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▶ 0:05:10this hearing of the committee on oversight and government reform will come to order want to welcome everyone back without objection the the chair May declare a recess at any time I now recognize myself for the purpose of making an opening statement welcome to today's oversight Committee hearing on the government accountability offices 2025 high-risk before we get started I wanted to recognize that this will be the comp troller General daro's final time testifying on the hris list as he is set to retire later this year
▶ 0:05:41I want to thank you Mr daaro for your Decades of service to the United States under your leadership GAO has done excellent work to expose waste fraud abuse in the federal government and provide recommendations to prevent it at the start of each new Congress the GAO publishes a high-risk list to update us on programs ripe for Congress oversight and action the 38 areas on this year's report all present either a financial risk of loss of at least 1 billion dollar taxpayer dollars or they present a risk involving
▶ 0:06:11public health or safety delivery of essential services to Americans National Security concerns privacy economic growth or the rights of citizens these potential billions of dollars could be better utilized for lowering taxes improving roads or making everyday life more affordable for the American people the average American works too hard to see tax dollars wasted my goal with this hearing is simple to make sure the tax pair of dollars is being spent wisely and to get more of it back to Americans
▶ 0:06:41Pockets where it belongs this Li this list helps track the progress of deficiencies of programs so that Congress can perform oversight to promote efficient and effective use of taxpayer money the federal government programs created and funded by Congress must stay true to their intended purpose meet the stated objectives and remain stewards of taxpayer dollars however year after year bloated Federal programs managed by the federal bureaucracy continue to fall short of their goals and are often plagued
▶ 0:07:12by Fraud and Abuse despite the excellent reports by go each year there continues to be rampant waste Fraud and Abuse across the federal government for more than 30 years GAO has provided members of congress with this report yet familiar programs remain on this list now now which were there in the very beginning Americans are tired of the federal government failing its report card the American people elected president Trump to drain the swamp and re in The Runaway
▶ 0:07:42bureaucracy and president D president Trump is delivering on This Promise president Trump has tasked Doge with conducting a government-wide audit to eliminate Washington waste goo's extensive reports and recommendations to the executive branch have given Doge a strong starting point as it takes on the federal bureaucracy Doge has taken note of gao's critical work in identifying trillions of dollars lost to improper payments made by programs like Medicaid and unemployment insurance and now doge is taking action to address the root
▶ 0:08:12causes of improper payments Doge has recognized goo's reports on the need to modernize it for a more efficient and effective federal government and Elon Musk and his a team are working on solutions to make that happen the J's high-risk list includes the department defenses financial management DOD I will remind everyone has failed audits for seven years in a row under President Trump's leadership secretary HTH is going to work with Doge to finally address
▶ 0:08:43this now more than ever Go's work tells us that we need more data more tracking of funds more oversight and yes more efficiency to know exactly where taxpayer dollars are going we are excited to work with the Trump Administration to continue our mission of cutting out waste Fraud and Abuse I look forward to hearing from cop troller General daro on the good work GAO is doing and how this committee and the Trump Administration could protect the American people's money from being wasted by their government Americans WOTE more than
▶ 0:09:13another report telling them about all the problems in Washington they want action to write the ship and that is just what president Trump Doge and the republicans in Congress are doing for the American people with that I now yield to the ranking member finally for his opening statement I thank the chair and I welcome Mr daro this is one of my favorite hearings uh in the calendar year and I think it's also very important if you really want to get at waste fren abuse and you want to achieve efficiency which is
▶ 0:09:43the ability to maximize good outcomes while minimizing waste wasted time wasted energy wasted money uh the high-risk list of GAO is a great place to start in fact when this committee has paid attention to that list we have effectuated serious savings I'll give you the example uh in I in information technology modernization which I focused on the 16 years I've been in this committee um we have saved according to GAO $ 31
▶ 0:10:13billion so when we talk about efficiency and trying to achieve results for the American people you don't do it by taking a wrecking ball to the entire structure and hope you get the bad with the good you in in fact take out a scalpel and you and you cut out the excess you cut out the waste and you do it in a thoughtful and reflective manner unlike what the chairman has just said I don't believe President Trump and Elon Musk have in fact
▶ 0:10:44done that done that at all they have done Mass firings mass resignations and attempt at resignations to fire everyone in a probationary status is not to pick the good from the it is in fact to treat everyone as the same and uh hope for the best and our Seed corn is is being lost we need to have talent for the future the approach of Doge so far and Elon
▶ 0:11:14Musk in particular actually uh is injurious to the Future course of skill sets needed in the federal government we need higher skill sets we have to replace a number of work workers in the federal government who were going to going to retire and they're eligible for retirement unfortunately the approach of this Administration so far led by Mr musk and Doge does not do that at all so I'm I'm looking forward to talking about other
▶ 0:11:44opportunities like improper payments which this committee talked about for years I believe Mr daro the improper payments add up to something like 281 Milli billion dollar a year you know if we multiply that times 10 that's almost three trillion doar we could reduce the debt by if we got serious about dealing with improper payments when we look at Revenue owed to the federal government owed to IRS but not collected because of irs's inability to audit and collect
▶ 0:12:15that number is anywhere from a half a trillion to a trillion a year the last uh Trump commissioner of the IRS said it was a trillion a year Well if we took that high number and multipli it by 10 that's trillion uh you know that's a third of the national debt almost so there are things we can do another one is Legacy systems which again go has talked about um they've highlighted the top 10 candidates for retirement Legacy systems of it uh which would save over $331
▶ 0:12:46million a year the oldest Legacy system I believe you've identified Mr daro is 51 years old um so we can we can do productive things we can find Common Ground Democrats and Republicans but we're we on this side of the aisle are never going to support a Mindless wrecking ball approach to quote achieving efficiency in the federal government that's not how to do it it will wreak harm on the American people it will damage our form of government and it's not something that will ever Merit
▶ 0:13:16our support I yield back than member yields back I'm pleased to welcome today's witness comproller General Jean dodaro who brings more than 50 years of experience at the US government accountability office and has served as head of the legislative branch agency since 2010 the cop trer General is serving the final year of his 15-year term Mr daro has testified before Congress 220 times on goo's recommendations to improve the performance and operations of the federal government leading to work that has led to over1
▶ 0:13:47trillion dollar in financial benefits to the American taxpayer during his tenure comp controller General daro was influential in developing the concept and content of the high-risk list which over the last 15 years has averaged Financial benefits of about $40 billion per year thank you for joining us and I look forward to our discussion this afternoon pursuant to committee rule 9g the witness and his staff will please stand and raise the hand do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to give is the truth the
▶ 0:14:17whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God let the record show that the witnesses answered the affirmative thank you and you all may take a seat we appreciate you being here today and look forward to your testimony and I want to remind the members of the committee that when the C Controller General testifies he has his staff with him and sometimes he'll yield to his staff to answer certain questions so that's why they were all sworn in uh let me remind the witnesses that we have read your we and statement it will appear in full in the hearing record
▶ 0:14:47please limit your oral statement sir to 5 minutes as a reminder please press the button on the microphone in front of you so that he is on and the members can hear you when the be when you begin to speak the light in front of you will turn green after 4 minutes it will turn yellow when the red light comes on your 5 minutes have expired we ask that you would please wrap it up so now I recognize Mr daro for his opening statement thank you very much Mr chairman ranking member Conley members of the committee uh it's uh very good to be here today to talk about Jo's high-risk area which focuses
▶ 0:15:17on fraud waste abuse mismanagement but also on broad-based transformation that's needed for a number of our programs to achieve greater efficiency and Effectiveness in government there's been some good progress since our last update as has been mentioned we've saved over $760 billion over time uh through implementation of recommendations that have been acted on by the Congress and the administration on the high-risk areas today I want to focus on a couple things one we're adding one new
▶ 0:15:47area this year and that's improving the delivery of Disaster Assistance storms are becoming more frequent and intense uh we in the last 10 years the government's appropriated $500 billion for Disaster Assistance FEMA is stretched Way Too Thin they're managing right now over 600 disasters some of them go back 20 years uh the uh system is fragmented they're over 30 different federal agencies involved in
▶ 0:16:17delivering assistance there's confusion overlapping regulations uh we need reform in that area and that's why we're highlighting it uh there's also opportunities the better manage the cost of the federal government as has been mentioned by the chair and ranking member improper payments re remains a very intractable problem uh last uh six years there's been over $150 billion doll every year and improper payments that's not even the complete number
▶ 0:16:48uh there a number of report uh programs aren't even reporting there's $ 600 billion doll net tax gap between the amount the taxes owed and tax is collected by the IRS voluntary compliance is hovering around 82 85% we can do better uh in that area to make sure the government's getting its fair fair share of Revenue there are many major Acquisitions across the government including DOD weapon systems they're on a high list the department
▶ 0:17:18of energy uh Contracting for nuclear uh development and cleanup of our weapons complex these contracts are are consistently overrun over budget and delays occur and don't deliver on the Promises Information Technology remains a a government-wide problem it's designated a government-wide list uh Acquisitions and U operations government spends over hundred billion dollars a year most
▶ 0:17:48of that goes to maintain existing Legacy systems and not to new technology so the government's not harnessing the power faas uh just to give a couple examples FAA has 138 Air Traffic Control Systems 31% of of those systems are not sustainable by FDA faa's own amounts there's not enough spare parts there's not enough money there's not enough plans and their plans to develop many of these systems
▶ 0:18:19aren't uh intended to resolve the problem for 10 or 13 years we've got the VA electronic health care System they're on their fourth try they've spent over 12 billion already we've only deployed the system uh to four uh medical centers another five in the next year but there's 160 more to go uh so these are issues cyber security I designated that a high-risk area Cross Federal Government 1997 added critical infrastructure protection
▶ 0:18:492003 it is still a problem it's grown in intensity and the government's not acting at a pace commensurate with the evolving grave threat not just to the federal government's information systems but the critical infrastructure protection the electricity grid Water Systems our telecommunications Network all across the 16 critical infrastructure sections uh of the United States uh there are many other areas on the list that deal with public
▶ 0:19:19health and safety oversight of medical products we've got drug shortages we've got not enough inspections of uh drug manufactur facturers food safety the Bureau of Prisons is uh in significant disrepair uh and underst staffed and I can go into many of these areas uh during the discussion um but the main message here is that action and heighten attention on these issues can save billions of
▶ 0:19:49dollars improve public health and safety and also go to the heart of improving the service and the Effectiveness and efficiency and a return on investment and build better trust in our government institutions I thank you for the opportunity to be here today and uh would uh enjoy entertaining your questions thank you I now recognize uh Mr ghost Dr Ghar from Arizona thank you Mr chairman and I extend the same thing Mr daro I looked
▶ 0:20:20all always looked to this hearing to to talk to you because you've always been good to us and always been very fair so thank you for doing that if I had to highlight just one Department of the government's efficiency accomplishment so far we be proving that the waste Fraud and Abuse infecting the federal government is not just isolated to one Department it's government-wide since the last GAO high-risk report in 2023 not a single item has been removed from that list the Biden Administration contaminated nearly every agency and dug our
▶ 0:20:50nation deeper and deeper in debt this highrisk list includes improper Medicaid payments and extravagant DOD Acquisitions to fund endless Wars for three years the family's first Corona virus response act provided fmap funding to states to continuously enroll Medicaid beneficiaries regarding regardless of Eligibility or their private insurance according to the Kaiser Foundation enrollment in Medicaid Chip grew by 23.1 million or 32.4% between February of 2020
▶ 0:21:20and April of 2023 and once again the dod failed its seventh consecutive audit perhaps we should authorize should authorize Abram tanks and send them over to Ukraine to be instantly destroyed Mr deero the high-risk list also mentions the infrastructure of the Bureau of Prisons Bureau of Prisons is planning to close seven facilities and three satellite camps due to budget constraints I know has been empowered with emergency funds ice who needs more
▶ 0:21:50detention beds my question for you would allowing ice to use these Bop facilities as detention centers help generate additional Revenue and expand the use of federal uh excess Federal property perhaps even improve the infrastructure I'm not we haven't taken a look at that issue yet I understand what your concerns are um and I I don't know we'll we'll be taking a look and I'm sure asked to look at how ice is using those facilities and whether that's having you know what effect that's having
▶ 0:22:20both positive and potentially negative and and we'll have to see but I I'm deeply concerned about the state of the prisons they're very understaffed uh and there's excessive use of overtime and that can lead to both safety concerns for their staff as well as incarcerated individuals they're also uh despite the first step act they haven't really focused on evaluating programs that are intended to help people transition back into society
▶ 0:22:51and not prevent recidivism you know from occurring and them ending back in prison shortly after their release um so I don't know to what extent ice using the facilities will complicate or or potentially have other effects on that area but we'll be we'll look at it and and to follow up on that is if if if you regard this as a transfer could you tell us actually how you would transfer that to yeah I'm not sure I'd have to look at the ownership of
▶ 0:23:21who owns yeah the the the the the prisons now the report also flags that the FDA must do a better job to protect public health and improve its oversight of temporary use or quote unapproved medical products like drugs vaccines during emergencies question for you in your investigation of this lack of FDA oversight did you uncover why the FDA approved the emergency use of the experimental covid shot but not Ivor meon for the treatment of
▶ 0:23:51covid let me ask uh juste going call our expert up in that area it's just far Miss just for as managing director of our Healthcare work yes uh Congressman we we haven't looked into um the use of uh uh eways for Icon or vaccines at this point we haven't been asked to do that yet by Congress well one of the things that we're going to have to really look at is approve FDA because there's there's trouble all the way around and I think both sides can agree on that
▶ 0:24:23um the report recommends the collection of tax payments for oil and gas Lees to help improve quote improve the government's fiscal position would you agree that funds generated from the taxes on oil and gas Lees on federal lands would help reduce the deficit uh yes so let's approve some more oil and gas no this our finding is that it's already being produced okay and the government's not collecting has no Assurance it's collecting the
▶ 0:24:53amount that's already due I'm not suggesting they you know produce more but for what's being produced royalty payments are due to the government the Interior Department systems are in kind of disarray and it's not clear that they're collecting the revenue that's due to the government thank you Mr daro I'll Yi back chair recognizes ranking member for five minutes thank you Mr daro welcome um you've been doing high-risk reports to
▶ 0:25:23this committee for a long time um and on the high-risk list this year there are how many items again there uh 38 items 38 and how many has Congress taken action on uh there there's quite a few I mean we took off last well quite a few is a little general well I can ask 19 before 20 I would say probably 20 is a fair statement 20 20 overtime is so Congress hasn't ignored
▶ 0:25:54the highrisk list no but there are some perennial favorites that keep on coming back for one reason or another are there not that's correct and what would those what would be couple of examples of that well there's some charter members have been on since 199 can I ask you to speak close to the microphone sure uh there's some charter members that have been on since 1990 Medicare for example uh the uh DOD weapon systems has been on the list 1990
▶ 0:26:24uh Medicaid joined in 2003 along with real proper property across federal government uh as I mentioned earlier put cyber security on in 1997 um and U so those are are some of the ones that were early additions to the list and there have been I want to be clear there have been improvements in some of those areas but they're not to the point where risk is being managed properly and we're still have opportunities to do better right if we adopted all of the
▶ 0:26:55recommendations uh goo put forward on the high list any idea what the savings could be to the United States taxpayer uh upwards of 200 over 200 billion 200 billion a year uh or total total but some of them would continue on on time okay um and that's a that's a very conservative estimate I think it could be more much more well just for example the savings from it modernization which has been on your highrisk
▶ 0:27:26list is 31 billion um so yeah and and by the way it's a gift that keeps on giving that's correct if we focus on real efficiency are you're are you familiar with the taxpayer funds oversight and accountability act previously known as the CFO Vision act yes and um would that make the federal government work better for the American people in your opinion if we adopted it yes yes that that was based upon recommendations from a GAO study where we studied the impact of the CFO
▶ 0:27:56act over the 30 years of its implement ation and some suggestions to make it stronger and does that bill also address improper payments and fraud with with some additional uh Provisions added it could and should and I'm happy to provide additional suggestions to the committee in that regard yeah could you just talk a little bit about improper payments um refresh our memory what we mean by improper payments we don't mean the government deliberately
