Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: As the Democratic Party ramps up its opposition to President
Speaker 2: Trump's agenda, to the priorities of a Republican controlled Congress,
Speaker 2: and to the role of DOGE. Along with Elon Musk,
Speaker 2: a few Democratic members of Congress have emerged as leading voices.
Speaker 2: One of them has been central to discussions over financial regulation,
Speaker 2: government accountability, and the future of the Democratic Party itself.
Speaker 2: Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. Warren has been a longtime advocate
Speaker 2: for strong regulation. She helped create the Consumer Financial Protection
Speaker 2: Bureau after the two thousand and eight financial crisis. She's
Speaker 2: been a US Senator since twenty thirteen, and in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty she ran for president. Today, she sits on the
Speaker 2: Senate's Armed Services and Finance committees, and she's the top
Speaker 2: Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee. That means she's played
Speaker 2: a lead role in vetting Trump's nominees for key positions
Speaker 2: in his administration.
Speaker 3: Will you put your money where your mouth is? Is
Speaker 3: there any billionaire rich enough who you wouldn't support a
Speaker 3: tax cut for Are you willing to commit right now
Speaker 3: that you will put enough people back to work so
Speaker 3: they can do the job of delivering the benefits that
Speaker 3: Americans earned.
Speaker 2: Warren has gone viral for some of those moments, and
Speaker 2: that's helped make her a prominent face of Democrats pushback
Speaker 2: on Trump at a time when the party is in
Speaker 2: the midst of a debate over its leadership and its future.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to sit down with Warren to get
Speaker 2: her sense of, well, everything that's happening now, from Trump's
Speaker 2: efforts to reshape the federal government and the regulatory landscape,
Speaker 2: to this week's explosive news that Secretary of Defends Pete
Speaker 2: Hegseth shared information about US military operations in a signal
Speaker 2: group chat, and where Warren thinks the Democratic Party is headed.
Speaker 2: I'm David Gera, and this is the big take from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News today. On the show, my conversation with Senator
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Warren, which has been lightly edited and condensed. I
Speaker 2: sat down with her in a hearing room on Capitol Hill.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you, first of all, about what
Speaker 2: we've been learning about. The editor of The Atlantic found
Speaker 2: himself in a chat with some of the most senior
Speaker 2: members of President Trump's administration national security staff, and by
Speaker 2: virtue of that was privy to plans for an attack
Speaker 2: in great detail, your reaction to it.
Speaker 1: You sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Speaker 3: So let me just start with if Pete Hegseith had
Speaker 3: a shred of self respect and decency, he would resign.
Speaker 3: That's what leadership is about. And instead Pete Hegseth thinks
Speaker 3: it's all about point at somebody else and minimize the
Speaker 3: problem and sweep it under the rug and deflect. You know,
Speaker 3: I want to be a leader of the finest armed
Speaker 3: forces in the world and step up and take some responsibility.
Speaker 1: Should he be fired, you talk about him, If you
Speaker 1: won't quit, then.
Speaker 3: He should be fired because he has put our national
Speaker 3: security at risk. That's part one. Part two is you
Speaker 3: realize a bunch of this is potentially certainly breaking the law. So,
Speaker 3: for example, because of the Freedom of Information Act, there
Speaker 3: are laws that require that people in the administration, all
Speaker 3: of them, have to preserve the records of their texting
Speaker 3: back and forth. I know this from the days when
Speaker 3: I served in the administration and we were carefully cautioned
Speaker 3: about the importance of preserving records. Signal, as you know,
Speaker 3: disappears those records. And I will say on this when
Speaker 3: I read how casually they just formed this chat. Notice
Speaker 3: that's how you refer to it to discuss the national
Speaker 3: security issues and the bombing of another country. How many
Speaker 3: other times are they using signal and what are they
Speaker 3: using it for? So this is a moment. We need
Speaker 3: some of those congressional investigations. We need a hearing in
Speaker 3: the Senate, we need a hearing in the House. I
Speaker 3: remember all of the hearings before when there was a
Speaker 3: question about Hillary Clinton's emails. I want to run the
Speaker 3: tape on how many Republicans talked about the importance of
Speaker 3: accountability and getting to the bottom of this. Where are
Speaker 3: they right now? I'm ready for those hearings, and the
Speaker 3: FBI needs to step up.
