty million
Speaker 6: dollars for condoms for Hamas.
Speaker 1: You know that one hundred million dollars for condoms? Condoms?
Speaker 1: Does everybody know what a condom is?
Speaker 4: You're delivering the speech in an elementary school. Why wouldn't
Speaker 4: they Why wouldn't they know what condoms are? Look, capitalism
Speaker 4: is by definition exploitative.
Speaker 1: It's how it operates.
Speaker 4: That's fine, But then government's role should be to ease
Speaker 4: the negative effects on Americans of that exploitation, not subsidize
Speaker 4: that treachery with our money. We're getting fit at a
Speaker 4: ditty party and they're making us buy the baby oil.
Speaker 8: I want.
Speaker 4: Siver, but man, I want doze to work.
Speaker 1: I want better efficiencies.
Speaker 4: I want to get rid of the alphabet agencies that
Speaker 4: don't do enough make the Pentagon pass an audit. But
Speaker 4: we are dozing in the wrong place if we want
Speaker 4: to really change the system. Companies like Walmart McDonald's make
Speaker 4: billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidized profits, yet many of
Speaker 4: their hardworking employees need taxpayer subsidized public assistance. Airlines get
Speaker 4: billions in bailouts that they use in stock buybacks and bonuses,
Speaker 4: but if you're on food assistance, you're not allowed to
Speaker 4: buy hot food with it because apparently heated entrees off
Speaker 4: of winners. We are subsidizing the very system that makes workers'
Speaker 4: lives harder in the first place, all in the name
Speaker 4: of freedom and liberty. But the greatest restriction of freedom
Speaker 4: in this country is in dei and pronoun pressure.
Speaker 1: It's free poverty and struggle and the government's role. I'm
Speaker 1: not done.
Speaker 12: Yeah, badass, it's fine.
Speaker 4: The government's role should be to end the corruption that
Speaker 4: enables that exploitation.
Speaker 13: That's what the Democrats should be doing every day, every day,
Speaker 13: every day, at five pm sharp, the Democrats should go
Speaker 13: live on Facebook and do the people's audit. Find the
Speaker 13: absurdities and the remedies in our exploitative system. Get someone
Speaker 13: like aoc your Jasmine Crockett or Chris Murphy or anybody
Speaker 13: that doesn't sound like they're complaining why there's no more
Speaker 13: frozen yogurt at the cafeteria in the villages.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry you have no riz.
Speaker 4: And we need something more than shouting. We need to
Speaker 4: do something constructive to anchor our hopes. A new acronym
Speaker 4: for a new age, It's not MAGA. It's something more
Speaker 4: like make America not governed. In obviously negative aboard a
Speaker 4: board Hodar, no divigilantes.
Speaker 1: But do something. When we come back, Rupa Baricharia will
Speaker 1: be joining us. Don't go away right after the data.
Speaker 4: So my gut Tonight A distinguished lawyer served more than
Speaker 4: twenty five years in federal government, including a special Master
Speaker 4: of the September eleventh Victim Compensation Fund.
Speaker 1: He's welcome to the program, Rupa Batacharia.
Speaker 4: Hello, Hi, Rupert, it is so nice to see you again.
Speaker 9: Thank you you too.
Speaker 1: You and I met in twenty sixteen. You had just
Speaker 1: please explain.
Speaker 4: You became the what's called the special Master or the
Speaker 4: special Paymaster of the nine to eleven Victim's Compensation form.
Speaker 1: That's right, through DOJ.
Speaker 9: Through DOJ. I was appointed by Attorney General Loretta Lynch
Speaker 9: at the back end of the Obama administration and then
Speaker 9: served for six years through the Trump administration and part
Speaker 9: of the bid administration.
Speaker 4: And your job was to take this program that had
Speaker 4: been appropriated by Congress and translate that legislation into action.
Speaker 9: That's right. And basically my job was to make sure
Speaker 9: that those who were injured by the September eleventh attacks,
Speaker 9: mostly because they were at the sites and breathing in
Speaker 9: the toxic dust got the compensation that they deserved.