▶ 0:28:26goes out and throws money from the rooftop uh no that's not in the official statutory definition uh and I would not support that the uh the official definition is uh it's a payment that was it should not have been made or was made in the wrong amount some of them can actually be an underpayment most however are overpayments probably 90% of them they happen when money is given
▶ 0:28:57to somebody who's really not eligible to receive the benefit or the payment calculation is incorrect right or somebody submits uh a uh a bill for a service that was never provided and of course some of the improper payments could be fraud and fraud is broader uh and the improper payments really are only estimate of about 80 Federal programs they're a very small subset they should be bigger
▶ 0:29:28but fraud occurs throughout the federal government so fraud can occur uh beyond the improper payments but but the improper payments final point it just seems to me that part of the problem with improper payments in the federal government is there's no sort of incentive of reward system in the federal Workforce to uh reward you for catching improper payments and trying to you know deflect them uh the reward system is getting money out the door and understandably and providing benefits and services to needy citizens real quickly
▶ 0:29:58could you comment on that yeah and how we address that that's exactly right I mean more people in the federal agencies have gotten in trouble for not paying someone than they have from paying someone that they shouldn't have paid and the incentives need to be changed the other complicating factors many of these programs are administered through the states so there needs to be incentives at the states and the labor department for example uh offered a suggestion that there' be legislation to give States the ability to keep
▶ 0:30:285% of whatever they recover in improper payments and use it to strengthen their payment Integrity processes nice support that I thank the chair chair now recognizes Dr Fox from North Carolina uh thank you m very much Mr chairman and thank you Mr dodaro and we'll miss you when you retire we appreciate you last year North Carolina saw immense Devastation caused by Hurricane helem with over 100 lives lost and nearly 60 billion damage
▶ 0:30:58while FEMA did show up to provide Aid I'd give FEMA and the federal response to helim an overall grade of a d plus it's no surprise that that quote improving the delivery of federal Disaster Assistance end quote was added this year to the jao highrisk list which states that attention is also needed to improve processes for assisting survivors I could not agree more one of the biggest problems I recognized while helping constituents affect Ed by the storms
▶ 0:31:29is how FEMA Representatives on the ground are telling people what the agency cannot do rather than what it can do FEMA has a lot of experience dealing with disasters yet it seems to have learned shockingly few lessons along the way these should be there should be an information road map available to those affected by disasters including what they can expect from FEMA this road map should include how much and what kind of Aid they can expect to receive a Time line for a information on all
▶ 0:31:59available assistants and what types of decisions will have to be made in the coming weeks months and years what recommendations do you have for FEMA to quote improve processes for assisting survivors end quote I I I'll give a couple examples and now turn to Chris Curry who's our expert in the area he can enumerate all the suggestions that we have one of the things is we think FEMA gets involved in too many disasters right now that it's based on a per capita
▶ 0:32:30amount of 100 excuse me $186 per capita hasn't been adjusted over time so they get involved in a lot more disasters that if they effectively evaluated the state and local ability to do it we estimate they could be not involved in about 27 fewer disasters which would would help deal with this issue so I'll turn to Chris for other examples yes ma'am um the way you described it I could not agree
▶ 0:33:00more with um the problem is we have a system that was created to do good but it's not helping the survivors that it's supposed to help and your description is is is rot on um the problem is we have the Survivor in the community has to pull the assistance out of FEMA and undergo a very complicated process that's often fragmented across multiple agencies and it's very confusing and survivors get worn down uh understandably so in terms of our recommendations we
▶ 0:33:30actually have a number of options to simplify the system but also to reform how the federal government provides this assistance so communities and survivors can get it quicker and more easily I have a follow-up question I'll send to you all um be because I'm not going to have enough time for you to answer that and I need another ask another question uh we've worked very hard in this committee on postal service reform and um we are concerned that you
▶ 0:34:00the high-risk list notes the Postal Service loss 16 billion in fiscal years 2023 and 2024 and has $181 billion in debts and liabilities the Postal Service cannot continue operating as it has with its financials in such bad shape what suggestions do you have to for us to share to shore up the postal service so it can continue to provide provide critical service especially in rural communities
▶ 0:34:31like the ones most of us represent yeah there there's a basic um expectation gap between the Congress and the postal service and I think that Gap has to be closed Congress wants certain delivery expectations uh set for the postal service but there's no way they're going to generate the revenue necessary in order to meet those expectations that has for it so I think there has to be a negotiation between
▶ 0:35:01Congress and the post service say this is what we want you to do how much can you generate they need to keep trying to reduce their costs and they've had some success but not a lot uh and I think that's fair to ask them to uh reduce their cost but at some point Congress has to say here's what we want and here's what we're willing to help contribute to pay to keep that level of service going it's my it's my understanding that they've done not nearly enough to automate and to reduce
▶ 0:35:31those costs do do you have some suggestions in that area this is Dave our uh director in charge of postal work so they have made some initial steps to transform their network but there still is a lot that remains to be done uh the network is Antiquated uh they are in the process of trying to transform it but there have been some problems in that transformation uh in certain areas where it's been implemented in Atlanta and Richmond you've seen declines in service performance as the roll out was done so it's really important for the postal service to focus
▶ 0:36:01on what are the lessons from that so as they continue this transformation which is really important to get at your point uh it's rolled out as smoothly as possible so you both get those gains and you don't get the significant hiccups that happened with the first two implementations uh Mr chairman thank you I I do want to follow up with our Witnesses particularly on the post office absolutely it affects every American and and it's very critical to us thank you much very good chair recogniz is Miss Norton from Washington DC
▶ 0:36:32thank you Mr chairman for for this year's high-risk update the government accountability office found that inadequate Staffing and skills skills gaps contributed to more than half of the nation's highest risk challenges Mr daro why are federal workers such an important part
▶ 0:37:03of the equation in tackling high-risk areas uh uh the the having the right numbers of Staff with the right skills is very essential let's take VA healthc care is on the high risk for timely not not providing timely and Quality Health Care there's a real shortage of mental health providers we have veterans that need uh you know suicide care for for example last I checked there were 17 veterans a day committing suicide so you we need uh
▶ 0:37:33well-qualified Mental Health Providers just in that area alone you need guards that are well qualified at the Bureau of Prisons you need good people managing our nuclear weapons complex Security Experts Etc you need software engineers at DOD and I could go on and on so these areas and we've had strategic human capital across the federal government on our high-risk list since 2001 I've been very concerned about the federal
▶ 0:38:03Workforce isn't doesn't have the uh proper skills that are needed to address many of these important areas that are providing critical services to the American people and at the heart of providing Public Safety uh if for example there are not enough inspectors at FDA to inspect foreign drug they only have 22% of the manufacturers that most of our drugs now
▶ 0:38:33come from foreign manufacturers in China and India and other countries and we're not inspecting them the way we should our food supply 15% imported but in some categories like seafood it's over 80% fresh fruits and vegetables over half and uh we don't have enough inspections being done on our food supplies either EPA is not doing enough assessments to assess toxic chemicals before they're introduced into society
▶ 0:39:03so these are reasons that we have this issue on a high-risk list because they don't have the right people and enough skills in order to execute their mission to protect the American people well unfortunately Elon Musk and the department of government efficiency missed the me memo on when when they came to power and began terrorizing uh the federal workers that serve
▶ 0:39:34uh the American people day in and day out and let's not forget that a third of these federal workers are veterans instead of focusing their efforts on recruiting and uh retaining talented people to put their skills to work solving the nation's challenges Elon Musk offered an illegal scam buyout uh 10 uh 10 Millions uh uh
▶ 0:40:05uh two millions of federal employees that will only make the Staffing uh challenges worse and last uh Saturday he was added a gain threatening on social media that all federal workers would lose their jobs if they failed to reply to an email email and report what they did last week Mr Doro is it a best management
▶ 0:40:35practice uh to throw around indiscriminate threats of mass firings regardless of job duties and Mission needs yeah I would not consider it a best practice but I do think you know I've spent most of my career decades dealing butting heads with the bureaucracies across the government there's a need for change but how you do it matters and going about it uh in in the way that's being done now can cause some short-term
▶ 0:41:06problems uh for the government because it can create other vulnerabilities unintended vulnerabilities the way I've suggested in the past that this be done as the government figure out what functions it does not want to do anymore then you can deal with the people in those functions or ones that don't have the skills that you need anymore but should be done in a respectful way and it should be done also in a way that does not hurt the federal government in a long term you
▶ 0:41:36know we need uh people to be coming into the government whatever any Administration decides to do with their policies and what they want the government to do at the end of the day they're going to need good people to be able to do it and not enough younger people have been coming into the government with the kind of skills that are needed going forward so you have to be careful that you don't disincentivize people to want to give Public Service uh because public service is important to implementing
▶ 0:42:06any policy initiative by any uh U Administration no matter what the policy is I'm I'm agnostic on the policy that's for elected officials but I've seen good policies that don't get implemented effectively because you don't have the right people very good G ladies times expired chair recognize Mr Higgins from Louisiana thank you Mr chairman Mr D thank you for your service what a what a very impressive records good
▶ 0:42:36sir and you are you are a individual to have been able to make it through so many uh significant changes in the executive branch and in Congress so we thank you for your service and I mean that I'd like to dig into two areas in my my brief five minutes with you sir one will be the Department of Defense but before we get there I'd like to talk to you more about
▶ 0:43:06the United States Postal Service you mentioned that uh Congress would that that Congress should identify to the United States Postal Service what we need what we expect and I I would ask you did did we not do we not do that in 1970 with the postal reor organization act when the when the postal service was was
▶ 0:43:37reformed and redefined as an independent agency and and allowed great autonomy and independence from Congress it were essentially and I'm simplifying here and I ask you to to correct me if I'm wrong good sir but essentially the post office was given great AU autonomy and the ability to run itself set its own its own uh fees and the price of stamps and establish its own Financial
▶ 0:44:08uh conduct within the the Postal Service it was essentially set up as as a corporation and part of that deal the 1970 law required performance to deliver for the American people and a uh a a net neutral fiscal performance or a break evening fiscal performance so I would say that that the
▶ 0:44:38that the United States Service has has failed to comply with existing law but perhaps I'm oversimplifying that and I yield to the gentleman would you please respond yes sure absolutely uh you know fundamentally structurally you're description is sound and it was intended to for deposal service to operate like a private entity all right until you run into situations where if you're in a private entity
▶ 0:45:08this Postal Service facility we want to close this post office in this rural area it's not if the gentleman will yield for a question to his comment here but there was no nothing in the 1970 law that prohibited the manifestation of private competition so any reason reable corporate structure right would have anticipated the manifestation of private competition so so I would say that the post office was never
▶ 0:45:39insulated from the impact of potential private competition nor are they at this time right now yeah no I'm not so why would we give them the autonomy of corporate structure without the responsibility to perform as in within the the the reasonable guidelines of corporate structure including consideration of private competition and I yield back gentlem yeah well there there certain areas they have competition in and certain
▶ 0:46:09areas there are Monopoly first class male being a classic example of of the Monopoly well all I'm saying is that over time as they move to exercise their autonomy there were certain things that Congress blocked at closing of postal facilities with was one moving to 5-day delivery and packages on six day as opposed to Six-Day delivery Congress bed on and so th that's the type of thing I think we need to
▶ 0:46:40negotiate around those particular things that a private sector entity would do but uh there's not an appetite for the type of changes that would occur I'll ask my my expert would you Concur and I be my final point and then please answer like how would you assess the USPS performance regarding their mandate by law to break even for decades they have failed
▶ 0:47:10they are not self-sustaining they have an unsustainable business model which is why there needs to be a definition of what level of service going forward as as Mr D was saying and also uh some figuring out of how is the postal service with those Services going to support it because right now they are not financially self-sufficient they're supposed to be first class mail is not coming back I mean that's their most profitable areas first class mail it's not coming back uh due to email and other you know electronic uh changes
▶ 0:47:40and and so and they they haven't been able to cut cost fast enough to meet these services and so that they're absent some um additional compromise between Congress on delivery and perhaps you know some contribution to them or a different model for what they have right right now the model just does is not going to work and eventually what's going to happen is that in five years or so their uh money
▶ 0:48:10that they have to pay postretirement Healthcare benefits is going to run out it's it's unsustainable words of wisdom Mr chairman my my time has has expired I you thank you uh chair recognizes Mr Lynch for Massachusetts thank you Mr chairman uh Mr daro good to see you uh you know they tell me that you have testified over 220 times I think Mr connley and I have been there for most of them uh and I just want to say uh how grateful I am on behalf of the American
▶ 0:48:40taxpayer for your your good work uh I can say that throughout your time have you have been honest and and fastidious with your reports and thorough uh I I would say that uh you've been strictly nonpartisan throughout your T your time and that that has been helpful as well during some tough issues uh just the fact that you're a straight shooter has has helped us with our work on our end uh I think honestly
▶ 0:49:11you've been a shining example of what a federal employee a federal worker in a in a government taxpayer Watchdog should be and so uh I I wish you well uh I am sorry that you are leaving because we need you now more than ever I'm just hoping that a little bit of Gan daaro rubbed off on those people sitting behind you and uh I think I think that may be be the case
▶ 0:49:41um Mr chairman I ask enous consent to submit for the record a report of the Inspector General of the Veterans Affairs uh Administration the oig determination of severe occupational Staffing shortages at the VA school year 2024 without objection so ordered so Jean if if you would uh we had a report that was filed by uh Mike Mell uh who was the who was the Inspector General for the VA
▶ 0:50:11until he was fired by President Trump a little bit uh a little about I don't know maybe three weeks ago anyway he um he reported that the VA uh the VA Health Administration which cares for more than nine million veterans uh in uh 1400 healthc care facilities and 170 VA medical centers was experien severe occupational Staffing shortages uh of about 3,000 people 2,959
▶ 0:50:42people with over 82% of the facilities reporting severe shortages of medical officers and nurses so the nurses are like the Marine Corps of our health system and especially at the VA they they do it all uh doctors take the credit but the nurses do the work and uh what did President Trump do and Elon Musk came in and fired another thousand uh that was right when they came in and then later on which included uh healthcare
▶ 0:51:12workers uh employees who process benefit claims workers who staffed the VA suicide uh Crisis Line uh you know with record suicides among veterans and then just yest today the president went back and fired an additional 1,400 so now we're down 5,400 employees at the VA this is something we used to agree on between Republicans and Democrats can you offer us an assessment on how these terminations will impact veterans and their
▶ 0:51:42families uh we're we're going to take a look at that because it's on the high-risk area but it's it's not going to help the situation you know we already had them listed as having shortages in those areas and they have difficulty retaining people I'm very concerned about mental health and suicide prevention we're looking at the crisis hotline right now the request of the Senate we're due to issue some reports I'll ask Jess farb to add uh her views she's uh or managing
▶ 0:52:13director for healthcare and follows this carefully but it it's it's a reason to be concerned yeah well uh Congressman as as uh Jean you could be a little B more forthcoming because you're retiring so you know if you want to have at it let me know what you think but but ma'am go go ahead I'm sorry so I would apologize it's it's obviously VA has struggled with just making sure that veterans get timely access to health care and so not having um right number of people with the right skill sets and the right
▶ 0:52:43ability to treat veterans is going to affect what's already been a long-standing issue at the VA in terms of timeliness of of care um as we've reported in the past about how long veterans have waited so the people that schedule the appointments are very essential to making sure that veterans are able to get care both in the VA facilities and in the community yeah the other thing that worries me is right now I asked the VA how how much of a backlog do you have on claims cases coming you know veterans coming in especially with the pack act as how many what's the backlog of cases at the VA because it's taking forever
▶ 0:53:13for people to get appointments and and uh they told me they had a backlog today of TW of 250,000 cases at the VA they just laid off an additional 2400 people so I mean can you can you surmise what the impact that's going to create well it it's going to create a make an already bad situation likely worse you know one of the times VA handling a disability issu is also on the high-risk list we've had on the high risis list for a long
▶ 0:53:43time and there was a point in time and I hope it's a little better now but where if you went for an appeal it take you up to seven years to get your appeal result exactly people would die before they would get a decision on their disability claim area and the PCT act did increase their workload now I have I haven't looked specifically what's happened and but we will as part of our work but I know the situation was not good to begin with all right thank you thank you