Speaker 2: This was a chat that was organized by Mike Waltz,
Speaker 2: the president national security advisor, and he addressed this in
Speaker 2: an interview on Fox News.
Speaker 1: Here's what he said.
Speaker 3: We made a mistake, We're moving forward, and we're.
Speaker 2: I noted that Biden large The response from administration has
Speaker 2: been there wasn't classified information here, and as a result
Speaker 2: of that, the Atlantic release screenshots of a lot of
Speaker 2: these conversations. We learned that there was information about planes
Speaker 2: timing of this attack, you talk about the need for hearings,
Speaker 2: are you optimistic that that's going to happen and that
Speaker 2: you're going to get to the bottom.
Speaker 1: Of what was in fact discussed on that chat.
Speaker 3: So I think this is a question fundamentally about where
Speaker 3: is power in this country. I get it elections, we
Speaker 3: pick a president. President picks a team, and that's where
Speaker 3: power resigns in terms of the execution day to day
Speaker 3: of various policies. But ultimately it's people across this country.
Speaker 3: And when people across this country said, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: the Secretary of Defense, I mean this is this is
Speaker 3: not some random guy off the street who stumbled across
Speaker 3: some secret information and kind of didn't know how to
Speaker 3: handle it. This is the Secretary of Defense. And those
Speaker 3: candid conversations need to be shielded from the rest of
Speaker 3: the world. When the White House wants to say nothing
Speaker 3: to see here, just flip at the other and ask
Speaker 3: yourself if the Atlantic had called the White House and said,
Speaker 3: let me show you what we've got in advance of
Speaker 3: the bombing, you guys, okay, if we put it up
Speaker 3: on our website, how many heart attacks would there have been?
Speaker 3: Over the White House say no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: you can't do that. Well, if it wouldn't have been
Speaker 3: okay for the Atlantic to publish all of that in advance,
Speaker 3: you got to worry it's not published on a website.
Speaker 3: But I don't know who's listening on signal, the Chinese,
Speaker 3: the North Koreans, the Russians, some other bad actors out there.
Speaker 3: It is important that we follow through as a nation
Speaker 3: and say, look, you put our whole country at risk,
Speaker 3: our allies. I'm getting asked in the hallways by foreign reporters,
Speaker 3: can we actually trust the United States of America if
Speaker 3: we tell secrets and they're going to end up on
Speaker 3: some signal chat with the Secretary of Defense. So there
Speaker 3: needs to be an investigation, but there needs to be
Speaker 3: some accountability, and the accountability should start right now. Hegsas
Speaker 3: should resign, and if he won't do that, then Trump
Speaker 3: should fire him. He knows how to say you're fired.
Speaker 2: I want to ask you at the moment that we're in.
Speaker 2: This is part of that moment. We're two months into
Speaker 2: this administration's tenure. How are you thinking about the role
Speaker 2: of the Democratic Party in this moment?
Speaker 1: And just it's gravity overall for the country itself.
Speaker 3: So let's set the table for this moment. Donald Trump
Speaker 3: ran for office saying over and over and over and
Speaker 3: over and over. I have a lower costs on day one.
Speaker 3: Those are his words, not mine. I have a lower
Speaker 3: cost on day one. He said that to millions and
Speaker 3: millions of people. And right after he got elected he
Speaker 3: was interviewed, his very first interview, he said that's how
Speaker 3: I got elected, was saying I'm going to lower costs
Speaker 3: on day one. So here we are two months in.
Speaker 3: He has done nothing to lower costs. I mean no,
Speaker 3: all that's happening is we're watching places where costs are
Speaker 3: going up, up, up. But he and his co president
Speaker 3: Elon Musk have been out there with a chainsaw moving
Speaker 3: through government, trying to fire the financial cops, for example,
Speaker 3: by trying to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,
Speaker 3: laying off tens of thousands of federal workers who kind
Speaker 3: of do the job of Social Security making sure people
Speaker 3: get their Social Security checks each month, ending contracts for
Speaker 3: medical research. So there's this and playing red light green
Speaker 3: light with tariffs. Right, Yes there's a tariff, No there's
Speaker 3: not a tariff, right, playing that game. So it's important
Speaker 3: to remember we're in a system right now that is
Speaker 3: deeply chaotic. I think that like a sand storm, you know,
Speaker 3: the sand is blowing everywhere. I have. The job at
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party right now is to say there's a
Speaker 3: lot going on. We are in the fight. We are
Speaker 3: in the fight to save social security. We are in
Speaker 3: these fights, but to pull back and to look at
Speaker 3: the bigger picture. The media will do the day by
Speaker 3: day fights, but our job is to pull back and
Speaker 3: the bigger picture is that other promise that Donald Trump
Speaker 3: made when he was running for president. Remember, to millions
Speaker 3: of people, he said, I will cut your costs someday.