Speaker 1: So you were a man and all.
Speaker 4: And obviously I don't mean to just paraphrase or those things.
Speaker 4: You were parasite on the system.
Speaker 9: Yes, apparently.
Speaker 4: Is what do you think when you hear that kind
Speaker 4: of talk about those in the government that are there
Speaker 4: to try and faithfully execute what the legislation has already appropriated.
Speaker 9: Honestly, it just makes me sad. I spent my entire
Speaker 9: career in federal government until I left in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 9: and throughout all administration, across party lines, and through all
Speaker 9: of it, every single person that I worked with, agencies
Speaker 9: across the government, their only goal is to administer the
Speaker 9: programs that Congress passed and that the Executive Branch wants
Speaker 9: administered according to its rules and its process. That's what
Speaker 9: we do. That's our job.
Speaker 1: And I was blown with it. So you were trying
Speaker 1: to do your job.
Speaker 4: And I showed up in your office one day with
Speaker 4: a gentleman by the name of John Field from the
Speaker 4: FIELDGA Foundation, who had lobbied very intensely to get it done,
Speaker 4: and we just showed up and you were so gracious
Speaker 4: to us, and you showed us around the office, and
Speaker 4: I was so impressed with the way that you had
Speaker 4: approached it with such compassion but also a toughness. And
Speaker 4: you had a mantra on your and I feel like
Speaker 4: an idiot because I'm sure it's like a managerial like
Speaker 4: hang in there poster and you just be like, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's a dumb thing that I put up on. But
Speaker 4: it was a mantra. Do you remember what I'm talking about?
Speaker 9: I do.
Speaker 1: What did it say?
Speaker 9: It was our guiding principles, and it was the way
Speaker 9: that we ran the program was we wanted to be
Speaker 9: fair to claimants, faithful to the statute, and accountable to
Speaker 9: the taxpayer.
Speaker 14: Come on, it.
Speaker 4: Makes me, It makes me so angry. I want to
Speaker 4: smash another mug. Oh wow, this thing's really coming out.
Speaker 1: Sorry.
Speaker 4: You know, in the commercial break, I had a lightsaber
Speaker 4: battle with one of the crew members.
Speaker 1: And that's how I got it, and you did it.
Speaker 4: The program itself had very little waste, fraud, and abuse
Speaker 4: because your mandate was to make sure that the people
Speaker 4: who got it, who should get it, got it, and
Speaker 4: the people who shouldn't.
Speaker 1: Get it didn't get it.
Speaker 9: That was my job.
Speaker 4: So this week or last week, I hear they're just
Speaker 4: cutting twenty percent of the stabs of people and the
Speaker 4: victim's compensation was one of those offices.
Speaker 9: It was the World Trade Center Health World General Health,
Speaker 9: which is our sister program.
Speaker 1: That's the one that administers healthcare to people.
Speaker 9: That's the one that administers healthcare to people. Is it's
Speaker 9: actually even more important because it provides these responders and
Speaker 9: survivors who worked at the World Trade Center side at
Speaker 9: the on at Shanksville who are now sick with the
Speaker 9: health care that they need. Eighty five thousand people who
Speaker 9: worked at one of the sides who lived in Manhattan
Speaker 9: have been certified with one or more nine to eleven
Speaker 9: related conditions. And so the cuts that were made were
Speaker 9: indiscriminately made to cut almost twenty percent of the staff
Speaker 9: of the health program, which would have been devastating.
Speaker 4: And what are in practical terms, and you know that
Speaker 4: people love a good conversation about administration and.
Speaker 1: Paperwork. In practical terms, what does that mean?
Speaker 4: Does that mean people wouldn't be able to access the program,
Speaker 4: They wouldn't be able to sign up for the program,
Speaker 4: they wouldn't be able to make their appointments, they wouldn't
Speaker 4: get their medications.
Speaker 1: What would it.
