head of the american federation of government employees. we will talk about what concerns his employees and those who he represents have about the future when it comes to the future of washington, d.c. those segments coming up on washington journal. >> all weekend, but tv will be live with the miami book fair. coverage begins at 10:00 eastern on saturday and 11:00 on sunday. highlights include stacey abrams , author of the book "stacy speaks up." malcolm gladwell with "revenge of the tipping point." and an author roundtable. it eastern, astrophysicist margo lydia explains the search for life outside of earth. at 10:00 eastern onfterwards,

stephanie gorton shares her book "the icon and the idealist" which looks at the lives of two key figures in the early movement of birth control and women's rights. watch book tv every weekend on c-span two and by the full schedule on your pgram guide or watch online anytime at book tv.org. >> he considers himself a full-time lawyer and a full-time historian. his latest book is called how the best did it, leadership lessons from our top presidents. he chose the first four of eight off the face of mount rushmore. george washington, thomas jefferson, abraham lincoln, and theodore roosevelt. in addition, mr. boston shows 24 distinct leadership traits he said were exhibited by these

presidents. the other presidents included in his vast leadership category, fdr, dwight eisenhower, john f. kennedy, and ronald reagan. 71-year-old to how much boston lives in dallas, texas. >> lawyer and historian talmage boston with his book "how to best did it" on this episode of book notes plus. ok notes plus is available on the c-span free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. >> the house will be in order. >> this year, c-span celebrate 45 years of covering congress like no other. since 1979, we've been your primary source of capitol hill providing balance, unfiltered coverage of government. taking you to where the policy is debated and decided all with the support of america's cable companies. c-span.

45 years and counting, powered by cable. >> washington journal continues. host: a discussion looking at the incoming trump administration and the effort to make government more efficient with john hart, ceo of open the books. thank you for giving us your time. before we go into our discussion, for those that are not familiar with open the book, what would you say? guest: we are a transparency organization, ce out about 13 years ago. i was in the senate working for senator tom coburn. there was a bill we passed in 2000 six with barack obama. coburn and obama met in 2004. it put all federal spending online. the hope that coburn and obama had would it would create an ecosystem of organizations that would take that data and make sense of it. open the books is the organization that did that. the co-founder, good friend of the program, passed away

unexpectedly. host: sorry to hear about that. guest: thank you. i recently took over just three weeks ago. i helped create the bill that opened up open the books, but transparency is a building block of a free society. if you remember from science class, carbon is the building block of life. transparency, when you connected to things like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, it brings those things to life. we are really trying to reinvigorate what we think is a free society through transparency. host: how easy is it to get information about what the government spends, what the government does, etc.? guest: it has become a lot easier because be forced the government to put all federal spending online but all organizations try to put all dollars online at all levels of government. it can be easy but it can be very difficult. a lot of localities will spend do hide the ball.

we have a very good day the team that make sense of that information. at the federal level, when you go down the contractor and subcontractor level, it gets more difficult. the james webb space telescope, we zoom in on various spending and bring all of those things to life, help the american people understand what government is doing with their money. host: we will talk about the specifics in a little bit but to this idea of making government efficient, what do you think about the names that have emerged at the head of this, elon musk, vivek ramaswamy c, what they've been tasked to do? guest: i'm ecstatic that they are doing this. coburn was on the simpson bowles commission which came after the financial crisis of 2007. there was a quest to do a long-term bargain for entitlement problems. our debt to gdp ratio was around 90, now about 120 percent. we are spending more on interest on the national debt that we are on defense. there is a real national security threat to the spending

we have. 40 years ago, president reagan found that one out of every three attacks on ours was not being spent efficiently. congress has not a good job bringing that down. coburn brought it down for it to have year period with his colleagues in the senate. that was the first real spending cuts since the end of the korean war. a lot of that work has been undone. we need to tackle that looming fiscal problem we have. host: what do you think about the specific approach as they plan for, taking a look at the minutia, workforce size itself, and what ultimately ends up for the taxpayer, what services will be impacted, other things impacted because of the shrieking of government so to speak? guest: services i think will get better. one of the key findings we were able to pull out of gao, we force them to do an annual report on duplication. one of their key statements was if you downsize and streamline government and the right way, you improve the quality of