Speaker 3: One to a handful of what he called his richest
Speaker 3: held donors, he said, I'm going to give you tax
Speaker 3: breaks like you've never seen before, mostly sucked up by billionaires,
Speaker 3: billionaire corporations, and then paid for on the backs of
Speaker 3: elderly people in nursing homes who will lose federal support.
Speaker 3: Your neighbor down the street who has a disability and
Speaker 3: needs a home health aid paid for by the federal government.
Speaker 3: Kids in public school who need help, and those public
Speaker 3: schools need help. Cutting scientific research and medical research, And
Speaker 3: that sets up what this fight is all about. Are
Speaker 3: we going to be a nation that hands over four
Speaker 3: point seven trillion dollars in giveaways to a handful of
Speaker 3: billionaires and makes everybody else pay for it. Are we
Speaker 3: going to be a nation that says no to tax
Speaker 3: cuts for those guys and says we're going to invest
Speaker 3: in in America where everybody gets an opportunity.
Speaker 2: Coming up next, I ask Senator Warren about her colleague,
Speaker 2: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and how she sees her
Speaker 2: own position in the Democratic Party. The leader of Democrats
Speaker 2: and the Senate, Chuck Schumer has a book out, so
Speaker 2: he's been talking a lot in Something he's brought up
Speaker 2: over and over again is he doesn't think that we're
Speaker 2: at a cuntstitutional crisis yet. I wonder if you agree
Speaker 2: with him in that regard, and if so, what is
Speaker 2: the threshold when we would be phasing one?
Speaker 3: So I have to say, before we got here in
Speaker 3: the last two months, I would have described a constitutional
Speaker 3: crisis is like a light switch. You're not in one,
Speaker 3: you're not in one, You're not in one of them,
Speaker 3: all of a sudden you are in one. I've come
Speaker 3: to think about that differently. I worry that we move
Speaker 3: increasingly toward an administration that's not just saying I'm going
Speaker 3: to be a more robust president. And I get it.
Speaker 3: Presidents look at this differently, some a little stronger, some
Speaker 3: a little weaker. But a president that says there are
Speaker 3: no constraints on me, and that takes me back to
Speaker 3: constitutional law. One on one, legislature writes those laws. That's
Speaker 3: our part. Congress, the administration, President and those who work
Speaker 3: in the administration administer those laws, and the courts have
Speaker 3: the responsibility if the administration steps out of line to
Speaker 3: say you violated the law. We keep all three parts
Speaker 3: in balance. And I'm watching Donald Trump and Elon Musk
Speaker 3: say no, there are not three equal branches of government.
Speaker 3: It's just one that smells a lot like a constitutional crisis.
Speaker 2: We've just been through a moment when Republicans wrote a
Speaker 2: continuing resolution and Chuck Schumer said the Democrat Sho had
Speaker 2: supported he did.
Speaker 1: You did not.
Speaker 2: I should say you did a town hall in Lowell, Massachusetts.
Speaker 2: WBR was there and recorded it, and I got tape
Speaker 2: of what you said.
Speaker 3: I think Chuck Schumer is wrong.
Speaker 2: You didn't linger on that, and I wonder if you
Speaker 2: might hear just for a moment. Was he wrong about
Speaker 2: the political calculation? Spell out for me what you disagreed
Speaker 2: about that he did.
Speaker 1: In particular, I.
Speaker 3: Think there's a moment when you stand and fight, and
Speaker 3: for me, that moment came with a continuing resolution was.
Speaker 1: A squaded opportunity to do so.