▶ 0:54:13thank you madam chair for your Indulgence and and thank you generosity generosity in Indulgence okay thank you I'll now now recognize myself for five minutes thank you uh comp troller General d for being with us today um and I I apologize for you having to Bear witness to the uh Tantrums that unfolded in this committee earlier today the oversight committee has convened today to discuss something throwing the left into a tail spin spending more time protesting and disrupting official proceedings than legislating
▶ 0:54:43all because we're talking about cutting waste Fraud and Abuse and government mismanagement for decades this wasn't a partisan issue you know who championed cutting back on waste Fraud and Abuse no other than President Obama and Joe Biden in 2011 Obama signed executive order 13576 to create a government accountability and transparency board under Joe Biden's watch to root out waste to root out fraud and to root out abuse in federal agencies Joe
▶ 0:55:14Biden himself even admitted back then quote cutting waste Fraud and Abuse has been something Washington has talked about for decades but now more than ever what the American people need is action end quote but now the left has done a complete 180 claiming cutting waste Fraud and Abuse is fascist they say it's a threat to democracy they even say our nation's chief executive shouldn't be allowed to direct or control the executive branch or even ask an unelected bureaucrat who works for him what they did at work last week
▶ 0:55:44we just want to know what are the top five things you did at the office you should know in about five minutes and if you can't answer that question you probably shouldn't be employed by the federal government or any company or organization I would never hire you their disruption has nothing to do with policy and everything to do with Trump derangement syndrome and I I fear that uh you know their disruption is pathological it's about their need to oppose anything tied to president Trump they'd rather protect bloated bureaucracy and light our tax dollars on fire
▶ 0:56:14than admit he was right so I'll repeat they have Trump derangement syndrome and I fear this is terminal now turning to an issue of great importance to me is chairwoman of the cyber security information technology and government Innovation subcommittee Mr do dodaro the 2025 high-risk list highlights serious failures in federal cyber security and Technology modernization as you are I'm sure fully aware federal agencies spend billions of dollars a year on software without a
▶ 0:56:44comprehensive or detailed understanding of what they're purchasing and how it compares to what they're already paying for in other words a lot duplication GAO has reported without improvements to it port portfolio investment reviews saying the federal government will likely continue to expand resources and it Investments that do not meet the needs of the government or the public what steps should agencies take right now to actually understand the software they're buying instead of just throwing taxpayer dollars at it hoping
▶ 0:57:15for the best what's your advice yeah I'm going to turn to Carol Harris who's our director and information technology and she can enumerate for you terrific thank you for the thank you for the question so a number of things that can be done first of all with regard to it management I mean we have a major issue where we have a hundred bill hundred billion dollar annually going to the it budget across the federal government 80% of that money is going towards sustaining old systems
▶ 0:57:45so we have to tackle Legacy old are some of these systems some of these systems range you know up to even like 50 years old so they're they're old and they need to be these are the Lage system corre are the Legacy system what kind of Technology were they coded with uh with cobal for example and other Antiquated computer languages and that's part of the issue where now the for these particular systems the government is having a difficult time finding staff that and knowledgeable people to actually work on these programs because
▶ 0:58:15these these computer languages are are out of data after I taught myself HTML and college because there weren't college classes on how to code HTML and I consider it a real programming language some people may not but but I learned Cobalt when I was this is back in 1999 I worked on Y2K stuff and um I mean that was 26 almost 26 years ago 27 years ago when I did that the fact that we're still using it decades later real quickly I only have 45 seconds left what are some of the security and operational risk resulting from the last administration's failure to
▶ 0:58:46review and manage federal government it well when you take a look at those Legacy systems for example because we're continuing to manage them um there are cyber security vulnerabilities associated with those as well as the Staffing challenges as well as you know just um increased costs associated with maintaining these so the security security vulnerabilities in maintaining these old systems are very real and we have to address them and we've made multiple recommendations we have 700 recommendations that are still open
▶ 0:59:16that need to be addressed immediately and thank you both for your time today I will yield back I will now recognize Mr Conor for five minutes thank you madam chair uh first I wanted to uh comment on the earlier debate where representative grothman and representative green said that some of these cuts that uh musk and Doge are making are are good and making our country more efficient and our side said no there
▶ 0:59:46are federal workers who are being fired without cause uh and they aren't the poor performers that they are and I guess my question for the chair and I know Cher colr isn't here is why not have Elon Musk come before this committee and make the case I mean why not have representative green ask him uh to explain why she thinks the situation is good and have the confidence uh to explain that to the American public and we can ask him questions about uh
▶ 1:00:16where we think that he has violated the law but I do not understand what the reluctance is uh to have Mr musk come here if you're so confident on your side that what he's doing is in the interest of the American people why not have speech and uh have him here and I hope that the chair will consider uh that request Mr uh dodaro I have great respect for you and I have great respect for your service but
▶ 1:00:46with due respect this is not a time for caution uh in speaking out your predecessor Elmer stats took Gerald Fort to court because Ford uh was not willing to comply with the impoundment ACT uh this was not a decision that she made uh that stats made but lawyers uh stats spoke out and I want to ask you whether what you think the president is doing in pausing these payments
▶ 1:01:16automatically is a violation of the impoundment ACT yeah we we are looking at that issue we've uh already sent uh letters to the administration asking them to explain their legal position to us and we will be making rulings as to whether or not these issues violated the improvment Control Act or not when will you be making that well as soon as we can get the information from the administration we're following the court cases as well so we're evaluating
▶ 1:01:47the court filings what if they refuse to give you the information well we have the information that's available through the court filings of what their legal positions are for any of these issues that are subject of the litigation would you say within 45 days because that's the the the recession recision I mean they have about 45 days I mean I think the automatic payments is a violation itself yeah we we are going to make these decisions as fast as possible I fully intend I fully intend to carry out our responsibilities under the empowerment Control Act
▶ 1:02:18expeditiously and thoroughly what how about by May 1st I'll I'll check with my attorneys is what the people always say I'll check you know I'll let you know yeah I'm going to do it as quickly as we can but but I I need to be we need to be careful and thorough because the next step for us is to go to court ourselves I mean under the empowerment Control Act if we say there's an impoundment the money's not released within a certain period of time we have to go to court and
▶ 1:02:48are you prepared to do that yes yes but I need to be prepared and be careful and because I want to go there I want to win all right so I want to we're going to do this as fast and as thoroughly as we can we have a good track record on this uh area I have a good group of attorneys and we're going to do a a thorough job so can the American people be assured that if there are violations of the impoundment act in the automatic pause or on
▶ 1:03:18in the cuts that uh you will make sure that uh you uh prosecute that or take it to court uh and are confident that you will prevail I I I can be confident that I will take it to its full closure I'm not going to predict what the Court's going to say I know better than that but they have their own independent decision making they're making some decisions right now on these very topics and uh but I I know and I'm confident I can give the American people Assurance we will
▶ 1:03:48carry out our responsibilities to all the constituents who are saying we're not doing enough these things are getting paused there cuts that are happening you can assure them that you are moving as expeditiously uh and taking this as seriously that this is your top priority in making sure that uh you're going to uphold the impoundment act and take aggressive action if it's not if it's violated yeah absolutely absolutely I've been talking about this uh uh as soon as things started to unfold we sent
▶ 1:04:18our letters over uh this is uh you know this is very important now there's a lot of factors that go into making these decision decisions one is how specific Congress was in the appropriation law to begin with uh we need to take that into account this year we're in a continuing resolution stage so you're not you don't have a lot of specifics for this fiscal year whether it's no year money or not your money there's a lot there's some pauses for programmatic review there's so there's a lot of details and a lot
▶ 1:04:48of legal considerations to sort through uh but we this is a high priority for us and we're going to execute our responsibilities I appreciate it all right I'll now recognize Mr BS for five minutes thank you so much uh it's good to see you again uh welcome back I have a question for you with regard to the empowerment act let's say congress appropriates a dollar but the administration finds a way to do the same task that that dollar was supposed to go for
▶ 1:05:18for 75 cents you don't think that they're violating the impound act if they don't uh spend a dollar the full dollar de well that's hypothetical question I'd like to see the federal government spend $1 on something I I don't think that that's going to happen but the the the theory behind your question is did they spend everything that Congress intended them to spend that's and if if
▶ 1:05:48they don't that there's nothing wrong with that the improvment ACT provides a a a remedy for the president to submit a recision proposal to to the Congress and the Congress has 45 days to approve it if they don't then but the process can be cumbersome is the is the point you could diminish the the the efficiency by doing the recision act but let's I don't want to take all the time from that but but it's there's a process so in
▶ 1:06:18your written testimony and in in your report you say that the areas on the high-risk list include programs that represented about 80% of the total government-wide reported improper payment estimate for fiscal year 2023 agencies and the department of the treasury are taking some steps to address this issue much more needs to be done to control billions of dollars in overpayments and prevent fraud for example CMS should improve the timeliness of audits to identify and recover improper payments you also
▶ 1:06:49make clear that while congressional action may be necessary to eliminate issues and that inter agency coordination is needed no progress has been made on improving Medicaid Program Integrity since was added in 2023 in 2023 GAO designated the unemployment insurance system as as high-risk because quote unemployment insurance is Administrative and program Integrity challenges pose significant risk to Service delivery and expose the system to significant financial losses similarly similarly GAO
▶ 1:07:19has quote designated Medicare as a high-risk program due to its size complexity effect on the federal budget and acceptability to improper payments further the significant amount of Medicaid improper payments is a principal reason GAO included Medicaid Program Integrity on its 2023 high-risk list as well in fiscal year 2023 the estimated amount of improper payments for Medicaid reached approximately 50.3 billion where's all that money going well
▶ 1:07:49it's going through the wrong places it's not it's not quite clear the the uh estimates here you know are made uh based upon sampling procedure so it's not an enumeration of all the payments it's just you know for those that are in the sample that where they make the payment they try to recover the money uh for other things it's just an estimate statistically yeah so you're basing on statistical information right right so it's impossible for you to tell how much of that is due to fraud that's
▶ 1:08:19correct although we have made recommendations we did a fraud estimate what's your fraud estimate our fraud estimate from 2018 to 2022 that 5-year period we estimated annual losses to fraud to be between 233 billion and 521 billion so that period covered both before the pandemic and during the pandemic which had in my view epic fraud during the pandemic right right Federal
▶ 1:08:49Medicaid spending was over 575 billion dollar in fiscal year 2023 and is expected expected to increase over the next decade what is needed to better manage the program is the medic did you say Medicaid or Medicare I'm sorry Medicaid Medicaid uh number one uh is you need to uh have better control over manage care portion of Medicaid the estimates on improper payments for for Medicaid only really are based upon the fee
▶ 1:09:19for service portion Which is less than half of the payments now and we encouraged much more uh aggressive fashion looking at the Managed Care portion they've increased the number of audits they're starting to find more more problems so that's number one okay it okay so I got to move on all right because there's just too much here okay because you also noted that DOD has major problems as well and so I've introduced
▶ 1:09:49once again the audit the Pentagon act which aims to increase transparency count ility in the budget and imposing Financial because have they ever had a clean bill of health on an audit not not for the overall Department there are some components and I was very pleased the last two years the Marine Corps has got an unmodified clean opinion the other services not so much yet now I I noted that secretary Heth has made this a priority
▶ 1:10:20I'm going to be communicating with him meeting with him to say if you want to do this here are the things that need need to be done in order to achieve an unmodified opinion for the whole department and I'm sorry that we're out of time because I would like to hear all your Medicaid remedies as well as your DOD remedies but I have to yield back you I'll now recognize
▶ 1:10:51Miss Danbury for five minutes thank you madam chair uh Mr dodaro thank you so much for being here today and also congratulations on your soon Tobe retirement and thank you for your service to our country uh I want to just take a couple of minutes to talk about what this hearing actually is which is to talk about the high-risk list I'm a former om and we use gao's reports at om to actually Implement change across the federal government and so I'm very acquainted with all the work of your staff thank you for everything
▶ 1:11:21that you do so I want to just clarify for folks who are watching at home the government accountability office is a nonpartisan government agency it's part of Congress it's part of the legislative branch and your job is to audit evaluate investigate and to provide recommendations as a congressional Watchdog both to Congress and to the executive branch correct that's correct and what you do every year as part of your work is produce this highrisk list and this year the one you're presenting to us today includes
▶ 1:11:5138 areas that you've identified that as you just said in your testimony would save money help ensure the health and safety of the American public and help to build trust in our federal agencies and I want to briefly talk about some of the things that appear on this list in fact as you mentioned in your testimony the first thing on here is the Improvement of delivery of federal Disaster Assistance that's FEMA second is improvements in uh surface Transportation we've got HHS
▶ 1:12:21and Public Health Services uh Department of the uh Bureau of Prison improvements there's a bunch of DOD recommendations here about improving Contracting and business practices improving small business administration resolving Federal Housing Finance issues through HUD uh EPA issues around environmental liability there's uh National nuclear Security on here enforcing tax laws including the IRS improving certain FDA
▶ 1:12:52and DOI programs improving VI VA service CMS programs and also uh the regulation of uh the financial regulatory system and all of these things really about are about the transformation of how the federal government provides services and I heard you just say to Mr Lynch as well as to Mr cona that uh with respect to some of the specific uh programs that were asked about that the just indiscriminate
▶ 1:13:22elimination of funding and staff in for these programs would not only fail to to actually resolve the issues that you guys have identified but potentially make them worse is that correct that's possibility yes so you know obviously there's been a lot of conversation today in this committee about the actions that are being taken pursuant to Doge by Elon Musk and this indiscriminate funding freezes that is happening the dismantling of these programs the hacking of
▶ 1:13:52federal data and the mass firings and we know that there's more that are planned for this week but unfortunately we don't exactly know what Elon Musk has actually been up to because he won't come to this committee and in fact our Republican colleagues have shielded him from having to appear but he did appear over the weekend at CPAC at their uh political action event that was held here in the Washington era area and uh you know here he is he was wielding a chainsaw with Argentinian
▶ 1:14:22uh leader and I'll just say you know somebody who grew up working construction I know what two dudes who don't know what to do with the chainsaw look like but uh it's also obvious that these guys actually don't also know how to manage a federal government and how to address high-risk areas where we actually do need to address issues of waste Fraud and Abuse and in fact because I worked at om I know that not only are they not addressing these issues they're looting the federal government and breaking the law daily and this recklessness
▶ 1:14:53has really severe consequences Es as was just outlined by some of the other commentary already but I want to note some of the human impacts in my district I was just home this weekend we heard from tribal college teachers who were fired VA employees who are not able to help support the veterans that they work with a colleague of mine who to was told this week that his PTSD counseling would be cancelled uh tribal Justice programs that pay for cops uh had their uh funding Frozen
▶ 1:15:23I mean the reality is is that this guy right here who is an unelected billionaire is literally looting the federal government right now and he has no idea what he's doing he's not even addressing the fundamental problems that have been identified by our nonpartisan uh Watchdog so uh you know I want to be clear also that the Republicans as of today just we took a break right before this committee when and voted on a rule to advance a tax package that would make these Cuts
▶ 1:15:54permanent to to pay for a permanent tax break for billionaires so what these guys are up to is not about government efficiency it's about looting the American people in the treasury to pay for billionaire tax cuts with that I back okay I now recognize Mr Cloud for five minutes thank you chairwoman and thank you commissioner for being here um you know our our country of course is $36 trillion in debt uh the American people if we were to ask them and we
▶ 1:16:24have uh in the previous election were to ask them if we thought the federal government was working for them they would say no it seems like we're working for the federal government yet we continue to hear over and over uh from from the left that uh people who are coming in doing things differently don't know how to run the government and the uh the argument seems to be like well we need to we need people who know how to do what we've been doing even though it's continually led to failure now I've since being a new member here have appreciated you coming before this committee because
