Transcription
Aishah: TONIGHT, WE ARE BRINGING YOU PART TWO OF BRET'S EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH ELON MUSK, AND MEMBERS OF HIS DOGE TEAM. AND, IN THIS SEGMENT, WE'RE GOING TO TAKE A DEEPER DIVE INTO THE ROLES OF SOME KEY PLAYERS HERE: HEALTHCARE BRUNER, BRAD SMITH AT THE HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES DEPARTMENT, ENGINEERING A REALM IMAGINE DARBY, CLOUD CEO TODD CLOUSE AT THE, ANTHONY ARMSTRONG—VERY IMPORTANT NAMES. IS HE OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT?
It's a lot of money sloshing out the door. Spend as a country about $3 billion a day in interest expense—probably the first thing got to me to focus on this: how do we get to this place and spend more on interest expense than we do on defense, for example? There is a lot going out the door. My focus, actually, while I have been here has been on the agency side and on the workforce side—and how is the Federal workforce, 2.3 million civilians, how does it function? There are 259 discreet departments in the Federal Government. We did ontology of the Federal Government AI and boot force to map out 16,000 boxes on the Federal Government work chart—and then how do we get this to be efficient, for example, that the Federal Government, one of the things we have learned: have you got full peril processors in the Federal Government? 2.3 million employees get paid through four peril processors. One is in the Department of Interior. One in the Department of Agriculture. Actually do very good work at this team, but it's at the Agriculture Department and they serve 76 Federal agencies from the Agriculture Department from peril. Everything from the IRS to the Smithsonian gets paid through the Agriculture Department. That doesn't make any sense. There should be one, and debate where it should go. Get the efficiencies of pulling those together. Get the information that comes from pulling those together. So that's what we're facing on the workforce front. You made the comment about shooting from the hip. I want to just talk about that for a minute.
That's what critics say.
It couldn't be further from the truth. I want to talk about what we are doing with restructuring plans. We literally go in and do this at night and over the weekends with the Secretaries of these agencies and senior staff and going line by line, the employee work charts, line by line from the bottom up, talking about every function is duplicative. Okay, what are we going to do with these 40 communication officers? We don't need 40. How are we going to consolidate them? That's the right team to pull those together? It is happening at the highest level, and line by line, box by box on these work charts. Also, more importantly, senior career staff—all of us have been—it's been an amazing experience. There are very, very hard-working people who are career civil servants and they're involved in these conversations as well to build out these plans for what these organizations should look like.
Tom Crass, working at Treasury. You are having access to the payment system oversee sees all the outgoing payments. Those payments were going places we didn't know where they were going, right?
Unfortunately, that's the case, Bret. Serving 580-plus agencies, up until very recently, effectively they could say make the payment and Treasury just sent it out as fast as possible—no verification. And so what we're doing is what any household would do. Imagine you are a household, you have a bank account. Everybody has an ATM card connected. Everyone has a checkbook. It's not just your children, it's not your parents, it's your in-laws and extended family, and go to the account and disperse funds—no questions asked, no justification, no variation. All we're trying to do is put the in basic controls. And then the last thing is really on the accounting side of things. Today, when a bill is passed, a budget bill or a continuing resolution as we have right now that actually does set a budget, it doesn't set a budget for the whole government as a whole, actually sets it by fund. If you think about it, there is actually 11,000 funds across these 580-plus agencies. But, today, on a real-time basis—not even a real-time basis—we cannot account for what's being dispersed by fund. Hope is to turn that.
We are very close to producing that. Why is that important? Well, by law, these agencies at the fund level are not allowed to spend more than their budget. But, if you don't have the information and you don't track it, how do you know?
On the technical side of moving these computers to new age, I mean, it's a challenge, right?
Absolutely. One thing I will say is that almost every long-time government employee that I have met is incredibly excited about taking a serious look at the fraud. They have seen it firsthand for many years, and see this as kind of an opportunity to use technology to address $500 billion a year fraud. I think that on the modernization side, it might actually surprise people how basic the improvements we are making are. We can't emphasize this enough. The things we are talking about are so basic that the Federal Government can't pass an audit. It doesn't know where the money is. Just being able to pass an audit, enable taxpayers to know where the money is going and know hard-earned tax dollars are being spent well.
Bret: The biggest spot is Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid.