Speaker 3: It's more than that. Understand, Let's go back to what
Speaker 3: we're trying. What is the big fight right now? The
Speaker 3: big fight is going to be whether or not the
Speaker 3: billionaires and Donald Trump and Elon Musk are just going
Speaker 3: to take over our country and run it to suit themselves,
Speaker 3: make everybody else pay for it. That's what the budget
Speaker 3: is all about. We do a lot of other things
Speaker 3: in Washington, but you want to know our values, take
Speaker 3: a look at the budget. And so the question becomes,
Speaker 3: in this fight, we got to stop and draw the
Speaker 3: line and say it's time. It's time for us to
Speaker 3: fight back. It's time to call on people of the
Speaker 3: United States, because that whole constitutional structure that I was
Speaker 3: talking about, the three parts of government, all rest ultimately
Speaker 3: on the people, and it is time to have that fight.
Speaker 2: Did it cause you to reevaluate your faith and confidence
Speaker 2: in Senator Schumer is a leader of Demo rats in
Speaker 2: the Senate.
Speaker 3: I want to be clear, we are heading into a
Speaker 3: fight where we need every single Democrat pointed the same way.
Speaker 3: We may still be bumping around on exactly what the
Speaker 3: timing is going to be on that fight, exactly where
Speaker 3: the trigger point is going to be, but there is
Speaker 3: no doubt in the United States Senate, the forty seven
Speaker 3: of us are locked arms and moving in the same direction.
Speaker 3: And the same is true over in the House. This
Speaker 3: fight is on top of us. We cannot avoid this
Speaker 3: fight because Donald Trump and Elon Musk, truly they want
Speaker 3: to take this country over for just a handful of people,
Speaker 3: and they want even more wealth and more power to
Speaker 3: go to them. Well, everybody else has to pay for
Speaker 3: That is the fight.
Speaker 2: Last question on this subject, sure, what is your role
Speaker 2: as you see it in that fight? You write a
Speaker 2: lot of letters to administration officials, you speak out quite
Speaker 2: a bit. You are somebody identifiable with this oversight fight
Speaker 2: and struggle with the administration. How do you see your
Speaker 2: role in the Democratic Party broadly today?
Speaker 3: Look, I look at what are the tools in my toolbox.
Speaker 3: I'll use every one of them that I possibly can.
Speaker 3: Oversight is a big part this is part of your
Speaker 3: job when you're a senator, and that is to look
Speaker 3: at the agencies, to ask questions of these nominees, to
Speaker 3: get them on the record, to press them, to ask
Speaker 3: for investigations. This is why we need inspectors General. This
Speaker 3: is why we need an active GAO. This is why
Speaker 3: we need an FBI that is still functional. It's partly
Speaker 3: just to say we already have laws and force the
Speaker 3: damn laws. Make sure that people are doing that. That's
Speaker 3: part of my job. Part of my job is to
Speaker 3: be in the fight to give it everything I've got because,
Speaker 3: as I said, ultimately it's going to be about people
Speaker 3: across this country saying, look, I don't want in America
Speaker 3: where it's all about a hand full of billionaires. I
Speaker 3: want in America where we actually do invest in medical research.
Speaker 3: I want in America where actually every kid has an
Speaker 3: opportunity to go to public school, even kids who have
Speaker 3: special need. To hear me talking as a special needs teacher,
Speaker 3: I want in America where we're making investments in our
Speaker 3: best resource, and that is our people.
Speaker 1: Talking to a former law professor.
Speaker 2: So Article two, Section two, Power of advice and consent
Speaker 2: by virtue of the committees that you sit on, Armed Services, finance, banking.
Speaker 1: You have had the.
Speaker 2: Ability to question a lot of these highermobile nominees. Coming
Speaker 2: up is the presence picked ahead the Securious and Exchange Commission,
Speaker 2: Paul Atkins, And you've written a memo thirty four pages
Speaker 2: in length.
Speaker 1: It starts with the congregations.
Speaker 3: Average for me.
Speaker 2: You say he has extensive experience in financial services and
Speaker 2: capital markets. But I have concerns about your record if
Speaker 2: you tick through what he's done as an sec staffer
Speaker 2: and commissioner, and the work that he's done since in
Speaker 2: the private sector as a consultant. He did work on
Speaker 2: behalf of FTX, the fraudulent and failed crypto conglomerate that
Speaker 2: Sam Bankman freed started. You point out things he said
Speaker 2: about crypto and climate regulations. Given all of that, is
Speaker 2: there anything that he could say to earn your vote
Speaker 2: and committee?