Speaker 9: Mean all those things. It means that people who are
Speaker 9: going to sign up for medical monitoring. Over one hundred
Speaker 9: and forty thousand people are monitored. Ten thousand people tried
Speaker 9: to sign up for monitoring last year. Those applications wouldn't
Speaker 9: get processed or they would be delays in processing them.
Speaker 9: They would be delays in certifying the conditions as nine
Speaker 9: to eleven related, which means that there would be delays
Speaker 9: in getting them healthcare and delays in getting their compensation
Speaker 9: from the VCF, which depends on those certifications. It means
Speaker 9: that additional conditions couldn't be determined as potentially eligible because
Speaker 9: the studies that would have funded that were being taken away.
Speaker 9: It means that the oversight of the program, which is
Speaker 9: largely run through contract.
Speaker 1: Actual people looking for they got.
Speaker 9: Cut to, got cut to.
Speaker 1: What are we doing for God's sake?
Speaker 9: And then they were rehired.
Speaker 1: And then they were rehired two days later.
Speaker 9: About a week later, thanks to the intervention of the
Speaker 9: New York Congressional delegation. Shout out definitely to Representative Andrew
Speaker 9: Garbrino of Long Island.
Speaker 4: Garbarino, by the way, for those of you in Long
Speaker 4: Island come to Goburrinos, a fantastic Italian restaurant overlooking Long
Speaker 4: Island Sound.
Speaker 9: But Senator Schumer and Jill Bramm were also instrumental.
Speaker 4: On Schumer and Jill Bann have ben on it. Jill
Speaker 4: Grant especially had been on it forever. Hillary Clinton when
Speaker 4: it first started, was an incredible advocate for it.
Speaker 1: But the reason why I wanted to talk about.
Speaker 4: It is because it's a very specific program. But in
Speaker 4: the specificity of it, I think there's something universal here.
Speaker 4: There's a ton of programs out there right now that
Speaker 4: don't have Republicans in a congressional delegation, you know, trying
Speaker 4: to fight for it, and they're gone.
Speaker 9: Yeah, if you don't have I mean, it's a sad commentary,
Speaker 9: right that the only reason that program was saved is
Speaker 9: because there are Republicans who are willing to go to
Speaker 9: the President and ask him to reinstate it. And thankfully,
Speaker 9: and I'm grateful that he did. But not every program
Speaker 9: has that constituency, and we shouldn't live in a world
Speaker 9: where the only programs that get saved are the ones
Speaker 9: where Republicans are willing to put their stamp of approval
Speaker 9: on right as.
Speaker 4: Long as it demonstrates fealty to the leadership. Anything along
Speaker 4: those lines were when you were administrating, What are the
Speaker 4: frustrations within government? Is it what makes it so difficult
Speaker 4: for government to be agile?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 4: Are there too many regulations? Is there too much paperwork?
Speaker 4: Do we need a moonshot to simplify things? Because I
Speaker 4: think I would love the idea of more efficiency.
Speaker 1: And a less adversarial role.
Speaker 4: It seems like any government program that's going to help people,
Speaker 4: and I know this from the pac NAC, any government
Speaker 4: program that's going to help people is adversarial, that the
Speaker 4: people become adversarial with the people trying to get the money.
Speaker 9: So we have certainly tried not to be adversarial. That
Speaker 9: was not our goal. But I think one of the
Speaker 9: things that sort of gets lost in all this conversation
Speaker 9: about efficiency is that part of the reason government is inefficient,
Speaker 9: part of the reason that bureaucracies exist, is because we
Speaker 9: are trying so hard to make sure that there isn't
Speaker 9: ways for odd abuse in our programs. The reviews and
Speaker 9: the processes and the things that seem to take a
Speaker 9: long time that sort of hang us up. Are there
Speaker 9: for a reason they're there because we want to make
Speaker 9: sure that we are being appropriate stewards of the public's
Speaker 9: money right and that we're handling these programs responsibly. Is
Speaker 9: it too much? Sometimes? Maybe? But the way to solve
Speaker 9: it isn't just to go in and discriminately cut people out.
Speaker 1: I wonder, let me pitch this.