▶ 1:16:54uh for the last several years I I felt like you were maybe the best good faith effort in helping us find uh waste fraud and and abuse um you know the last several weeks have been very interesting as new technology tools have been brought to the table and uh you know I I've always I find myself kind of like in a little Quagmire here in the sense like I've always thought it odd that we been begin counting waste Fraud and Abuse at a billion dollars even though it's the best good faith effort we've had I've said a number of times like your report should probably
▶ 1:17:25be our agenda uh as a committee or certainly somebody should be doing it in the last few weeks though we've seen a handful of very young people with some very specific technical skills come and seem to expose a lot that that uh we haven't been able to to see through uh the government accountability office so um we have a lot lot of new information at our disposal when it comes to the very specific things that we're seeing I I wanted to touch on the report because while I do think
▶ 1:17:55that you do good work I was also concerned about some of the things that I do see in the report and maybe some of the lenses that things are being interpreted through uh one for example interest payments and what we're paying on interest isn't even mentioned and yet it is superseding our military spending uh one of the things you mention is strategic human capital uh and all the solutions to address it have to do with basically more government okay we need more programs to more train to more and it continues to fall into
▶ 1:18:25this thing that we see continually throughout the bureaucracy where the answer to failed government is more government uh and sometimes that can be the case but there's nothing addressing the fact that it takes two years to H to fire a bad employee uh you know we could talk about the state department recently a lots come out about us a and you know transgender operas overseas and those kind of things uh I didn't see and again it's 300 pages I might have missed it but I didn't see very much addressing the state department and then there was a lot concern conning climate
▶ 1:18:56stuff um specifically when it came to connecting disaster relief to uh to climate activity man-made carbon uh uh carbon creation um and that at best connecting that to hurricanes is at best debatable science right now yet the report acts as if it is established long held science um and makes a number of recommendations for that on the
▶ 1:19:26other hand it says that we need to look at oil and gas revenues and you actually mentioned it earlier that you know maybe we need them more but we're talking about $15 billion there and maybe what maybe there's 10% we're not getting so we're talking you know $1 to5 billion uh but yet uh on the EV mandates we lost 7.5 billion dollar that's not addressed in the report as well so I I have some about whether we talk non about it being nonpartisan I think that's your best
▶ 1:19:56intention but at the same time with a multi- thousand people on staff I have con some concerns about the true nonpartisan nature of the report I do want to give you some time to address something because A lot's come up about Medicaid recently there's a lot of fear-mongering Chicken Little Stories the sky falling if we do or touch anything in Medicaid meanwhile we know that if we're going to correct correct course on the fiscal course of our we have to address the mandatory
▶ 1:20:26side of things but you give a number of things touching Medicaid that we can do that don't actually address the people that Medicaid was affected for in other words we're not taking disabled people off Medicaid where you know children are still being their needs are still being met uh could you talk about some of those ways that we can find savings for the American people do yeah but before I get to Medicaid though let me just touch on some of the things you talk about first on an interest on a debt I issue a special report on the fiscal health of the federal government
▶ 1:20:56basically saying it's on an unsustainable long-term fiscal path I specifically call out the increase in interest on the debt call for a a plan to put the federal government on a more sustainable fiscal path point out the main cost drivers which are Health Care demographics and growth and interest on the debt so that's and I've also tried to get uh made recommendations for about a decade to try to change the approach to setting the debt ceiling which there's nothing to control
▶ 1:21:27the debt on the issue on Staffing we're not saying you need more government we're saying the Congress and the a uh Administration said this is what we want to do and what we're saying is okay you don't have the people in order to accomplish what Congress has set in statute and administration's priorities are so we're not determining the size and scope of government that's up to elected officials we're saying however you define it it's not being implemented
▶ 1:21:57properly last on the climate is on that point on that on that point with the change of policy that we're seeing from the Trump Administration could we expect this report to deal with climate issues differently and oil and gas issues differently well climate yeah and the climate issue I want to be clear on that our only focus on the climate issue is not on what's causing it what's change it's on the fiscal exposure to the federal government and that is the federal government is an insure our flood insurance programs not actuly signed the flood
▶ 1:22:28insurance program owes 22.5 billion dollars to the treasury after the Congress has already forgiven billion uh the defense Department's been under instructions from the Congress to look at its impact on its installations domestically and internationally the a agriculture uh crop insurance uh has more than doubled over a period of Time Wild fires have expanded and the federal government's fiscally exposed
▶ 1:22:58so all we're saying is as a fiscal Guardians of the federal government it's costing a lot more money and it's be better to focus on resilience uh and and to try to build things in up front we're not commenting on the science of it or whatever on that area let me ask my colleague to talk about Medicaid because we have a lot of good suggestions I'll try to be quick um so we have over 65 recommendations but there's three key ones that kind of get at program Integrity in the Medicaid Program uh to your point Congressman so looking
▶ 1:23:29at the budget neutrality of Medicaid demonstrations and making sure that CMS is really clear about what that means when States experiment we want to make sure that um we're not spending more than we otherwise would have um looking at the data uh behind um some of the non-federal share Federal of of payments in Medicaid so understanding State directed payments to manage care plans and understanding sort of Provider taxes and other things that states use to help Finance their share um and then Leverage ing the findings of work that they can be doing with State Auditors we've made a lot of points about this
▶ 1:23:59um just using the trends and the findings that the state Auditors find through their audits um to to inform their own oversight of the program so all areas directed at um program Integrity activities thank you appreciate your work chair recognizes let me for a second time go to Mr Garcia and we can follow up with that I was just going to say I'll submit the fiscal Health report for the record for the committee okay thank you recognize Mr Garcia thank you uh thank you Mr chairman and I I do want to appreciate the work
▶ 1:24:29of the uh Gio I think there's incredible work that happens there and of course a lot of uncovering of waste F Fraud and Abuse happens uh Mr daaro I want to thank you for your important testimony uh I agree there is absolutely um a responsibility for us to look at ways of reducing the deficit uh to actually make government more efficient and I think that um weer as mayor before coming to this committee we worked really hard with our auditor with our state auditor to do just that and so thank you for being here um so Mr daro I do have some simple yes or no questions
▶ 1:24:59for you which I think are are important uh Mr Dar do you believe that the recently firing of promoted federal workers who are therefore on probationary status does anything to solve the important problems that you've raised today yes or no well I agreed to was sworn to tell the whole truth nothing but the truth and the whole truth sometimes doesn't get reduced to a yes or no answer and uh so in that case um I think it's important to look at what functions were were being
▶ 1:25:30provided and what was what was uh done in those cases but it's important that the rules be followed that there's certain Personnel requirements and rules would you say would you say yes or no I I would say that and the question was whether it would solve any of the problems that we identified on the high risk list and the answer to that question would be it's doubtful exactly and I agree with you that would be that I agree it would it would be a no now what about has has the GAO recommendation
▶ 1:26:00ever included firing FAA aircraft safety inspectors who repair air traffic control facilities not no no that's I agree has the GAO ever made any recommendation on firing USDA animal and plant health inspection service workers who are tracking the bird flu outbreak or other outbreaks in pure cattle I do not believe so no thank you that let to know has the Jo recommended firing National nuclear Security Administration workers Who oversee our nation's nuclear stockpile no what about firing
▶ 1:26:30the only locksmith at yosity National Park has the GAO ever recommended that I'm not sure we've ever run into the locksmith the park and the answer to that as you have not right and and so I I I thank you for that because of course these um none of these have ever actually aligned with any of the recommendations that have come out of out of your office but yet they are clearly huge priorities for Elon Musk and his doge team um it's obviously there a crusade against the government against actually helping people across this country and it's
▶ 1:27:00the hypocrisy that we're seeing today and in our committees that I think is quite disturbing to to house Democrats now Republican colleagues who spent a lot of time warning about unsustainable deficits we know that today there is a huge vote of course we know on a budget uh their budget version in bill has a 4.5 trillion doll tax cut giveaway essentially when we should be asking the super rich to actually pay more and at the center of this we know is a huge cut to Medicaid they're charging at least 880 billion maybe
▶ 1:27:30more in Medicaid Cuts now in my district alone uh we have 300,000 people that are dependent on Medicaid approximately which is a huge amount of of the community and and the district now nationally 80 million people we know are on Medicaid but it actually impacts every single District across the country whether you're talking about uh kuy's First District where 26.5% of the population there 155,000 people are dependent on Medicaid whether it's in Ohio's fourth district
▶ 1:28:01over 100,000 people depend on Medicaid that's 15% of the population whether it's in Louisiana's thirdd District 196,000 almost 200,000 people dependent on Medicaid or in Georgia's 14th District where 109,000 people or 16% of the population are dependent on Medicaid we know that Medicaid saves lives these are huge numbers of people these are folks that are colleagues of ours on the other side of the aisle that are members of this also of this of this committee and that often
▶ 1:28:31times are here at this committee so this actually has an impact to our constituents it means elderly and disabled people won't won't get their health care their longterm care it actually impacts people that have real substance abuse issues and one other thing that people don't realize about Medicaid there's a lot of conversation in this country about births and and encouraging people to have more children Medicaid covers 41% of all births in our country 41% of us births were paid for by Medicaid
▶ 1:29:01and so if this is really about supporting families and about expanding families we should also be talking about supporting and expanding Medicaid coverage uh for Americans we should be providing more coverage not less and so with that I want to thank you again for your work and I'm hopeful that are enough Republicans in today's vote will do the right thing and avoid these Medicaid Cuts with that I yield back yeld back chair recognizes Miss green thank you Mr chairman uh thank you for being here today Mr
▶ 1:29:31daro and and congratulations on your upcoming retirement um you know for the past four years Democrats have been in control of uh basically all government functions for the American people we are at $36 trillion in debt and the lies are getting to be outrageous um just listen to one of my colleagues talk about Medicaid the truth is for people watching at home your Medicaid uh benefits cannot get cut unless the governor of your state and the state cuts your
▶ 1:30:01benefits that's the real truth Republicans here in Washington here in Congress we are not taking away anyone's Medicaid benefits as a matter of fact we're trying to cut out improper payments we're trying to cut out fraud um at my Doge subcommittee I had a hearing just two weeks ago where we talked about improper payments it is unbelievable and I'm sure you would agree Mr that the amount of money that's being paid to dead people to foreigners to criminals to terrorists
▶ 1:30:31is is amounting in the billions and billions of dollars every single year that's what Democrats and Republicans should be agreeing on we should be able to come together and say let's stop this immediately another thing that I find outrageous is that Democrats uh under the Biden Administration passed $7.5 billion do in spending to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations all over the country whether Americans wanted them or not
▶ 1:31:02but only eight of these electric vehicle charging stations even got built I think that should have been in your top 25 list because where's that money honestly where is that money that's a great question some other things that um I'd like to bring up to you here is Goa estimates that total fraud in these programs for unemployment insurance and you were just talking about it during the pandemic is at least $60 billion Americans all over the country will never forget the Democrats
▶ 1:31:33shut our country down shut our businesses down people got fired their churches was closed all their rights were taken away and $60 billion $60 billion from the Department of Labor the Department of Labor has still not developed an anti fraud strategy even though $60 billion is missing also the Medicare program and scale of Medicare spending is innately high risk with the program spending an estimated one trillion
▶ 1:32:03in 2024 of that in fiscal year 2024 we saw roughly I'll go back to improper payments again 54.3 billion in improper payments and we have Democrats crying over Elon Musk are you kidding me the American people the polling is out 72 % Democrats and Republicans support Doge support it 72% they are not upset about anything
▶ 1:32:33that Elon Musk is doing as a matter of fact they're happy they want their 50 they want all this these improper payments all of this waste they want it back now here's what's really interesting to me despite this significant progress made since goa's 2023 high-risk update thank you for that remains unable to fund its services and employee obligations that's outrageous private companies have to have to be able to fund
▶ 1:33:03everything they do but the United States Postal Service still can't do it now the big one the big one the Department of Defense financial management first appeared on the highrisk list in 1995 1995 hey I graduated from high school in 1992 that's a long time ago now and it remains on this list 28 years later 28 years later Congress hasn't fixed this the Department of Defense hasn't
▶ 1:33:34fixed this and last year the Pentagon with a budget of around $850 billion failed uh failed its seventh straight audit what are we doing what are we doing this is not this we should be at the most bipartisan time in history his where Republicans and Democrats can come together and say the American people's money is being stolen it is being lost it it
▶ 1:34:04it is outright treason to treat the American people this way Mr Mr D Mr daro I'm sorry let me ask you this question and and I would feel I can't imagine all the things you all have seen in your work do you disagree with the effort of Doge I there's probably nobody in the government that wants the government to be more efficient and effective than we do at the Gio and I do personally
▶ 1:34:35that's our job to help do that and we've worked many many years in order to bring about those changes so yes now there's a couple of bipartisan things that you touched on I think you and your committee this committee could do one is we've recommended that they make in order to stop paying dead people the Social Security Master death file is given to treasury but only for a three-year period they've already saved millions of dollars Congress needs to make it permanent he could save hundreds of billions
▶ 1:35:05of millions of dollars if that's done can I get information from your team after okay that' be great what about identity verification identity verification needs to be more automated and we have recommendations for that to occur in the in the unemployment insurance area actually the unemployment Insurance estimate on fraud we made was 100 billion to 135 billion wow the other thing that could be done on a bipartisan basis is that the statute of limitations to go after the
▶ 1:35:35fraudsters needs to be uh extended from five to 10 years Congress did it for the paycheck Protection Program but not for unemployment insurance it's almost due to expire so if Congress doesn't act soon some of the fraudsters are likely to get away because they'll be outside the statute of limitations so those things are really important uh and are B I think should be bipartisan I agree thank than I think my time's up thank you Mr D thank you and uh regular member pointed out uh We've we've gone over
▶ 1:36:06a little bit on on the last two on on our side if if someone feels the need to go over I'm keeping up with the time so we'll we'll make it all work out chair recognizers Mr subra mayam Brown oh Miss Brown charize Miss Brown thank you thank you chairman Homer and thank you to Mr daro for joining us today this Administration claims to care about rooting out waste Fraud and Abuse but the facts tell a very different story so I just want to set the record straight
▶ 1:36:36on week one president Trump fired 17 inspectors General these are the folks who work on behalf of the people Republicans and Democrat Democrats regardless of party affiliation or who is in the white house they are the Watch Dogs who root out government waste Fraud and Abuse day in and day out last year they identified nearly $100 billion in savings if Elon Musk
▶ 1:37:06I'm sorry if Donald Trump and Elon Musk cared about cracking down on waste they would be talking to these Auditors not firing them right out of the gate meanwhile the government accountability office provides cost cutting recommendations that that save taxpayers $40 billion each year so if Trump was serious about efficiency it would focus on Implement implementing the thousands of outstanding GAO recommendations
▶ 1:37:37including the 38 areas on the high riskless but that's not what's happening instead Trump created the Redundant Department of government efficiency putting his billionaire campaign donor Elon Musk who just so happens to be a government contractor in charge that's not efficiency that's corruption dressed up as reform Do's records so far overstated claims receipts that don't add up
▶ 1:38:07lies about condoms in Gaza lies about 130 year olds on Social Security an 8 billion doll contract that was really $8 million can somebody say oops Doge claims to have saved $ 55 billion well the Wall Street Journal rert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal crunched the numbers this weekend and found just $2.6 billion
▶ 1:38:37doll in savings mostly from cancel contracts and cuts in research funding for things like Alzheimer's and chronic lung disease which brings me to my questions Mr Doro how does the GAO Define define waste waste is uh defined as uh extravagant spending or something that doesn't really add any value in terms of the
▶ 1:39:08government's overall uh accomplishment of goals thank you and based on that definition would eliminating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau qualify as cutting waste or making a policy choice that that's basically a value judgment and a and a and a policy choice in order to do that I mean thank you yeah in my district a Federal grant to train teachers in underserved Urban schools was terminated solely because
▶ 1:39:38it was labeled as a Dei initiative is this cutting waste or making a policy choice you know in know wa waste is the one person is not wayte to another person I mean that that but these are basically value judgments that that are made uh and based on policy preferences in your testimony you mentioned that 20 of the 38 areas on the highrisk list in part are due to skills gaps or inadequate inadequate
▶ 1:40:09number of Staff would indiscriminately firing probationary staff make it more or less likely that government addresses waste Fraud and Abuse yeah I answered this question earlier I said it was doubtful doubtful thank you um in your testimony it highlights that gross the gross tax gap which is the difference between taxes owed and taxes paid on time can you remind