Speaker 3: So let me back up just a little bit. Think
Speaker 3: about the job that he's being interview top cop on
Speaker 3: Wall Street, top cop on Wall Street and cop in
Speaker 3: two meanings of that word. One is you've got to
Speaker 3: catch the fraudsters. You've got to make sure everybody's dotting
Speaker 3: their eyes and crossing their tees, because there's a lot
Speaker 3: of value in having that stock market be an honest
Speaker 3: and level playing field. But the other way in which
Speaker 3: top cop it's to watch for risk building up in
Speaker 3: the system. It's to make sure that the regulations that
Speaker 3: are in place are appropriately calibrated to deal with those
Speaker 3: risks and beat those risks out of the system. Paul
Speaker 3: Atkins actually has a track record on exactly that issue
Speaker 3: because he served as a commissioner in the SEC from
Speaker 3: two thousand and one to two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: You remember what happened a crisis.
Speaker 3: Yes, so here we are in lead up to the
Speaker 3: financial crisis, and over and over again, what does Paul
Speaker 3: Atkins vote for? Loosen the regulations?
Speaker 2: What does his nomination say to you about the regulatory
Speaker 2: framework this administration wants.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think this is entirely in keeping with what
Speaker 3: Donald Trump and Elon Musk want to see us do,
Speaker 3: and that is loosen regulations. Loosen regulations, loosen regulations. That
Speaker 3: is what Paul Atkins did. He also said repeatedly that
Speaker 3: no regulations just get in the way. Everybody needs to
Speaker 3: do whatever they want. Those big Wall Street giants. We
Speaker 3: saw the crash in two thousand and eight. And here's
Speaker 3: what happens next. After the crash, he has the chance
Speaker 3: to have a little twenty twenty hindsight. He has twenty zero.
Speaker 3: Heindez site. He looks back and says, no problem with
Speaker 3: having let those giant Wall Street banks run wild, and
Speaker 3: the fact that the American taxpayer had bail them out
Speaker 3: not a problem. That's my concern. If someone has demonstrated
Speaker 3: such poor judgment, you've got to be really worried about
Speaker 3: putting them in a job where the failure to have
Speaker 3: good judgment could be like it was back then. Remember,
Speaker 3: ten million families lost their homes, millions more people lost
Speaker 3: their jobs. We watched Wall Street do a real tank then.
Speaker 3: And here's the thing about Paul Atkins. We have both
Speaker 3: his demonstrated experience, but also look at his experience overall.
Speaker 3: So his time in government is a real problem. But
Speaker 3: now he's someone who has built a very lucrative business
Speaker 3: with the Potomac Partners. He charges evidently upwards of twelve
Speaker 3: hundred dollars an hour to give advice, and he says, well,
Speaker 3: I'm going to divest this interest. But he doesn't want
Speaker 3: to tell us who he's divesting too. Who's buying and
Speaker 3: for what purposes? And what are the long term plans?
Speaker 3: Because here's the deal. SEC chairmanship doesn't last forever, right,
Speaker 3: two years, four years, maybe longer? My concern is, And
Speaker 3: so what happens on the other end. Does he just
Speaker 3: come right back out and instead of charging twelve hundred
Speaker 3: dollars an hour, it's now twenty four hundred dollars an hour?
Speaker 3: But it's who do you work for? And why that
Speaker 3: matters is it has an effect on the time you
Speaker 3: sit as chairman of the SEC. So there he is
Speaker 3: making decisions, and I look at someone like Paul Act.
Speaker 3: How much time has he spent with families that are
Speaker 3: working three jobs to try to make it to the
Speaker 3: end of the month. How much time has he spent
Speaker 3: with any of those ten million people who lost their
Speaker 3: homes in the last crash. And how much time has
Speaker 3: he spent with this handful of billionaires who really, at
Speaker 3: least in the short run, love these deregulated markets and
Speaker 3: taxpayer bailouts. And how much when he makes a decision
Speaker 3: is he thinking about the guy working three jobs? And
Speaker 3: how much is he thinking about his future clients whom
Speaker 3: he could please. Wiley's at the SEC. So those are
Speaker 3: the problems for me.
Speaker 2: After the break, my final questions for Senator Warren on
Speaker 2: the independence of regulators and the judicial branches role in
Speaker 2: the balance of power in Washington. Something about which I
Speaker 2: know you're passionate is the independence of these.
