Darin LaHood Commends Trump And Musk For Contronting Government Inefficiency ‘Head On’

9 hours ago

During Wednesday’s House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Darin LaHood (R-IL) discussed Elon Musk's work at DOGE.

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Transcript

00:00Mr. LaHood. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This conversation today would be much

00:06different if we were 36 trillion dollars in surplus, but we're not. We're 36

00:12trillion dollars in debt, and to think that we can't have a conversation about

00:16looking at our debt and deficit and economic policy different is political

00:21malpractice. It's government malpractice not to have a conversation about Doge,

00:28not to have a conversation about cutting spending, not by having a conversation

00:32about the fiscal health of our country. And it's interesting, I also serve on our

00:40House Intelligence Committee, and last year we had General Petraeus and

00:45General McChrystal, served under Republicans and Democrats, have

00:50unbelievable reputations for serving in our military, and they came and talked to

00:55us about the threats facing America from our adversaries. So they talked

01:00about China, and they talked about Russia, they talked about Iran, but they said the

01:03biggest threat is our debt and our deficit. And as most of us should know,

01:11we're paying more now on our interests than we do the entire Department of

01:15Defense. Think about that for a sec. It's insane, but yet we can't have a

01:22conversation with a new president that ran on fixing the fiscal health of this

01:29country, created the Doge Committee, Department on Government Efficiency.

01:34Again, it's political malpractice that we're not thinking about this. I want to

01:41reference an article from the Wall Street Journal,

01:44dated February 25th of this year, titled America's Future Depends on Doge. I want

01:51to read one section of that. The message from today's civic elites is that the

01:56president's job is to pretend to be in charge while doing nothing meaningful.

02:01Shut up. Don't disturb the administrative state. Let it keep doing its thing

02:06without oversight or disruption, and you'll get your library or best-selling

02:11presidential memoir. Mr. Trump refuses this deal. In his second term, he's

02:16determined to slay the bureaucratic beast. He knows all too well from his first

02:21term and the Biden years. Doge's efforts are epic, breaking more than a century

02:27of acquiescence to spending and government. The Trump team is

02:33courageously confronting the problem head-on. We have an obligation and

02:36responsibility to bring down our debt and get this country back on track

02:40economically, and the Doge Commission and what President Trump and his team are

02:45doing is putting us on that path. I yield back.

Darin LaHood Commends Trump And Musk For Contronting Government Inefficiency ‘Head On’

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