Speaker 4: Is there a way if we were to make because
Speaker 4: you know, there are tons of people that qualify for
Speaker 4: food assistants who don't claim those benefits because it's difficult,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of hoops you have to jump through,
Speaker 4: and all those things, if the government didn't use waste,
Speaker 4: fraud and abuse as a default, made that money simpler
Speaker 4: to get like what it was in the pandemic, and
Speaker 4: then bolstered the money on the back end searching for fraud.
Speaker 4: Because it seems like we're making the three percent or
Speaker 4: five percent of fraud, we're making the ninety five percent
Speaker 4: pay a price for that. Is there a different way
Speaker 4: to jigger those programs, make them easier to access and
Speaker 4: bolster the fraud watched.
Speaker 1: On the back end of it.
Speaker 9: So I'll say two things. First of all, there is
Speaker 9: there are very very routine and rigorous processes in place
Speaker 9: at all federal agencies to try to prevent waste, boad
Speaker 9: and abuse. There are the inspector generals. The VCF underwent,
Speaker 9: there were the inspector generals. There's the Government Accountability Office,
Speaker 9: OMB does a budget process to make sure that money
Speaker 9: is being appropriately allocated to the right programs, and there's
Speaker 9: annual fiscal audits. Right so every step of the way
Speaker 9: there is something happening to try to make sure but
Speaker 9: those programs, all of that process only runs if you
Speaker 9: have the staff there to do it, and the staff
Speaker 9: who understands the programs, who can answer questions, who has expertise.
Speaker 9: The second thing I would say is that if you're
Speaker 9: going to eliminate efficiency inefficiencies in programs, the people you
Speaker 9: have to talk to are the people who are running
Speaker 9: the programs. That's what I did when I started up
Speaker 9: the LAT.
Speaker 4: I mean, okay, so that's it's a clauseline. I disagree
Speaker 4: with you a little bit. Whenever I have a situation
Speaker 4: like that, I rely on teenage boys. I find them
Speaker 4: judicious and hormonally balanced, and I like to let them
Speaker 4: loose in an organization.
Speaker 1: And just go how about it, boys, It must be.
Speaker 4: So incredibly frustrating to see that because I'm also like
Speaker 4: I was very frustrated at the fights that had to
Speaker 4: occur to get people who had earned benefits benefits, and
Speaker 4: I imagine that's and to see how easily corporate interests
Speaker 4: have infiltrated our process through lobbying. You know, the tax
Speaker 4: code isn't complex because working class people made it that way.
Speaker 4: You know, the regulations aren't complex and difficult to do
Speaker 4: because small businesses want that. That's all the result of
Speaker 4: corporate lobbies because they know how to gain the system.
Speaker 4: Is how do we stop that part for infiltrating the
Speaker 4: part that you want to do?
Speaker 9: So that's a really good question that I wish I
Speaker 9: had an answer to. I'm not sure. I'm not sure
Speaker 9: that I do. What I do know is that we have,
Speaker 9: especially in the context of the nine to eleven programs,
Speaker 9: the VCF, the World Trade Center Health program, we have
Speaker 9: seen over and over and over again, these responders who
Speaker 9: are sick go back to the Hill over and over
Speaker 9: and over to try to keep these programs funded.
Speaker 1: It's happening again.
Speaker 9: It's happening again.
Speaker 4: This Wednesday, you know, Yes, this Wednesday, they're going to
Speaker 4: reintroduce some legislation to get funding right.
Speaker 9: The World Trade Center Health Program is facing a crisis.
Speaker 9: It's still a few years out, and so that makes
Speaker 9: it hard for Congress to focus on it. But the
Speaker 9: fact of the matter is is that if you don't
Speaker 9: know whether you're not you're going to be funded a
Speaker 9: few years from now, you have to make decisions today
Speaker 9: about how many people you take into the program, because
Speaker 9: you need to make the money sure that the money lasts.
Speaker 9: I had this exact same problem in twenty eighteen when
Speaker 9: we reauthorized the VCP. I had to cut awards by
Speaker 9: fifty percent because.