Speaker 1: Regulatory always is.
Speaker 2: You look at the SEC today, there are two Republicans
Speaker 2: on that commission, one Democrat whose term will be up soon.
Speaker 2: There's been no indication the present's going to put forward
Speaker 2: another Democratic nominee. I look at the FTC, the Federal
Speaker 2: Trade Commission, and the two Democratic members were removed by
Speaker 2: this administration. They're fighting to get back in those positions.
Speaker 2: What is the practical implication of that, not having five
Speaker 2: members in place, not having the kind of I imagine
Speaker 2: ideological political diversity you would have under normal circumstances.
Speaker 3: Right. I'm glad you asked that, because it's a reminder
Speaker 3: that when those agencies were designed FTC, of course the oldest,
Speaker 3: the SEC, during the Great Depression. They were made bipartisan
Speaker 3: from the beginning in an understanding that yeah, it's going
Speaker 3: to move a little, there's going to be a little shift,
Speaker 3: but we need buy in across the political spectrum. And
Speaker 3: we need the stability all the way through the entire system.
Speaker 3: I think of it this way, even for companies that
Speaker 3: are saying, let's do regulately, you know, turn us loose,
Speaker 3: let us do whatever we want. At the end of
Speaker 3: the day, Yeah, make me feel good. In the short term,
Speaker 3: you may be able to figure out how to cut
Speaker 3: a corner here and make a little more money. But understand,
Speaker 3: the reason our stock market is so valuable is in
Speaker 3: part because it has level, transparent rules that are strictly enforced.
Speaker 3: And you start to weaken that and in the short
Speaker 3: run you may make a profit and that guy over there,
Speaker 3: but how many other people say, you know what, I
Speaker 3: don't think that's where I want to invest my money.
Speaker 3: I think I'm just going to slow down on how
Speaker 3: much of my wealth, my energy, my time, my talent
Speaker 3: I put in there. We have built a legal structure
Speaker 3: that in many ways is the envy of the world.
Speaker 3: There's a reason investment comes into the United States, and
Speaker 3: it's because you count on those structures independent of where
Speaker 3: they've got a Democrat or Republican in the White House.
Speaker 3: The structures work when Donald Trump and Elon Musk come
Speaker 3: in and don't just say, you know, let's give a
Speaker 3: little different emphasis. But they want a chainsaw. They want
Speaker 3: to just get rid of everyone who doesn't follow their
Speaker 3: deregulatory agenda. They're boost the billionaire agenda. That's going to
Speaker 3: cost everybody in this country.
Speaker 2: I want to stick with the FTC and what happened there,
Speaker 2: because we've heard from the FED chairman, with whom you've
Speaker 2: had your sheriff disagreements, I should say over policy and
Speaker 2: ticket hearings. He's not over his independence, not over his independence,
Speaker 2: and that's where I want to go. Should he be
Speaker 2: worried as he watches what happened at the FTC about
Speaker 2: his and his colleagues ability to keep their positions in
Speaker 2: the Federal Reserve?
Speaker 3: I want to say, no, he shouldn't be worried because
Speaker 3: I stand staunchly behind the independence of the FED. But damn,
Speaker 3: I stand staunchly behind the independence of the FTC and
Speaker 3: behind the independence of the SEC within their statutory neighborhoods.
Speaker 3: But that's the question. If Donald Trump can just start
Speaker 3: getting rid of everyone who disagrees with him anywhere in government.
Speaker 3: For me, it started actually with the Inspectors General. If
Speaker 3: he can just fire those inspectors General, even though the
Speaker 3: statutes say that they have job protection and can only
Speaker 3: be fired for cause. If he can just mow through
Speaker 3: every civil servant, if he can just mow through the
Speaker 3: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it's a form of lawlessness and
Speaker 3: all the power belongs to the king. That it suggests
Speaker 3: nobody is safe, not even the chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Speaker 2: I want to guess that the person you'd most like
Speaker 2: to have in seat in front of you in the
Speaker 2: hearing room is Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: Of course, is not a cabinet appointee.
Speaker 3: In fact, what is he? Can you just tell me?
Speaker 3: I recurt here it documents, and I hear that he's nothing.
Speaker 3: He's just the guy who stands her in the White House.