▶ 1:40:39us what the tax Gap was in 2022 oh I'd have to go back and take a look at the what it was in 2022 but it was it it it's been about the same as a percent of the economy over time even though the numbers are grown as a percent of GDP it's about the same what would that percentage be uh I'd have to all right let me just move on to my next question I'll provide that for the record I I have it so I'm I'm gonna
▶ 1:41:09step out on the limb and say it's about $700 billion dollar a year that American taxpayers are being robbed of roughly and that sure sounds like a lot of wayte to me now with firing some 6,000 6,000 and IRS workers lead to more or less of that waste yeah it it depends on what their jobs are uh you know at at the IRS you know but you you you basically uh they need more Revenue agents they need more training they
▶ 1:41:39need people for customer service uh so you'd have to look at what functions those people do and decide whether or not they're important or not well thank you I appreciate that and let me just clarify High income individuals are among the most notorious tax cheats and these are the same people Republicans want to reward with a $4.5 trillion tax cut at the expense of Medicaid veterans benefits and
▶ 1:42:09food assistance for children and seniors and that's what this is really all about Doge isn't about saving money y'all it's about consolidating power and ensuring that the rich get richer so from where I sit it looks like Trump and Elon Musk aren't fighting waste they're just ensuring that the waste benefits the wealthy and with that Mr chairman I yield back gentle lady yields back chiz Mr Perry from Pennsylvania thanks Mr chairman uh Mr daro thanks
▶ 1:42:40good to see you again you know a lot of things about a lot of things um so I'm going to go where somewhere where at least it has been bipartison and I hope just by talking about it that doesn't destroy that cuz we got a lot of work to do uh the federal government owns uh about a quarter a million buildings and structures about two billion dollar or two billion square feet of office space a study by your agency recently um indicated 17 of the 24 agencies reviewed use 25%
▶ 1:43:10or less of their headquarters office space even at their High Mark um 24 federal agencies no a of of 24 federal agencies none of them use more than 49% uh we got more than 11,000 Acres of old unused buildings and the American taxpayer they're forced to pay $2 billion a year for office space that s that sits empty uh 80% of leases are going to expire in the next uh five years
▶ 1:43:40I don't know if you're looking to take a contractor job after you leave this Rat Race but maybe uh maybe that's something you're interested in um J reported just this year that real property management was downgraded from met to partially met now I think you're familiar with the thing called the use it act which we passed out of that bipartisan not easy but bipartisan and um and you know alongside omb's Benchmark
▶ 1:44:11uh we we'd like to remedy the this this situation of $2 billion a year for more than 11,000 Acres of old unused office space I mean that's that's more than half the size of Disney world just like sitting there empty but we're paying for it you know a lot of things what would be your recommendation to Congress and to OPM uh to speed up the implementation process as you know most of these agencies don't want to give any of it up even though they're not using it right but they don't want to give any of it up
▶ 1:44:41so what do we do each one Congress and OMB yeah Dave here he did the study that you reference I'll let him explain in a minute but the one thing I would say that Congress needs to do is to make sure that there's Lessons Learned Congress tried to expedite this uh by creating a board and the board was to identify properties for sale they had three rounds it barely made a dent in anything they weren't in sync with OMB there's no
▶ 1:45:11Lessons Learned that's why we downgraded them there's still not a process to dispose of federal Ro property quickly and expeditiously and Congress can create that and set Milestones I think it was very good that you set benchmarks for utilization of the buildings that we keep but we got to get rid of a lot of buildings set the benchmarks right but we have agencies that can't meet them or won't meet them or don't meet them but they still want to hang on to them yeah but but you got to get rid of some of the properties and
▶ 1:45:41uh Dave can enumerate yes well second Benchmark is an important point in in the law you reference there's also within a year uh the measurements requiring om and GSA to start uh uh notifying agencies if they have extra space but I think you can do it once those measurements are in place how many people are coming in to these buildings on a daily basis use those measurements to say okay we have extra space and then the agencies need to expeditiously move forward om has a role there to ensure that they're setting appropriate time frames for agencies to respond if they're
▶ 1:46:12not doing it on their own uh Congress has a role in your oversight of the implementation of the use it act uh and as The Controller General mentioned as well taking a look at the disposal process for once own buildings are going into the pipeline to be gotten rid of looking at ways to shorten it make it less complicated we have noted for years that it is a complex complicated process it takes too long uh and the reform process the faster process was an attempt to uh look at ways to do that your legislation has extended uh the life of fasta so it's an opportunity
▶ 1:46:42really to take lessons not only what properties can we dispose of but how can we do it more quickly because there is a lot of extra space so are you saying it requires more legislation from us uh regarding this standards and the process is that what it requires or can this be done by the agency like GSA can they can they do this on their own and and you know even though we want them to devest sometimes they don't and even though we give them a timeline you know the timelines keep slipping so so then what so I think having the data now as you know from that
▶ 1:47:12report for your subcommittee uh prior to that there was not even data on utilization outside of headquarters buildings very limited to know so it's hard to tell how much space you need if you're not actually measuring it that legislation will now require the collection of that data for both owned and Lease space throughout the country that's what's really important for the agencies to take a look at that data and om to be there to push to say okay if you are extra if you have more than you need start getting rid of it would it be an empowerment if om just said look you have extra you're
▶ 1:47:42not utilizing we're paying for x and we're not paying for the rest as a forcing function yeah no no what what I think needs to be done the feder there's a federal building fund you know in order to dispose of some of this property uh you need to fix it up sometimes and make it available we didn't get into the backlog of Maintenance and cost and all that right but but in this case though Congress has been using the federal building fund for other purposes so
▶ 1:48:12I think we have to come to grips with if you want to unbelievable right that they would do that i i i i nothing shocks me after being in this job for so long but I mean that we have to get in sync and the other thing Congress ought to do is make sure that whever the extension of fasta is they work in concert with om and GSA last time they're working in parallel they weren't working together okay I thank you chairman I yield thank you chair recognize is Miss
▶ 1:48:44Lee thank you Mr chair um Mr Mr Doro thank you for being here today and sharing with this committee this year's highrisk list this of course is the list that the government accountability office puts out every year that lays out the government programs most at risk for race Fraud and Abuse and recommends ways to approve them if that sounds familiar it's because that's what those is pretending to do but the work that GAO does isn't pretend and they produce benefits at an average
▶ 1:49:14of $40 billion each year Mr daro your time at GAO goes back more than 50 years as you told us so it's fair to say that you have a lot lot of experience with this list and uh the gao's work correct thank you I have uh just a few yes or no questions not they not value judgments yes or no questions about some of the contents of the high-risk list one of the areas identifi in this list is the need to provide veterans with better and more timely Health
▶ 1:49:44Care does your report recommend improving Veteran healthare by cutting more than jobs by by what by cutting more than 1,000 jobs uh no it does not thank you how about the USDA does your report recommend firing the workers tackling the bird flu outbreak uh no another major area um your list identifies is it and cyber security Improvement does your list
▶ 1:50:14recommend anywhere that the federal government start bypassing security protocols and installing outside and software no is cutting diversity equity and inclusion programs recommended anywhere in your report no we don't discuss those issues yeah so no that does no but that's not a topic in the report so it's not there right thank you those are all actions taken by El musk and uh Doge wrecking crew and it's not surprising that none of it is
▶ 1:50:44actually doing anything to improve waste Fraud and Abuse it's also not surprising that none of musk's billions in government contracts have been cut yet none of the actions by Trump and musk have helped the American people eggs are still expensive um so expensive that Waffle House is added a search charge and thousands of hardworking federal workers across the country have lost their jobs slashing all the funding for programs and services now is only going to lead to more inefficiencies and more costs later the GAO literally has a blueprint of
▶ 1:51:15what to do to save billions the high- risk list is reported out every year we have a hearing on it every year Trump and musk are ignoring these reports instead they're gutting our government programs and services to root out waste and to fix our 36 trillion debt dollar debt crisis in reality Trump and musk want all of us to pay for a massive $4.5 trillion tax giveaway to the mega Rich make no mistake $4.5 trillion tax giveaway
▶ 1:51:45uh is government spending and it will balloon the deficit if Republicans want to be serious about tackling our debt they should start there start by putting the American people ahead of the pocketbooks of their billionaire Elite friends thank you again for your time Mr dodoro um I yeld back to the ranking member I thank my colleague um and I Echo what she has just said Mr zaro um the inspectors General are an important part of
▶ 1:52:16transparency efficiency and oversight of the federal government in a broad scope um does firing 17 of those inspectors General help uh with government efficiency no I think the firing please I can't I'm sorry I'm sorry uh no uh I think it was very unfortunate I think we lost a lot of institutional knowledge and expertise with those firings you know when they uh there was some
▶ 1:52:47Inspector General was fired uh back in the first Trump Administration you know I issued a report talking about the importance of independent inspectors General and recommended that the Congress add some Provisions the 30-day notice period because the inspector generals also report to the Congress they're very unique uh part of our government system even though they're in the executive branch I don't dispute the president's uh authority to fire them uh but there should been
▶ 1:53:17notice of 30 days given and specific reasons uh for for the fire ings but the it's important to have independent IGS it should be performance-based and there has to be cause otherwise we are jeopardizing the independence of the inspector's General I thank my colleague for yielding chairel recognizes the next governor of Florida for five minutes uh I actually appreciate that Mr chairman thank you
▶ 1:53:48um M uh Mr darar it's good to see you again thanks for being back back um since uh 2003 federal agencies have reported about $2.8 trillion in improper payments including um over the last seven years consecutively at a minimum $150 billion in each one of those years um the high-risk report mentions that the Department of Agriculture HHS HUD DHS OPM and SBA all failed
▶ 1:54:18to report uh improper payment estimates in FY 2023 and to reiterate for the American people we have seven agencies of the federal government that have not reported on their improper payments and if memory serves the last report GAO issued had improper payments north of $240 billion that was um what are some of the
▶ 1:54:48real issues within the federal government for the lack of ability for these agencies to report on improper payments within their purview I I I think there needs to be more uh pressure put on those agencies by the administrations that are in place and I've talked to the prior administrations about this and the Congress needs to demand that the law be followed and they do in proper payment estimates I mean I I think it's um it's it's not good management to
▶ 1:55:18not know how much you're paying that you should be paying it's not good fiscal stewardship so I'm I'm very disappointed they're not reporting and I would encourage the Congress and the Trump Administration to uh require the reporting now I I would agree with you wholeheartedly let me ask you the question the agencies that didn't report some of them vary in size obviously uh Department of Homeland Security is a major uh Department of the federal government um considering that let's just say for estimate sake I don't have
▶ 1:55:48the report in front of me that in fiscal year of 23 improper payments were billion if we had the estimates of those seven departments what do you think the actual outstanding was from 2023 yeah I I I really can't hesitate to guess the one thing Congress needs to do in this area though the temporary assistance for needy families they believe HHS they can't make an estimate uh and unless Congress changes the law so they they refuse
▶ 1:56:19uh to do it saying they don't have the legal authority to required states to give them the information they need in order to make an improper payment estimate so Congress needs to change the statute there and I think that's important all right thank you uh FEMA is currently managing over 600 major disaster declarations some of which have occurred 20 years ago um one of the GAO recommendations is this year's in this year's high-risk report is that FEMA should identify a document Lessons Learned
▶ 1:56:49related to estimating obligations for catastrophic disasters can you expand upon this yeah I'll ask the Mr Curry's our expert sure Mr Curry thank you sure um Fe f is always struggle with this because they don't know how much they're going to need in a particular year and then when you have a catastrophic disaster season like you had last year in your home state with Helen and Milton that throws everything off um so but Co really threw this off because uh FEMA did not expect to spent what it spent on co uh at the end of this year it's going to have spent well north of $150
▶ 1:57:20billion on covid and what's that's done is sort of thrown all the estimates off it's gone up over time which affects their estimates moving forward and um they're spent way more than they thought they were going to have to spend on that and that's one of the reasons the disaster relief fund is in this constant negative situation it's supposed to be actually it's going to be12 billion underwater already at the end of September even after the supplemental appropriation that you all provided it late last year so Fe not to cut you off but to go down this line
▶ 1:57:51uh of the we're talking about is FEMA still having to make payments out associated with covid-19 absolutely they're still making payments do you have an estimate of how much FEMA is still appropriating out because of covid-19 uh last time I checked uh which was at the end of February they were upwards of $130 billion they have paid out and they expect to spend over $150 billion at end of fiscal year they also told us they expect the disaster to run through the end of FY 26 next year and spend
▶ 1:58:21almost 188 billion on that so they're still reimbursing state and local governments for that okay so they're expected to spend another $180 billion reimbursing state and local governments for covid-19 and that's stretch sorry another another $50 billion another 50 billion to take it to $1 1880 billion exactly okay all right thank you for that I appreciate that I'm out of my time uh thank you so much Mr chairman uh Mr tario thank you for your time and your service chair recognizes Mr subra subra mayam subam
▶ 1:58:51thank you Mr chairman sorry that's okay um so before we go on to this someone had said earlier that we cannot cut Medicaid here in Congress and I just want to make sure everyone knows at home that that's not true in fact my state um this Republican budget which it does would cut Medicaid benefits even a little bit uh everyone who benefited from Medicaid expansion in Virginia uh would actually lose that benefit and so it would hurt us and many other states uh millions of people across the country uh but um moving on uh thank you Mr
▶ 1:59:22Dar for for for coming I um I was actually I saw in the news that Doge had a a savings dashboard online have you seen this savings dashboard this website doj.gov uh I have not savings okay well I have it up here it says let's balance the budget doa's total estimated savings are $65 billion um but I'd like to enter into the record um this article February 25th um from um The New York Times Doge quietly deletes the five biggest spending
▶ 1:59:53cuts it celebrated last week uh the subtitle is the cuts highlighted on an earlier version of the wall receipts uh contained mistakes that vastly inflated the amount of money saved how how much money do you think doge is actually saving do you have just an estimate I I don't know you don't really know I don't know either in fact a lot of us don't know we really want to ask them it would be really nice if we could um have you met with anyone at Doge or Elon Musk uh I have not no we have had the a couple of our people at the uh meet with some
▶ 2:00:23those people at the treasury Department to talk about our audits of the general fund of the treasury since we audit the federal government's financial statements we also AED the general fund which is all the cash payment uh systems over there to they had some questions about our report that's the extent of it so far we have a number of requests from Congress to begin looking at their access to systems uh and uh we will begin that work at a number of agencies across government I've sent a lot of letters do
▶ 2:00:53you think have they responded to any of your requests so far we're just getting started you're just getting have you sent any actual requests to them uh We've uh asked for an insurance meeting at the treasury Department and so we expect to what did what do they say well I we're in the in the process as far as I know we're not having any okay I I tried to get into the treasury Department they wouldn't let me in so yeah well we're the we're their Auditors that makes sense but I'm a m of Congress I conf I expect and anticipate cooperation interesting and so just
▶ 2:01:23going on I've heard a lot that this is about um addressing the the federal uh debt and uh if you got rid of every single federal civil servant how much of the federal debt would that actually pay down like we think percentage Yeah the the total federal payrolls less than 10% of the federal government's expenditures even you C the problem with our our debt is you could eliminate almost the entire discretionary part of the
▶ 2:01:53budget which is about 20 and still not really make an impact long term on the deficit path that we're on right now I mean you're 36 trillion you know in in debt right now the debt to GDP ratio from debt held by the public is a percent a gross domestic product this year will be 100% in our entire history our entire history it's only been 106% during World War II sure absent any change in fiscal policy
▶ 2:02:24uh by 2050 it'll be over 200% of thatb to GDP ratio the only way to deal with this is to deal with the main driver which is Healthcare uh cost now you can make you can make inroads you can make inro in terms of but but I would just say so you would I I would conclude from that then that this effort isn't actually doing much if anything to reduce uh the federal deficit to reduce our federal debt in fact it's a drop in the bucket I would say say and uh and now let's look at
▶ 2:02:54what the federal civil servants who are being fired in Mass uh being targeted in Mass are actually doing um you know they're firing nuclear safety experts uh accidentally they're trying to call them back they can't even find some of their emails they deleted all their contact info uh they um fired the staff researching bird flu actually which is very relevant today they cut FDA NIH and CDC staff uh some of the high-risk projects that you're talking about uh you know staff that's integral to implementing a lot of your recommendations were