Speaker 1: We did in the middle of it. And I remember that.
Speaker 9: Because we didn't have enough money, and it was thanks
Speaker 9: to you and thanks.
Speaker 4: To get it all those people. They were tireless and
Speaker 4: many of them were very, very sick. The response to
Speaker 4: give you a sense of what that is in the
Speaker 4: middle of the VCF funding and the Victa's conversation, if
Speaker 4: your cancer had just been if you had the unlucky
Speaker 4: occurrence of having a cancer diagnosed in twenty twenty one
Speaker 4: or twenty nineteen, when the fund had lost money, you
Speaker 4: wouldn't have gotten the full benefit because they had to
Speaker 4: resource guard.
Speaker 1: But that's what's happening. You had to reach I read
Speaker 1: it must have been heartbreaking.
Speaker 9: But that is exactly what is happening to the World
Speaker 9: Trade Center Health program right now. And doctor Howard, who
Speaker 9: was a Trump appointee, who was appointed in a who's
Speaker 9: reappointed to his position in the last part of the
Speaker 9: Trump administration, is going to have to make decisions very
Speaker 9: soon about how many people he can continue to allow
Speaker 9: into the program if they don't re up the funding.
Speaker 9: And so members of Congress, including New York delegations, or
Speaker 9: reintroducing that billo on Wednesday. It's it's already been agreed
Speaker 9: to twice and been stripped twice, once in twenty two
Speaker 9: two and once just in December when the funding bill
Speaker 9: fell apart.
Speaker 4: From an omnibus bill they were going to sneak it
Speaker 4: into like a transportation bill or something along.
Speaker 9: So hopefully this time around. You know, these these these
Speaker 9: responders and these survivors, many of them have PTSD, many
Speaker 9: of them have very severe health conditions. To have to
Speaker 9: go up again and again and again to ask for
Speaker 9: this funding is.
Speaker 1: Just and again, this isn't just this program.
Speaker 4: This is happening across government, and this is what we
Speaker 4: talk about when this system must be torn down, the
Speaker 4: idea that people who need the funding, that's what government
Speaker 4: exists to provide. It doesn't exist to provide a smoother
Speaker 4: road for McDonald's. It exists to provide for people. And
Speaker 4: that's got it's got to change.
Speaker 1: And so I really appreciate you being on the show.
Speaker 4: And we're going to see, hopefully we can get that
Speaker 4: group put on a chorial.
Speaker 6: Ladies on, We're going to take a.
Speaker 1: Hei everybody. That is our show for the sevement.
Speaker 4: But before we go, we're gonna check in with your
Speaker 4: host for the rest of this week.
Speaker 1: Does he light it?
Speaker 12: Does he? I?
Speaker 1: SA Let me see, what are you going to be
Speaker 1: covering for the people.
Speaker 14: Well, John, I'll tell you what I won't be covering.
Speaker 7: President Trump wasting government resources to check in on the
Speaker 7: gold at Fort Knox.
Speaker 14: What a nothing burger.
Speaker 7: I mean, there is no need to investigate or count
Speaker 7: it or do an inventory on Volt eighty four C.
Speaker 14: He's unhit and uninged.
Speaker 1: Bault eighty four cy eighty four.
Speaker 14: C A cop.
Speaker 7: No, just trust that all the gold is there, John,
Speaker 7: Every last.
Speaker 1: Bar was that the sund of a gold bar falling
Speaker 1: out of your part.
Speaker 7: Yes, yes it was, but I brought that gold bar
Speaker 7: from home.
Speaker 4: All right, deathly like everybody here, it is your moment
Speaker 4: of dead.
Speaker 6: We're also going to Fort Knox because we want to
Speaker 6: see if the gold is still there. Wouldn't that be
Speaker 6: terrible we open up this Fort Knox has got it's
Speaker 6: just solid granite that's five feet thick. The front door.
Speaker 6: You need six musclemen to open it up. I don't
Speaker 6: even think they have windows. Wouldn't that be terrible if
Speaker 6: we opened it up to a snow gold there? Hey?
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