Speaker 2: But it gets to this issue of who does hold
Speaker 2: him to account? And in your capacity as senior center
Speaker 2: from Massachusetts, ranking member of the banker, how do you
Speaker 2: get answers from somebody who again has no official position,
Speaker 2: traditional official position, but is doing so much to reshape
Speaker 2: the bureaucratic landscape, the regulatory landscape, in fact the whole government.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so let me do two parts here. The first
Speaker 3: one is I want to remind you after Donald Trump
Speaker 3: was elected. One of the very first letters I wrote
Speaker 3: was to Elon Musk, and I said, I've read the declaration.
Speaker 3: You want to cut two trillion dollars from the budget,
Speaker 3: which he then trimmed down to a trillion, which he
Speaker 3: then trimmed down to half trillion. I said, don't give up,
Speaker 3: don't give up. You can cut two trillion dollars in
Speaker 3: waste and fat out of the budget. And here's a
Speaker 3: list of thirty things that I've been working on for
Speaker 3: a long time here in Congress that I've seen kind
Speaker 3: of an insider's view on some of this, places where
Speaker 3: we could make cuts that would make our government actually
Speaker 3: more efficient, that would make our government work better. You
Speaker 3: want to go to work, I'm ready.
Speaker 2: I'm ready.
Speaker 3: And you don't have to promise to do all thirty
Speaker 3: just pick any of them. This is a menu, Just
Speaker 3: take whatever you like on this. No answer. And instead
Speaker 3: he goes out there and just starts firing people. And
Speaker 3: now this moves into the second part of the answer.
Speaker 3: He does things that are illegal, and there's just not
Speaker 3: much doubt about this. He fires people who under law
Speaker 3: have certain job protections, can only be fired in certain ways.
Speaker 3: He goes out there and cancels contracts government contracts that
Speaker 3: can only be canceled by a federal contracting official may
Speaker 3: look at the laws, boring old laws about this stuff.
Speaker 3: So what we have is a lawlessness that has been
Speaker 3: set through our entire government. And this is a threat
Speaker 3: to democracy. It is also a threat to our economy.
Speaker 3: You can't build a strong and stable economy in the
Speaker 3: middle of this. It is also a threat, damn it,
Speaker 3: to good government. I go back to my list, there
Speaker 3: are things I really wanted to cut to something else
Speaker 3: I want to do. I think we ought to have
Speaker 3: simpler regulations. I'm not a no regulations gal, but I
Speaker 3: am definitely like there are a lot of places we
Speaker 3: should simplify our regulations, make them clearer, easier to understand.
Speaker 3: There are things we could do to run this government better.
Speaker 3: And in that sense, I want to cheer when someone
Speaker 3: says I want to be a reformer, but you got
Speaker 3: to be a reformer within the law that is possible.
Speaker 3: Right now, Republicans are in control of the House, the Senate,
Speaker 3: of the White House. You guys want to do reform,
Speaker 3: pass some damn laws, but do not set elon Musk
Speaker 3: to take a chainsaw of cancer research in America and
Speaker 3: put old people out of the nursing homes that they're in.
Speaker 3: That is not how America builds a future, and frankly,
Speaker 3: that is not the kind of people we want to be.
Speaker 2: Last question here, we've talked about the three branches of government.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you about the judicial one in particular,
Speaker 2: drawing from your experience again as a professor of law,
Speaker 2: are you confident that the courts will be able to
Speaker 2: keep up with all of the challenges that we've seen here?
Speaker 2: There has been this flurry, the sandstorm, as you described it.
Speaker 2: Can the courts keep up?
Speaker 3: It's tough. Look, we're at over one hundred lawsuits. I
Speaker 3: no longer can keep the number in my head because
Speaker 3: it keeps shifting. But the judges, by and large have
Speaker 3: stepped up. Courts are designed to go slowly, right, and
Speaker 3: Elon Musk is moving fast. Right. You can break laws
Speaker 3: a lot faster than you can actually hold people accountable
Speaker 3: for that. But at the end of the day, the
Speaker 3: three parts of government. Congress writes those laws, the administration
Speaker 3: administers those laws. We count on the courts to hold
Speaker 3: the first two to their roles. I think the judges
Speaker 3: are stepping up. So I say this half out of
Speaker 3: hope but half out of conviction. I still believe in
Speaker 3: the Constitution of the United States. I think most judges do,
Speaker 3: and I think they're going to hold.
Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gera.
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