Can I speak to Medicare and Medicaid? We are 100 percent committed to protecting Medicare and Medicaid. GAO says $84 billion a year in improper payments—how does that happen? I will just give you a couple examples. Article in the "Wall Street Journal" about this individual who are getting paid two separate states for the same individual. Connecticut pays for somebody's Medicaid. How could that possibly happen? In the reason is they have individual data systems. They run their programs separately. The Federal Government kind of sort of collects the data, but does not put it together to pull together their opportunities. That's a really concrete example of paying twice. We don't need to be paying twice. Paying once won't effect…
In our final installment of our spotlight on the Department of Government Efficiency, Bret speaks one-on-one with Elon Musk about what issues keep him up at night, the scrutiny he is facing, his involvement in politics outside of Doge, and whether or not he thinks his work with the Department can have lasting effects.
Bret: Here is Keith on X: says executive actions can be undone with the next President. What is the team doing to ensure the government waste and overregulation is permanently reduced? I assume you are working with Congress. That's part of it, but…
Yeah. We certainly would like a lot of what we're doing to be permanently enshrined in law. But a lot of the changes we are making are very basic things that I think are likely to remain in place, such as the improvements to the Treasury financial system, to have better—a better understanding of how and why payments are made. So, the fact that payments now must have a payment code that correspondence to Congressional appropriation and must have an explanation for someone to call to ask about the payment. I think those changes will remain. All these things we are doing like the one I just mentioned will enable the government to actually pass an audit. Is at such a basic level that you have to stand back and recalibrate just how bad things can be. You think it can't possibly be that bad and it is. It will basically blow your mind. There is no way that any commercial company could possibly survive if it operated like the Federal Government.
Bret: You are still involved in politics. You were big in the election, obviously in Pennsylvania. Now, I guess you are in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race we plug in.
The Democrats are trying to redraw the district in Wisconsin, try to stop the Democrat from Wisconsin German Derg two House seats. That's what the Supreme Court case is about. I want to emphasize to people out there, if you are in Wisconsin, go out and vote. Can you do early voting for the Supreme Court? If you have affluents and family in Wisconsin, please urge them to vote for Brad Schimel. If we don't, government can be shut down.
What's the biggest thing that keeps you up at night?
Well, there are a lot of things that I suppose I worry about, but—and so many things will seem esoteric to people. You know, the birth rate is very low in almost every country, and unless that changes, civilization will disappear. America had the lowest birth rate I believe ever, that was last year. Places like Korea is one third. That means in generation 3% or 4% of current size. Nothing seems to be turning that around. Humanity is dying, and people—it's just not something we evolve to react to. And I mean, I worry generally about the strength America. America is the central that holds up all the places in civilization. If the temple of waste, column—if that felony fails, it's all over. Can't run off to New Zealand or some other place. It's other. So either we strengthen and make sure America is strong and will be strong for a long time or that roof is coming down.
Bret: I think we got into detail today about what you all are doing and demystified some of that for the people who look at you and your business sense about SpaceX or Star Link. Can you tell them specifically there's not a conflict of interest and how you are doing it, what you are doing and the contracts you are getting with the Government?
Everything I do is under extreme scrutiny.
Bret: Every day?
Yeah. So there is not an action I can take that doesn't get like scrutiny six ways to Sunday. Every action that the Doge team does is—is public, put on the website. The most amount of transparency been about any government ever. So, it would be—even if I wanted to, I couldn't get away with it. In fact, it's actually disadvantageous for me to be in the government, not advantageous. If I wasn't in the government, I could lobby, and I could push for things that are advantageous to my companies, and probably get it, probably receive. My companies are suffering because I'm in the government. You just pointed that out a moment ago.
Bret: Right.
Think it would help sales if dealerships are being firebombed? Of course not. And Tesla customers are being intimidated all over the country and all over Europe. Does that help Tesla? I mean, have you Tim Walz, a huge jerk, running on stage with the Tesla stock price has gone in half and he was overjoyed. What an evil thing to do. What a creep, what a jerk. Like who derives joy from that? And it was pointed out to him that actually, no, Minnesota State Pension Fund is a major investor in Tesla, but he didn't care; he was so overjoyed by Tesla stock going down. Does that sound like a good person to you? I don't think so.
Bret: You know, when I was growing up, we didn't have internet. Then we didn't have cell phones, and then we got them. Then we got the Apple phone and all the technology that I have just seen in my lifetime. The fact that we are where we are. If you are talking to an audience, where are we in five years? Where are we in 10 years?
I do think there is a potential for a great future, as long as America remains the land of freedom and opportunity. So, so freedom means that the government does not infringe upon your personal liberties; that you can do what you want, as long as it doesn't harm another person. Land of opportunity means that you succeed on the basis of your merits, on how hard you work and how good you are at your job. Those fundamental principles also ensure a great future. That's what President Trump is committed to doing. That's what the Doge team is committed to doing, and if we succeed, I think we will have a wonderful future.
Bret: Well, Elon, we really appreciate the time, and I think we dispelled some rumors and got into some very specifics.