▶ 2:03:24actually fired and then um even the the website I was just talking about this wall of receipts uh they actually messed that up too they they said that they cut about 8 billion doar at at at ice um but it was actually $8 million uh and then um and then that's that's setting aside the fact that they gave accidentally perhaps uh you know self self-proclaimed racists actually read and write access to the critical Treasury data that includes almost every
▶ 2:03:54American's personal information and so I just doesn't doesn't seem like this is actually very good if they're trying to cut the deficit if they're trying to get rid of waste fra abuse they're doing a really bad job it sounds like thank you I yield my time chair recognize Mr Burleson from Missouri thank you thank you so much it's good to see you again um I will be be sad when I when when you after you leave um you you had mentioned in the previous conversation the debt to GDP ratio at nearly
▶ 2:04:24100% but according to the debt clock at 36 trillion the with a GDP of um 29.6 trillion we're actually at 123% well if you count uh I'm counting just debt held by the public the 36 includes debt that we owe to ourselves and intergovernmental transfers like back to Social Security and Medicare trust fund so you're right if you use gross
▶ 2:04:54that I'm using just that help by the public over the next 10 years we're planning to add another 20 trillion something on on the current spin level correct yeah so at what point at what point do we end up in a situation where the where the interest pay we can't make the interest payments I I I think uh this is the big issue and I've I've said we have tremendous interest rate exposure because we borrow short term so we got we're always refinancing
▶ 2:05:25the debt that we had before we never pay down any of and rates are going up and rates are going up and that's what's happened the the interest on the debt in uh 2023 was 352 billion dollars it's this year it'll be a trillion so you know compound interest works well when you're saving but not when you're borrowing yeah and that's why for me the alarming number was seeing that the the growth in the interest payments from last year to
▶ 2:05:55this year has been near over $200 billion yes just in the growth right so when when we're talking about a Reconciliation package if you're just going to cover the growth in the interest payments you would need to you need to find Savings of at least $2 trillion over the next 10 years correct absolutely absolutely this is a big problem it is a really big problem and I would I would really welcome if our Democratic colleagues would
▶ 2:06:25recognize this is not a republican problem it's not a Democrat problem this is a math problem this is a serious thing that I think we only have maybe a few years a handful of years left to to correct this before we end up in a debt spiral absolutely and and you're also going to confront the uh depletion of the Social Security trust fund and the Medicare part A trust fund eight
▶ 2:06:55years yes to 11 years yeah and and uh it depends on you know the trustees estimates will be out in another couple of months and I wouldn't be surprised if those dates are moved up T so if we're going if we're having a mandatory spending conversation and and this is what my question to you is is that if as someone who doesn't and I think that we we universally even though we've been we're going to be criticized as though we're trying to kick people off of medic Medica if the goal is not to kick anybody off of Medicaid
▶ 2:07:26that needs it what are the different solutions that are in our toolbox where we could eliminate improper pay I would I would hope to think that Democrats are not opposed to eliminating improper payments Medicaid no right you would one would hope one would hope that that they would not be opposed to finding frauders or people that are you know that that are not supposed to be receiving the benefits one would hope that you would want to find
▶ 2:07:56ways of getting the best bang for your buck within the program so for examp and that's what I want to kind of drill down to within at the end of the day this is the health care industry and the costs of healthare that the federal government is is having to deal with Medicaid and Medicare and even the insurance on the lives of the of the federal Workforce correct yes so what can we do is there have you guys seen anything that can be done that would actually have an impact in driving down health care costs yeah yeah
▶ 2:08:26this is a compound problem because you got health care costs going up faster than the economy and you have uh the demographics are working against this because they're older people that are hitting the payrolls this combination of both things this and then I wanted to if you could answer this before my time rooms out within your answer I notic there was a study that was done in 2019 I'm that you have new studies that indicated when you studied the impact that pbms
▶ 2:08:56had had and whether or not that money was actually the savings was actually coming back to the federal government or to the and and and if that if there's new data because at that time it was 96% that was coming back in savings so on the PBM issue um I'm going to have to get back to you on on how much uh we we are doing some current work in that that area um in terms of what would drive down so the way you pay for services you know the the the responsibility of the patients
▶ 2:09:27for cost sharing those are the types of things where um the government could take some action so for example we've had a long-standing recommendation you all have considered this in multiple congresses of um making sure that Medicare and other payers are paying the same for services uh whether they're delivered in the phys officer in the hospital outpatient Department setting the most recent CBO score of that which they site neutrality is what you're I mean site neutrality yes so that the most recent score of that is $151 billion in savings over 10 years and that has
▶ 2:09:57impacts on the entire Health Care system so it's not even just savings within Medicare it will have an impact on other programs as well as the private sector Health Care system so there's lots of examples like that of paying differently for services that can you can you provide those examples to me yeah yes yeah we'll do that there's also the adjustments that are made every year between fee for service in Medicare and and Medicare Advantage and the uh the committee legislative commission set up by the Congress I appoint the members
▶ 2:10:27members to this med pack for Medicare one for Medicaid in the Met mpack medpack area they estimate that there's overpayments being made to the uh Managed Care portion of like $40 billion that's correct and so we we have recommendations to make that a fair comparison so we're not overpaying thank you yield back thank you chair recognizes Mr or Miss Ansari Mrs
▶ 2:10:57thank you I sorry I thought since uh representative of frost is back um thank you Mr chairman Mr daaro uh you said today that quote there is a need for change but how we does so matters I couldn't agree with you more we absolutely need to ensure that our government and its agencies and programs are running efficiently and free of waste so that we can deliver for the American people we need to make sure seniors are getting their Social Security checks on time so they can pay their rent and have food on the table but meanwhile Elon Musk is spre
▶ 2:11:28spreading braz and lies that tens of millions of dead Americans are receiving checks and he's going after our personal data we need to make sure we're getting correct tax returns so that Americans depend um and can respond in a timely manner but president Trump just fired 6,700 IRS employees in the middle of tax season as you know and we need to ensure that americ Americans on Medicare continue using teleah Health Services which is essential for Rural communities and seniors but the president
▶ 2:11:58is shutting that service down as well in April they fired over 1,000 VA employees that our veterans depend on for essential healthc care services and their hard-earned benefits not only that but they enacted a hiring freeze for this agency that already has a shortage of doctors and nurses um and I I know you confirmed this later or earlier today as well there's also been a lot of talk about polling from my colleagues from the other side of the aisle so I'd also like to cite recent polling on this issue in
▶ 2:12:28two recent polls when asked uh when respondents were asked whether they approved or disapproved of the job that Elon Musk is doing within the federal government there was a 34% approval compared to a 49% disapproval that poll was carried between February 13th and the 18th it also found that 52% of Americans disapprove of musk shutting down Federal program that he deems unnecessary and in another poll only 28% believe that mus role in the government is a quote good thing
▶ 2:12:59so Americans are fed up with the corruption they know that none of what is happening is about addressing waste Fraud and Abuse the new buzzword it's about saving a buck to hand off to billionaires so Mr daro thank you again for being here few questions for you do you believe that 6,700 IRS employees reduces waste at and makes tax filing more efficient no thank you does the high-risk
▶ 2:13:30list recommend the dismantling of usaid the Department of Education or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau do we recommend that no we've not recommended that and did Elon Musk or Doge consult with you and your team to decide who to Fire and who gets to keep their jobs no so the independent nonpartisan office your office dedicated to research how the federal government can increase efficiency and I've heard a lot of Praise from both sides which is
▶ 2:14:00deserved um your the GAO was not in any way shape or form consulted by the Trump Administration or Elon Musk before they made sweeping decisions to fire thousands of government employees dismantle agency or overstep Congress to do so the point of clarification I would make is since we're an independent nonpartisan organization and a legislative branch it's really not our role to be consulted on Personnel decisions in the in the executive branch we give advice on what kind of functions
▶ 2:14:30the operations of the government but we don't you know make recommendations about specific individuals and Personnel decisions that's left to them but what we do look at is whether or not decisions like that were made in accordance with law and and Merit principles and there's also the Merit systems protection board and the office of special counil and and the Fair Labor Relations Board so there are a number of entities within their independent agencies that are supposed to
▶ 2:15:00focus on the Personnel process and whether people are treated fairly thank you that that clarification is helpful it's overall extremely alarming to me that you were not consulted in in such sweeping rapid changes that have come about your recommendations as you said many of them have been around for years and and still remain an issue that we very much should be tackling um but the corruption of of Doge and Elon Musk and and to a point that's already been said if they are
▶ 2:15:31you know if they believe what they are doing is correct and they are tackling these issues for the American people I welcome them to come here and speak to us as well so thank you again so much chair now recognizes uh Mr Maguire thank you Mr chairman and thank you uh Mr daro for your service and I wish you the best in retirement um you know our country is in big trouble $ 36 trillion
▶ 2:16:02in debt we should be sounding the alarms all over the place on both sides of the aisle if it was one trillion if you spend more money per day in your houseold than you make per day you'd be out on the street and if you were a business and you spend more than you bring in per day you'd be out of business if the government was out business please talk the microphone there so they if the government was a business it would be out of business again I talk about 36 trillion dollars is is the biggest uh national security issue in our country
▶ 2:16:32um I Heard folks on the other side of the aisle talk about Dei if you had a list of things you would do if you wanted to destroy our country you would have open borders you would have 103,000 people a year die from fentanyl overdose from this Chinese chemical warfare fentol being produced in China and coming across our border you would have these foreign war you would uh spend more money than you make things that didn't happen during Trump's first Administration I heard them talk about Dei you know what Dei stands for didn't earn it
▶ 2:17:02plus it's illegal discrimination and it destroys efficiency equal opportuni is okay but equal outcome is Marxist instead of focusing on uh waste Fraud and Abuse over the last four Administration last four years we were focused on these divisive woke IDE IES when you're doing business with foreign countries they say you know when we work with America's competitors they say we want to build build a bridge they talk about building a bridge when America comes to their town they want to talk about these woke ideologies it's ridiculous and I heard that said that Trump
▶ 2:17:33is not serious about being efficient well we talk about the fentanyl that's killing all these American people dead 103,000 a year Well border crossings are now down in just a short period of time 95% from 2,000 border crossings per day to about 200 border crossings a day I would say that's pretty efficient his uh recruitment is up in the military the highest it's been in 11 years I'd say that's pretty efficient I mean if we don't have a young men and women willing to step up and volunteer and protect our nation we will not have
▶ 2:18:03a nation he's also gotten his appointees through the Senate F just about faster than any president in history I'd say that's pretty darn efficient and when you're $36 trillion of debt and it's getting worse I don't say we're at the cliff we're over the cliff and by the grace of God president Trump and Eli musk and everybody else wants to pull us back and save this country I think every major nation in history that went under was because of bankruptcy he got the hostages returns several hostages American hostages returned in record time
▶ 2:18:33so I would say president Trump definitely cares about efficiency what shocks me is that the left is outraged at Elon Musk and all these people that are fighting so hard to discover waste Fraud and Abuse and save our country but they're not outraged the people that committed the waste Fraud and Abuse and that shocks me um I find it concerning that since 2003 federal agencies have reported about $2.8 trillion and estimated improper payments the GAO issued a BAL
▶ 2:19:03report the start of each Congress to identify which programs are vulnerable to fraud waste and abuse and mismanagement so Mr daro are there any common themes or problems that you have noticed across the high-risk areas when compiling this list in recent years uh yes there there's u a number of areas we've been adding to the list involve multiple AG uh agencies to have to work together in order to address it and one one of them is on point to your point
▶ 2:19:34about fentol we added uh drug misuse as a high-risk area because there needed to be a better National strategy that pulled together Federal departments and agencies but also work at the state and local level work with law enforcement work with treatment uh facilities and others and so th that's an area that that requires multiple agencies to work together so that's that's that's one of the patterns that we've seen you know over time well I would say the American people
▶ 2:20:04we the people are sick and tired of being ripped off and in just five weeks Doge Elon Musk and is in his genius team and by the way the guy's the richest man in the world he doesn't need our money and president Trump is the only President in recent history I've ever heard of that left office with less money every other president has left office with more money um but we have got to make some good decisions our country is in really big trouble we talk about FEMA hurricane Helen impacted my district as well and I was just struck by
▶ 2:20:34how farmers and volunteers all across our Commonwealth and all across our nation jumped in to help people what are some things that we can do like I've heard it proposed that FEMA some of the FEMA duties can be returned to the governors what do you think we can do to make handle these n natural disasters more efficiently yeah I think one one thing would be uh to determine at what level the state and local levels they're already the the First Responders and uh FEMA
▶ 2:21:05gives grants for them to be better prepared but we've always said well how prepared are they and they've never been able to tell us uh over time I'll let Chris Curry all right last question real quick all right what is the definition insanity well the common definition it's used just keep repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result yes so we have to move quickly I don't know if you who Mr Wonderful is Kevin o very successful businessman he he's in CNN he's saying that Doge
▶ 2:21:35should move faster than it's moving and should cut 20% more and then you rebuild from there because we are in drastic times desperate times for require Desperate Measures thank you very much all right you back we'll we'll provide answers on FEMA for the record CH recognizes uh Mr Frost thank you Mr chair Mr uh um Mr dataro thank you so much for for being here today the GAO government accountability office um it's really important thoughtful um expert reports that help us save billions of dollars
▶ 2:22:06every year and I I thank you for that work and thank your staff for that work uh the GAO couldn't be more different than Trump and Elon musk's Doge um Trump and musk want to rip away the vital services that millions of Americans depend on he's doing it just to find money to give tax cuts to the richest people in this country and largest corporations in this country many of whom pay a less effective tax rate than a lot of the teachers in my district Doge will save nothing for the American people while making
▶ 2:22:36everything worse for us um while trying to find room to give tax cuts to the richest people in this country shamefully those cuts include cuts to our military veterans including the nearly 32,000 veterans that I proud represent and I take this subject personally because I'm the son of a veteran I come from an Air Force family how my family's been the Air Force so long they were in it when it was the Army Air Corp and so I take this very personally Mr daro VA Healthcare is on the gao's
▶ 2:23:06high-risk list uh how have Staffing challenges at the VA contributed to this and ask Miss farb to come up but it they've contributed to it very significantly Jess um I would say you know we talked about this a little bit earlier um in terms of scheduling appointments for veterans both in the VA facilities and in the community um providing treatments that are needed um And Timely care which VA has had problems with in the past as we all know so um not having the staff that they need to kind of
▶ 2:23:36continue on the path to making sure that veterans get timely access to Quality a sta capacity issue not enough yes well not a right type I mean we I'm very concerned about the mental health area and they don't have enough Behavioral Health people particularly for Rural veterans 100% and uh and the suicide prevention areas is another area you know the last I checked there were 17 veterans a day died by Suicide I it's a National Disgrace in my opinion that we're
▶ 2:24:06not better supporting these people which is why I added it to the high risk list and so they need doctors nurses they need the proper uh care and uh and also the proper handoff if they go to Community Care process uh as well so it it's a um it's it's an issue that that we need to be very careful on how we handle and make sure it's done properly I 100% agree with you I was actually about to ask you about the va's need to hire more psychiatrists and
▶ 2:24:36psychologists and I appreciate you bringing that up um you know last week I held a veterans Town Hall in my district at my local VA there are a few hundred people that showed up uh folks came very confused very angry and very scared they asked questions I have some of them down uh they asked will I lose my benefits um who staffs Doge and what are they doing with my personal medical information will budget cuts mean that I'll have longer wait times um why is my Healthcare
▶ 2:25:07being sacrificed to politics these are the questions people ask me my constituents veterans asked me among the 18 inspectors General that Donald Trump illegally fired which by the way were Congress was supposed to be notified before an IG is fired like that maybe but two hours ago I Republicans in this committee took a vote to silence me because I said Donald Trump was engaging in grifting but complete crickets when he breaks the law and completely circumvents Congress and
▶ 2:25:37doesn't tell us about the firing of 18 inspectors General how will the firing of the Inspector General of the VA make it harder to address the issues that my constituents my the veterans in my district raised well I responded earlier that I thought it was unfortunate those IGS were fired I think we lost a lot of institutional and and expertise in that area uh we've worked very closely with Mike Mell o over the years and the other IGS now they have a very talented
