Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio.
Speaker 2: News leader Schumer. We heard from the Transportation Secretary in
Speaker 2: argument the airspace is safe. As he put it, I
Speaker 2: wonder if you would tell Americans right now that they
Speaker 2: are in fact safe to fly.
Speaker 1: Look, I'm not going to dispute the FAA when they
Speaker 1: say that, but you can't be too careful and things
Speaker 1: are safe until they're not safe, as we learned at DCA.
Speaker 1: And so the bottom line is there are lots of
Speaker 1: questions about how they have handled themselves. First, the firing
Speaker 1: of so many employees under Doge has weakened the FAA. Second,
Speaker 1: a good number of top level people who are concerned
Speaker 1: with air safety in flight flight safety have left out
Speaker 1: of exasperation because they think the people who have been
Speaker 1: put in charge don't know what they're doing. And Third,
Speaker 1: the FAA increased bonuses to attract more where people in
Speaker 1: the towers and keep them in the towers for thirteen
Speaker 1: cities but not Philadelphia, New York or Washington. That seems
Speaker 1: to me to be ridiculous. So there are so many
Speaker 1: questions that have not been answered yet. And you know,
Speaker 1: one word that describes this administration is chaos. There's no
Speaker 1: place worse to have chaos, very few places than an airport.
Speaker 1: Yet that's what's happening at Newark, and it's spreading around
Speaker 1: the country.
Speaker 2: Senator Schumer, do you believe then that DOGE is to
Speaker 2: blame and these cuts are to blame for what you
Speaker 2: are seeing in the air right now?
Speaker 1: All the reports we get from people who work there
Speaker 1: is the cuts have hurt, and there's no rhyme or
Speaker 1: reason to them. They're just cutting for cutting's sake, and
Speaker 1: it's very bad, and we talk to people who are
Speaker 1: in the towers.
Speaker 2: I want to pivot here to ask you about the
Speaker 2: budget process, which of course is ongoing and being driven
Speaker 2: here by Republicans. They talk about their being waste, fraud,
Speaker 2: and abuse in Medicaid to the tune of six hundred
Speaker 2: billion dollars. Do you think that is findable in that way?
Speaker 2: And how do you sort of see Democrats responding to
Speaker 2: Republicans pushing this forward? No?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we ask them give us specific examples of waste
Speaker 1: when they're cutting Medicaid, and they fail to come up
Speaker 1: with them, or have one anecdotal thing that can't even
Speaker 1: be proven. We know that they want to slash Medicaid,
Speaker 1: not because of waste, but for one reason, and that
Speaker 1: is to give tax breaks to the wealthiest people in
Speaker 1: this country. You know, God blessed the people who made
Speaker 1: a lot of money, but they don't need a tax break,
Speaker 1: certainly when you're cutting Medicaid, which is going to cause
Speaker 1: huge layoffs, decline in healthcare, and closure of hospitals and
Speaker 1: nursing homes. I was on Staten Island, a Republican area,
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago with the health leaders and they
Speaker 1: estimate that there would be eighteen thousand people who would
Speaker 1: lose their jobs under these cuts. That would send that
Speaker 1: whole economy of Staten Island into a recession. So they
Speaker 1: use excuses because they just want to slash the budget,
Speaker 1: and they don't come up with anything specific, nor do
Speaker 1: they come up with specific solutions out of end waste.
Speaker 1: People show up Friday night at home after a hard
Speaker 1: week of work and online as you're fired. Don't show
Speaker 1: up at the office. These people have dedicated their lives
Speaker 1: to helping people, and they're not even given an explanation
Speaker 1: of why they're fired because those doesn't have one. They
Speaker 1: just want to slash.
Speaker 2: Now there are those in your own party though that
Speaker 2: have said there.
Speaker 1: Need to be changes when it comes to spending. Where
Speaker 1: would you suggest cuts? Well, look, first, no one's against
Speaker 1: cutting waste, but you've got to document it. You just
Speaker 1: don't tell somebody they're part of waste without giving them
Speaker 1: any explanation, any evidence. But there are obviously places that
Speaker 1: can be cut throughout the budget, but you've got to
Speaker 1: be careful. You've got to use a scalpel, not a chainsaw.
Speaker 1: When Elon Musket's there smiling that he's using a chainsaw
Speaker 1: to government, doesn't he realize he's hurting millions of people