▶ 2:26:07group of people they'll Soldier on and uh they'll continue to do the job but it was unfortunate and you know I I had recommended to the Congress to make the change to required a 30-day notice and to Fort cause because the inspector generals do report to the Congress as well as to the head of the agency it's a very unique responsibility and Congress should have the opportunity to engage in a dialogue on that I don't dispute the president's authority to fire them
▶ 2:26:37but how it's done and follow the proper procedures I believe is important thank you the the Orlando VA Healthcare System already suffers from critical Staffing shortages I mean the people there who a large percentage of them are veterans themselves are doing a great job they're doing what they need to do um but they don't have the staff capacity necessary um to to be able to meet the demand to be able to live up to our promise to people who put the lives their lives on the line for the Safety and Security
▶ 2:27:07of this country and that's something I take very seriously it's something that a lot of my Republican colleagues used to take very seriously but times change um thank you so much and I yield back chair recognize Mr Gil from Texas thank you Mr chairman and thank you for holding this hearing today I'd like to start by addressing a few of the uh concerns that our colleagues have had uh on the other side of the aisle about the Doge movement and Elon Musk in particular and and first they're they're telling us
▶ 2:27:37that what Doge and Elon Musk are doing by firing federal workers many of whom aren't showing up to work to begin with is somehow cruel and I'd like to say that perhaps what is is actually cruel is bankrupting our country by funding a federal Workforce that isn't working what is cruel is driving up inflation by spending more money than our federal government has harming workingclass families across the country
▶ 2:28:08what's cruel is consolidating power in an undemocratic administrative state that doesn't answer to anybody apparently if they had their way you know no no federal worker has a right to work for the US government but our children do have a birth right to inherit a country that isn't bankrupt and that is what House Republicans and president Trump and Elon Musk are trying to do by cutting out waste Fraud and Abuse from the federal government
▶ 2:28:38what Elon Musk is doing isn't cruelty it's altruism and it's the first time anybody has been able to actually rightsize our federal budget and we should be a plotting him regardless of which side of the aisle we sit on I'd also like to address the the idea that Elon Musk and president Trump are somehow corrupt in rightsizing the federal government if you want to know where the real corruption is let's look at which side of the aisle
▶ 2:29:08has been benefiting from this slush fund that we've been giving uh giving out with very little accountability it tends to be left-wing pet projects left-wing media like in and PBS who always routinely Run cover for Democrats while attacking Republicans it's left-wing advocacy groups and NOS that are taking our tax dollars and promoting Dei programs and transgend gender surgeries and girl powerered climate action whatever
▶ 2:29:38that means these are all left-wing movements that are being funded by our tax dollars and it raises the question of how successful would the leftist political movement be in America if it weren't for the fact that their whole movement is subsidized by taxpayers that is what corruption is and we're finding out now recently that Stacy Abrams is part of part of the grift as well apparently the EPA gave $2 billion
▶ 2:30:09dollar to a group called power forward communities um that was funded in late 2023 and had only $100 in total revenue power forward communities had no business managing a grant that large of course um but they they were appealing for Democrats the co-chair of power forward communities is Shan Donovan who previously served as Barack Obama's director of Hud and OMB and we also know that Stacy
▶ 2:30:40Abrams is senior councel for one of the Coalition groups called renewing America affiliated with this that is corruption and that's the waste that trying to root out here they talk a lot about Elon Musk and Doge and having access to American data we remember Biden let 53 unpaid researchers and students have full access to the American people's data at the IRS and there was no outrage then we're learning
▶ 2:31:10now that the Biden IRS leaked taxpayer information we were told last year that it was only for I say only for 70,000 Americans we're finding out today it was actually Americans that's the kind of access to data that I'm concerned about and it's being leaked to a left-wing news Outlet that's partially funded by George Soros these are the questions we should be asking and we should be raising they like to talk
▶ 2:31:41I think disingenuously and very hyperbolically about President Trump being a a dictator as they know article two of the of the Constitution says that the executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America not in a technocratic undemocratic unelected administrative state that they've been propping up for so long we're a republic not a European style technocracy and that's why our country is the global
▶ 2:32:11leader and Europe is not but for decades we've watched as this administrative state has metastasized and acts with incred leftist fervor and has no accountability what president Trump and Elon Musk are doing is returning our country back to its its Democratic Roots restoring constitutional order in this country and that's why we should be supporting them thank you Mr chairman gentleman yields chair now recognizes Mr
▶ 2:32:41Men oh okay am I out of order who who do I oh no that's fine uh Mr daro thank you for joining us thank you for your DEC hold on M sorry Mr connley who who's next I thinkon is next okay sorry about that right okay thank you Mr chairman and thank you ranking member um I appreciate your testimony today sir and thank you as a MPA uh Master student a few years ago I spent an awful lot of
▶ 2:33:12time reading your reports and I really really appreciate the level of professionalism um that that you've LED and thank you for your service you know colleague Mr Frost you talked a bit about veterans sir and I appreciate that uh my mother served the veteran administration for over 35 years you know if you call 415 22148 one0 or in Phoenix 2 602 27755
▶ 2:33:42one1 or in Texas 713 7911 1441 we know now when veterans mothers of veterans partners of veterans when they're calling there's only three of many vas in the country folks are not going to answer the phone on February 14th this Administration fired over 1,000 VA workers 1,000
▶ 2:34:12VA workers so you know when you cut staff you cut services and when you cut services these are more than just budget decisions it's a betrayal of the American promise our servicemen and women deserve better they fought in the line of fire with an understanding that when they came home they would have efficacious health benefits Social Services mental health services
▶ 2:34:42that was our promise and it's not just in this Administration that we've broken our promise I will say that we've not done what we have should have in the past and currently in the present but to annihilate critical staff supporting lives of folks who dedicated their lifespan to this country it's a betrayal of a lexicon of America First that I am hearing every single day you
▶ 2:35:12know sir I don't have a question for you again I'm thanking you but last week I visited an NIH funded Clinic and I know we're not talking so much about NIH in report a Nobel prizewinning scientist and physician scientists on her team and Young American students have dedicated their professional careers to ending genetic diseases like CLE cell they're there they have a cure the trials have gone really
▶ 2:35:43really well they're looking at moving forward treatment for ALS and for folks who have suffered from ALS and have buried your uncles and your mothers and your fathers and your cousins and your nieces you know the devastation of that disease for folks who are struggling themselves with dementia you know the devastation and the Whirlwind financially that your families have had to go through this lab in Berkeley California has the best and the brightest scientist and they are facing because
▶ 2:36:13again of this effort to move efficiency a $37 million cut that will all but halt the research and send those students home that is not fearmongering that is fact so for all of the patients those who are in the operating rooms sitting outside waiting for your folks to come out those folks who are care workers sitting at home trying to figure out how you're going to make ends meet because you can't work because your father has devastating dementia I want us to understand
▶ 2:36:44what is at play I'm not anyone what I'm saying is we're making bad decisions yes we need a more efficacious government but when you attack the sick when you attacked when you attack literally the scientists who are going to cure Americans cure Americans we're lying to the people here those young people I met one young man who has dedicated him his life to curing cancer he is in
▶ 2:37:14that lab he doesn't know if he's going to be able to continue America first look something very different than what we're purporting here today about creating an efficacious government the last thing I will say and I again appreciate knowing a lot about your organization and while you don't provide Direction necessarily to government departments when they've done staff reductions what your agency has done is guide directors to make those
▶ 2:37:44reductions using a process a process that is concurrent evaluations concurrent with making sure that there's deep communication making sure that those employees have an exit plan that will not exacerbate homelessness in our communities thousands of workers have been laid off with no evaluation we have not stayed true to our Union contracts we need to create
▶ 2:38:14a government that is efficacious and efficient but this ain't it thank you so much I yeld my time G lady yields back chiz Mr Fallon from Texas Mr chairman thank you you know we sit here all day and we hear folks pontificating and uh it's the same old broken record and I fear that it's going to be like this for two years that you know you hear Elon Musk and you do hear fearmongering and you do hear billionaires unelected billionair unelected
▶ 2:38:44oligarchs blah blah blah fact of the matter is is that when I was serving in the Air Force I saw many in the medal many federal workers that did a fabulous job they were gold coins for this country unfortunately I saw equal probably slightly larger number that were a complete waste of taxpayer money it was just not operating efficiently and they didn't have the motivations and that's why I think even the father of modern progressivism
▶ 2:39:15Franklin delanor Roosevelt feared and was not a fan of public sector unions I want to thank you com Controller General dearo for your years of service half a century dare I say started with new y or five uh you had an illustrious career very successful one and a decade and a half in your current position uh and sincerely thank you um also you've done significant work with uh operating and efficiencies in the federal government I think
▶ 2:39:45that you could argue in a sense that you were Doge before Doge or Doge was cool or at least for after the people on this committee cool uh what have you but the concept isn't new long before Donald Trump ever ran for public office you were doing your work and looking to get a lot of bang for that taxpayer buck and that's something that should be bipartisan doesn't seem to be unfortunately but you know I'm a internal Optimist that we can hope for a better day tomorrow do you think sir that the federal government did does or will operate at maximum efficiency
▶ 2:40:15right now uh it does not it does not even I listen I had a small company of 100 employees private sector I was making a buck we didn't operate at maximum efficiency it would be wonderful if we could but you can't and there's absolutely no way a federal bureaucracy of millions of people I mean what are you're finding uh what is it about 40 billion a year that you've saved yes because you're doing your work and maybe then maybe we could argue that oversight accountability Works looking for those efficiencies
▶ 2:40:45uh and quantifying that and trying to organize it it into an effort where we can increase the scale think it's a good thing for the country and I just went to Austin Texas I was in the Texas legislature for eight years uh in the house and the Senate and visited with some of my colleagues and then some experts in the attorney inspector General's office rather in uh Texas and they were telling us and in their professional opinions and these folks have done it one of them Mr chairman Ser for 25 years investigating primarily Medicaid
▶ 2:41:16fraud and I asked in your professional opinion after a quarter Century doing what you've done of the $50 billion that Texas spends on entitlements what if what majority of that is fraud waste and abuse what percentage rather and he said at best 10% and at worst probably North just north of 20% so just in Texas alone we're thinking we're talking about probably s A5 billion dollars of money that's spent by the taxpayers but it's not getting to the people that need it you've get folks that lie on you know and sometimes the honor
▶ 2:41:46System stuff or they're making much more income that they than they admit to or you've got the frauders um and the organized CRI criminals that steal and they're very good at it they're very sophisticated and so taking a look at it we shouldn't be scared of it we should embrace it we should run toward it and not run away from it and not play political games or demonize the most successful you human being in history in in in the private sector uh so I wanted to ask you also sir some of these initiatives that you had with your high-risk list
▶ 2:42:16will I believe need congressional action what specific ific actions can we realistically take you think in the next year or two to see a noticeable uh difference in Improvement yeah well one is uh um to make permanent the use of the death Master file to have social security give it to the treasury Department uh that's only on a pilot basis it's already saved millions of dollars it needs to be made permanent we should not be paying deceased people uh it took me a number
▶ 2:42:46of years to convince Congress to even make that a pil program I never thought it would be so hard to stop paying dead people but apparently it was were they all in Chicago I don't know I don't think so I think there are more spread around yeah uh but in any event that's number one number two would be to extend the statute of limitations for fraud in the unemployment insurance program it's about ready to expire at the fiveyear Mark Congress should do as it did
▶ 2:43:16with Paycheck Protection Program and extend it uh for five more years to make it 10 years there there's a number hundreds of cases still being investigated that I think need to come to a conclusion and people and that's for the what did was that for the Social Security unemployment unemployment fraud unemployment insurance fraud extend the statute of limitations make site neutral payments a reality for Medicare if you go to
▶ 2:43:46a doctor who's affiliated with a hospital Medicare pays you more than if you go to a doctor in a private practice it costs more for co-pays for beneficiaries cbo's already said in the next 10 years it would save $153 billion uh I got many other ones uh that that I could you know I hear you en enumerate but those are those are those are three biggies thank you very much we love to get your office on getting an extensive list and again thank you for your service chairman
▶ 2:44:16I yield back gentleman yields back chair this Mr Min uh thank you Mr chair Mr daro congratulations on your retirement and thank you for your service I appreciate your suggestions and uh as a freshman uh new to your uh your particular suggestions these high-risk projects but uh appreciate the concept uh like some of my colleagues I want to First just briefly talk about Doge the department of government efficiency uh which is apparently not a department but a temporary organization with all the authorities of a department or
▶ 2:44:46agency uh but none of the legal legal requirements that would otherwise apply to a department or agency now temporary organizations you may know under federal statute are limited to specific project or study uh president Trump's executive order creating Doge made clear that Doge's Authority was specifically limited to quote data modernization uh but as has been widely reported under the leadership of Elon Musk uh Doge has far exceeded those statutory and executive order limitations uh Doge employees have taken over the federal payment system
▶ 2:45:17they've received access to sensitive person data for any person who's ever received a check from the federal government they've Frozen federal employees out of their computer systems they've tried to terminate agencies and programs like the Department of Education and usaid so Mr darar I assume you're familiar with the United States Constitution I am and so my many of my GOP colleagues today were talking about article two of the Constitution apparently that was in their talking points for today uh but article one section one states that all legislative powers are reserved to the Congress of
▶ 2:45:47the United States article section 9 gives us exclusive authority to appropriate money to Congress are you aware of any provision in the Constitution that allows the executive branch to unilaterally take away our legislative and Appropriations Authority I'm not aware of that no uh that's right because it doesn't exist are you aware of any provision in the Constitution that allows a special government employee appointed by the president to unilaterally take away our legislative and Appropriations Authority I don't think Constitution addresses that it makes clear it is our Authority only and so
▶ 2:46:17uh what is happening right now with those is is unconstitutional legal I'll make that clear because they are overturning laws that we passed they're deleting agencies that we have funded and created and they're doing so without consultation with Congress so I want to make that clear uh now Elon Musk has claimed he wanted to eliminate $2 trillion in waste from the federal government uh do you believe that we're going to find $2 trillion in waste if we look through the budget uh not on a on an annual basis well I think he's talking annually actually so yeah but that's why
▶ 2:46:47I say that but not no I don't think that that's POS and you are you aware of the size of the domestic discretionary budget which is the focus of this hearing and basically every effort uh that doge is looking into uh yes what is that roughly that's roughly about let's see it's about a third of the so it's it's a uh 900 billion sound about right yeah yeah okay yeah it's a little more than that but yeah 917 I believe is the exact number from may be a little harder than that okay and is that that's less than $2 trillion
▶ 2:47:17just so we're clear so so we could cut everything from the domestic discretionary budget every program every federal employee and we're only a fraction of two the weight of $2 trillion right yeah well I mean you got medic Social Security is over a trillion Medicare is over a trillion interest on the debts over a trillion Medicade if you is is half halfway more than halfway there reclaiming my time so $2 trillion do then I think you're suggesting this but I just want to get to the point right uh we're looking at $2 trillion and we're only going to get there probably if
▶ 2:47:47we cut Medicaid Social Security Medicare is that about right you you'd have to get to the big programs you you can't cut the big dollars if you don't go to the where that's right and so do you think there's $2 trillion in waste if we look in Medicaid Medicare and Social Security no okay do you think there's a hundred billion doll in waste well so U let me reclaim my time many of my house Republican colleagues have expressed their concerns about the $36 trillion debt I'm also concerned about that their proposed budget would cut $3 trillion including
▶ 2:48:18for Lifeline Pro programs like Medicaid snap uh Healthcare you know we're talking about uh food from Hungry babies uh health care for sick veterans but it also adds over five four and a half trillion dollars in tax cuts so my question to you is is math if you cut $3 trillion in spending but add uh also reduce revenues by $4.5 trillion dollar does that increase or reduce the national debt well according to that scenario it would increase it y uh and and that's exactly right now I want to get on last little line of questioning
▶ 2:48:48because uh many of my constituents have told me they're concern about the waste fraud abuse and mismanagement associated with the idea that one person Elon Musk gets to decide so many aspects of the federal budget these days uh they're concerned not only that it's illegal and unconstitutional but that so many of his decisions seem designed to go after the agencies that have tried to regulate his businesses his competitors uh so my last question to you is if an auditor uh were coming to audit something for you but they were a major investor in one of the companies that you were looking
▶ 2:49:18at uh would you hire them to work on that project uh no all right thank you very much yeah and we're we've been asked to and we'll be looking at the arrangements for do as it relates to ethics and conflict of interest well thank you very much and again appreciate your service thank you chair now recognizes himself for five minutes uh Mr daro what are the worst programs for improper payments over the last year uh over the last year uh
▶ 2:49:50Medicaid uh the earned income tax credit and a supplemental nutritional assistance program and then bringing up that would be unemployment insurance right Medicare Medicaid and snap the 2025 high-risk report like the previous reports continued to paint an alarming picture of the extent of payments those issues facing Medicare and Medicaid that I think we agree and I know the American people agree that
▶ 2:50:20we shouldn't be uh giving payments to people or businesses improperly so last year Medicare improperly paid roughly $51 billion and Medicaid improperly paid about 50 billion that's over a hundred billion dollar so why do these programs continue to have such massive issues with improper payments year after year because uh goo's released report that estimated between 200 33 billion and 521
▶ 2:50:51billion that's half a trillion was lost annually due to fraud between 2018 and and 22 but Medicare and Medicaid in particular 100 billion in the last year why why do this happen yeah well I I think the uh you have uh a need for better provider screening in other words you know letting providers in there and you have a need for better uh enrollment screening this has been a consistent problem particular in the Medicaid or Medicaid area
▶ 2:51:21yes in that area now during the pandemic for three years uh everybody who was eligible at the beginning was deemed eligible throughout to the end of the National Emergency so I don't even think the recent numbers as big as they are are the full amount of improper payments so there needs to be more rigorous screening and more attention on manage care portion and more auditing there of both of them so during Co when the federal government government lost its mind and that spanned two
▶ 2:51:53administrations people were were put on Medicaid without proper screening and things like that uh supposed supposed to be temporar temporarily Medicaid supposed to be a temporary safety net program and what's happened is it's become an entitlement and one of the things that we're proposing in the budget reconciliation Bill isn't cutting Medicare and Medicaid like my colleagues on the other side of the it's it's trying to reform
▶ 2:52:24Medicare and Medicaid to where there's no improper payments we recognize the fact that you have been writing about this for years the problem's not getting any better people got on Medicaid during covid supposed to be temporarily but they're still on there right they're still on there they're not supposed to be in there hardworking taxpaying Americans have to pay for their health insurance and there are people that are gaining the system getting on medical care and Medicaid that's who we are looking at in this budget reconciliation
▶ 2:52:55bill that's what president Trump and Doge are looking at this isn't something that we made up this isn't something that we pulled out of the air you all have been writing about this for years and we recognize there's a problem but the fear people say well why hasn't Congress done anything this is why the way they're acting they wait people know that Social Security is being scammed people know the unemployment's being scammed people know in this chamber that Medicare and Medicaid is being scammed but they wait
▶ 2:53:25they wait for one person and it's always a republican to be bold enough to say we need to look at this and we need to stop these improper payments we need to stop the waste fraud abuse and mismanagement and then the Democrats go oh my God they're going to cut they're going to cut the Republicans are going to cut then they get their their constituents all fired up they say oh Elon Musk is going to steal your social security check and and nothing gets done we
▶ 2:53:55are serious about it the president has a mandate we appreciate the work that you and your staff has done identifying the list but one reason that people in both parties Congress for for numerous congresses has refused to even look at Medicare and Medicaid fraud is because they knew that somebody would try to score political points and spook the the the elderly people that need Medicare
▶ 2:54:26the the the children that need Medicaid the children that need staff they won't face the reality that people have been added to the roles that shouldn't be on the roles there there are people ineligible there are providers in all 50 states that are abusing the system and it's going to take someone bold it's going to take uh a a a congress with the backbone to do something about it and I I'll conclude by saying this we don't want to cut benefits for children we don't want to
▶ 2:54:56cut benefits for the elderly and and the the truly needy we want to look at the system and and get rid of the waste Fraud and Abuse that's what doge is about that's what president Trump campaigned on and that's what I hope at least the majority party in here is committed to get his back and and try to do that because the American people are fed up they've lost confidence in government and just as Miss green said an overwhelming majority of people
▶ 2:55:26uh approve of what the objectives of Doge are but it's going to be up to Congress to get it done I think we're seeing tonight during this hearing there's some people that are going to obstruct and kick and try to score political points and there are some that are serious that have rolled up their sleeves and hopefully we'll get something done so thank you for your highrisk report and Hope hopefully this Congress and this Administration will have the backbone to do something about this this Heist of
▶ 2:55:57the American taxpayer dollar so thank you my time's expired I now recognize Miss Presley I guess or Miss Crockett who's next Miss Presley thank you uh thank you to the com Controller General for being here today I'm grateful for your service and um you are a great reminder of the ways in which uh government does benefit people every day um but they're often unaware Congress has a duty to ensure that government operates efficiently effectively
▶ 2:56:27and in the public interest for any elected official constituent services are our bread and butter um I know long before I was an elected official I I worked uh as a constituent Services Advocate at Social Security liaa on advocating for our most vulnerable if your grandfather can't get an appointment at the VA or if your mom is stuck on hold with the Social Security Administration for hours you should be angry and we should be fixing it but instead of fixing it the Trump Administration has turned over the keys
▶ 2:56:57to an unelected billionaire Elon Musk through the so-called Department of government efficiency or Doge Mr Doo can you define just so we're operating with the same um understanding and comprehension here can you define efficiency well efficiency is is getting the best possible outcome with the least amount of resources right it's not about slashing budgets for the sake of headlines while weakening the VAR services that keep people safe fed in house true efficiency
▶ 2:57:27is about making government work better for the people protecting the rights strengthening essential services and ensuring tax dollars go to the public good not private profits by that standard Doge isn't here to serve anyone other than Elon Musk but let's take a step back history is important Mr odaro do you know how the term Doge came about um not not particularly well it came from an internet meme featuring a Sheba Inu dog that went viral
▶ 2:57:57on Reddit and that Meme led to the creation of Dogecoin a joke cryptocurrency eventually caught the attention of none other than Elon Musk in 2019 more than five years ago Elon Musk started tweeting about Doge making jokes and using the cryptocurrency for profit he was not interested in government efficiency he only cared about about making money that's why the actual creator of Dogecoin said that Elon quote was and always will be a grifter
▶ 2:58:28unquote Mr chair I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record this article titled Dogecoin co-creator calls Elon Musk a grifter who had troubl running basic code without objection ordered talk about didn't earn it so here we are in 202 2 and Elon Musk is still using Doge to make money this time instead of pumping up a joke currency for his own profits he's using a meme inspired agency to launch a hostile
▶ 2:58:59takeover of the federal government Doge has recklessly fired FAA employees and attack the agency allw must own Aerospace business benefits from regulatory roll backs make it make sense Doge dismantled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau a watchdog agency that turned $21 billion to victims of fraud when he heard it was planning to investigate his company and just last week
▶ 2:59:29in a moment of stunning incompetence the administration frantically tried to unfire hundreds of employees they had to let go the day before why because those employees were overseeing our nuclear stockpile those employees were managing the bird flu outbreak those employees were providing in not nice to have but essential musthave services that all of our constituents rely on Mr Doro do firing workers and then trying to
▶ 2:59:59unfire them sound like government efficiency to you it's not a best practice sure doesn't to me what kind of efficiency makes people hungrier what kind of efficiency makes people poor what kind of efficiency makes people less save if Ben mus truly wanted to make government better than they would turn to the actual efficiency experts at the government accountability office but this was never about efficiency
▶ 3:00:29just like the doge mean the lives of hardworking families are a joke to them I won't stand for it I know my colleagues won't either we'll continue to fight for a government rooted in real efficiency one that works for everyone not just for billionaires I yield back chair now recognizes Miss TB thank you Mr chair thank you so much um uh I know it's really incredibly ridiculous uh
▶ 3:01:00for me it's really ridiculous that we're sitting here today listening actually to this incredibly thoughtful presentation and report from you um about all the ways we can make government work better for our families but tomorrow my colleagues my Republican colleagues are actually going to ignore all of that they're going to ignore all of your thoughtful and you know very investigative thorough report of looking how we can serve our communities better and so it's it's it's
▶ 3:01:30alarming to me because I don't know if you know this Mr dor like our phones have been off the hook of people just increased anxiety fear of what's going to happen many parents who have special needs children who just can't imagine you know Medicare care and and Health Services are being cut another person who has access to Affordable Care Act is saying I can't believe they're thinking about allowing that to increase I think an average by $600 I
▶ 3:02:00you know understand from your report some of the biggest challenges in delivering for our families for the people that we represent here stems from Staffing shortages right and skill gaps that make it very difficult to be effective in delivering disaster assistance I believe your report said you about responding to Public Health emergencies and keeping groceries safe to eat food safe to eat is that correct that's correct 20 of the 38 areas
▶ 3:02:31are on there in part because of skill gaps and shortages so you're talking about we don't have enough people in some cases that's true but in most cases it's having the right skills necessary to do it it's both it's both I mean do you I mean for me this is you know a lot of my colleagues talk about like oh Elon Musk is about making more money I actually think he just likes experimenting and he's experimenting with us the American people it's like an a huge experiment and a game
▶ 3:03:01or something of that sort uh I mean one day they turn the lights off in one Department the next day they turn it back on I mean we're talking about like Head Start programs that didn't even get access to the portal until like a couple I think this past week the you know and these are folks that are offering Services already right they already rendered the services and they're trying to get reimbursed by us so do you think I mean this experiment Al must experiment of indiscriminately firing hundreds of thousands of federal employees working on these key issues
▶ 3:03:31will make a positive impact and addressing some of these life and death challenges yeah uh I think there's a need for more efficiency in government I want to be clear about that and I do think I agree they should they should start with the Pentagon budget but okay yeah well it's across the board in government I think you could be more efficient but you have to approach it in a more thoughtful deliberative process but Mr don't you think they're hiding behind efficiency they're saying it's efficiency but it's irresponsibility it's chaotic
▶ 3:04:02yeah it's not my job to side I that you but one day they say okay all these folks are fired the next day they say okay you can come back well that's as I said that's not a good practice I mean I and I and I think well the good part about it is is they recognized it and they brought them back yeah but even when they try to turn the lights back on it's I think you need to take a more deliberative process the one thing I've learned I've been auditing the federal bureaucracy for 50 years that you need to
▶ 3:04:32find out what's the reason why things are the way they are before you change it usually there's a good reason but not often but you need to know the answer to that question before you make start making changes otherwise you have unintended consequences I mean do you know what they did today do you know no I no because I think it's important I but do you know what they did today they they they let go 28 veteran workers so VA
▶ 3:05:02John Dingle VA in Detroit it's a it's a veteran hospital they let go 28 employees I called I said what did they do like I asked simple questions I I don't know if they're doing that what did they do do you know what they did most of them were the people that worked in uh cleaning the surgical equipment do you know that we had a a a audit of the VA you know about this right yeah well we did people died Mr did people die at the John Dingle
▶ 3:05:32VA hospital because we didn't have people cleaning the surgical equipment yes or no yes yes that's a so they just let go all these people so you're telling me my veterans are going to go under a knife and we don't know if somebody's cleaning the surgical equipment this was a particular problem with calling OS how is that efficiency he's experimenting with the lives of our constituents and our residents you want to come here he should come here voluntarily they won't allow us to subpoena him and answer our questions what what are the reasons behind you
▶ 3:06:03letting go these folks behind again essential Services that's not effici it's irresponsible it's almost negligent it's chaos Mr daro your service is welcomed because we believe we we want to be effective in delivering for our our families we do but this is not the way to do it and uh I really do thank you for your service I know it's a long way and it must be so frustrating um God watching this last few weeks must be just unbelievable
▶ 3:06:33for you for us hearing our residents in tears has been painful so thank you all thank you thank you chair recognizes Miss Crockett thank you so much and um Mr dudo I'm I'm going to pick up where my colleague left off by number one thanking you for your service um even though I mean I I don't really know if they would have been trying to push you out too because it seems like anybody that knows what their job is gets pushed
▶ 3:07:03out so um congrats on your retirement uh and I'm hoping that you have sunnier days ahead but um Miss TB just went through a series of things that she feels like this is other than and I have a term for what I believe is going on I think it's just downright cruel I think that you have people that literally do not have a heart they're telling us that oh no no no we're going to run the federal government like a business well let me talk to you about the people that are allegedly
▶ 3:07:34running this business because the federal government ain't a business but let me clarify if it was I don't want it run like the president has run businesses the president it's my understanding has filed bankruptcy six times we don't have that luxury in the United States of America but even when we start to think about Elon Musk right now as it relates to Tesla the sales are down as it relates to
▶ 3:08:04X he has never made a profit since he bought X in fact the value of x is 75% lower than it has ever been so if I am going to go look for somebody to run a business I'm going to look for someone who is going to run one successfully and before people start screaming and yelling about well he's a billionaire yeah when you know the right people and they'll just give you money then you can become a billionaire too and maybe one day all of us will have that kind of access
▶ 3:08:34but until then I want to talk about the fact that um Congressional Republicans again as it's been stated they don't care about government efficiency no more than they care about government services and programs that constituents rely on and just like Elon is hiding from this committee Republicans are now hiding from their constituents under the current Republican budget proposal 166,000 people in the Chairman's District could lose their Medicaid benefits including more than
▶ 3:09:0470,000 children the same for the chairwoman of the Doge subcommittee under the current budget proposal 120,000 people in her District could lose Medicaid benefits including 75,000 children this is what efficiency looks like to Republicans selling out their own constituents to pass tax cuts for their billionaire donors and friends and rather than taking gao's recommendations And discussing how Congress can help make federal employees and agencies more efficient effective and supported
▶ 3:09:34they're firing probationary federal employees which again in my opinion has led to planes actually fallen out of the sky but nevertheless which is crazy because no one has been more unproductive than the Republicans on the oversight committee nevertheless Mr Doro of the 38 highrisk areas in gao's 2025 report more than half are due in part to Staffing or skills gaps which you've already discussed in your written testimony
▶ 3:10:05to the committee you stated quote when we have seen progress on high-risk issues it is typically involve three Essential Elements congressional action or oversight commitment from Top leaders at an active involvement by the Office of Management and budget in your opinion has Congress done enough to ensure the mass indiscriminate purging of federal Workforce doesn't quote impede the government from coste effectively serving the public and achieving
▶ 3:10:35desired results yes or no well I I talked before about telling the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth sometimes it's not a yes or no I think Congress should get more engaged and proactive in this area I've always encouraged administrations in the past to consult Congress and making some changes Mo many of these things are deal with laws that congress passed and I think law Congress needs to get more active I agree we need to do our constitutional
▶ 3:11:05Duty which is to conduct oversight so again I'm inviting Elon or anybody else that's a member of Doge to come through and we can have a conversation in fact I am not aware of any recommendations that really go beyond just cutting those services that people need there's not been any talk about cutting any of elon's uh contracts though not a one not that I'm aware of maybe you're aware of it but you are aware that Elon has been getting money from the federal government for a number of years correct yes okay
▶ 3:11:36and it's my understanding that he has not made a recommendation to cut any of his money as we are trying to save money and save this country at the end of the day what I am going to say is that we have the national highway traffic safety administration open five investigations on Tesla for complaints of unexpected breaking loss of steering control and crashes while cars were in self-driving mode and Tesla tried to block at least two rulings from the National
▶ 3:12:06Labor Relations Board punishing Elon for tweeting that factory workers would lose stock options if they joined union this is a problem can you at least tell me that you agree that you understand what a conflict of interests is and that I well aware of what a conflict of interest is and we've been asked by the Congress to take a look at this situation and we will well I appreciate that and with that Mr chair I will yield gentle lady yelds back that concludes our
▶ 3:12:36questioners uh in closing I want to thank our W witness Mr daaro for your testimony today thank you for your many years of of service uh I want to thank your staff once again for uh your input today as well with that and without objection all members have five legislative days within which to submit materials and additional written questions for the witnesses which will be forwarded to the witnesses if there is no further Business Without objection the committee
▶ 3:14:16e e