services because you make it easier for government to communicate with itself. i am very optimistic that we can fairly dramatic downsizing of government and improve the quality of services. this is not a demolition project, this is a restoration project. i think we are in a 1989 moment in the united states. that was the year the berlin wall came down. this could be the year the bureaucratic wall comes down that separate the people from the government. we have been on a 100-your path of increased spending since woodrow wilson really so this can be the end of an era, move back to restoring our founder's of limited government. host: you send out a demolition project but a lot of people have the idea that mr. musk and vivek ramaswamy may do just that. guest: i disagree with that. congress has really outsourced a lot of the decision-making to what is called the administrative state. republican described as the deep state. the deep state israel, there are

people within the federal agencies that will obstruct and don't want to support the president's agenda even though that is their job to do that. but we also have what i call the default state. we've been doing things a certain way for decades and will be very helpful to have people on the outside. elon musk is an historically significant figure. to have him apply his expertise, i wish we had that when i was working with coburn. would have been helpful to have his outside counsel. of course there will be people that will be upset, and that is why our organization is so important. our job is to bring the spending to light and let the public have a free and open fight about what is in their interest. host: an op-ed this week about what they hope to do. we are assisting the truck transition team to identify a lean team of small government crusaders including some of the sharpest technical and legal lines work with the new

administration, white house office of management and budget. d.o.g.e. pursues three major kinds of reform. regulatory decisions, administrative reductions, and cost savings. we will focus on the driving change of executive actions based on existing legislation rather than passing new laws. those three approaches, you look a lot into that world. what are they facing as they hope to do that? host: if you look at the duplication of the federal government, there are different buckets where you can find significant savings pretty quickly. duplications, one hundred billion dollars. improper payments of medicare and medicaid. then there is a lot of questionable, silly spending. the bridges to nowhere, shrimps on a treadmill, cats in drag shows in ecuador. you can get other significant block of savings in that category. everything we are seeing, they have been very forthright and public about what they want to do, but president trump has not

even taken office yet. d.o.g.e. will be a work in progress. we don't fully know what they will do other than their charges to come up with a report in 2026. also keep in mind we have a standing that commission in this country, the u.s. congress. congress will have a say on what they want to do. my feeling is musk and vivek will put pressure on congress to act, and it is in their interest to act now and not wait on the report. that is what the founders intended, that there would be a competition, separation of powers, to have a discussion about what is the optimal size of government. host: john hart joining us, open the books, serves as the ceo. if you have questions about their work, (202) 748-8000 for democrats. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independent, (202) 748-8002. federal workers, if you want to give your thoughts, (202) 748-8003.

you can always text us at that same number, (202) 748-8003. you talked a little bit about your work with senator coburn on this. from what your experience was, what challenges might these two face? i know it's a different situation but you probably clearly have lessons learned. guest: every dollar in the federal government is protected by a special interest or constituency. every dollar savings will be a fight for them. serving in the arena is like swimming in the ocean. you can study swimming in the ocean, read about it, but until you are there and doing it, you don't understand the currents. there are two currents here, the surface level and the undertow. there are two trends on the surface and below that will really help you lawn and vivek. we have had a political realignment in this country. the gop is now the working class party. one of the hurdles we faced is the left would argue that

anything we would do to reduce spending would be harmful to low income americans. now the base for the working class has flipped to the gop, so people advocating for those savings are now on that side. that will be a helpful dynamic. secondly, we have seen over the past in the digital age, we are living through the biggest disruption and change in information technology since the printing press. power is moving away from centralized institutions, whether it is the media, political parties, and this administrative state, this fourth branch of government, power is flowing away from that. those are two big trends that bode well for the chances of d.o.g.e. to make significant savings. host: let's hear from armors on our independent line in michigan for john hart of open the books. go ahead. caller: good morning, pedro. good morning, america. sir, is there anything in the

writings of the laws of this country that allow one man to come to office and remake the way america works by establishing sanctuary cities for people who are coming here and just move all over the place ? i cannot believe what i saw when i first saw that list of sanctuary cities. it was like the whole country was a sanctuary. is that legal? is that what they call constitutional? could you please tell us? i would appreciate it. guest: the thought of sanctuary cities, one of the key priorities of the administration is getting our immigration system under control. they are going to prioritize removing people who, illegal immigrants who have broken the law. there is a big question of how much deportation can they do it

effectively in a short period of time. that will be the priority and that is how they will go after these immigrants, sanctuary cities. host: republican line. michael in florida, clearwater beach. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. glycol is about the unionization of government employees which i guess makes it harder to get some of these people out of these jobs. it also flies in the face of the taxpayer who is paying for these employees. washington, d.c. boats about 90% democrat. it happens in a lot of big cities. so the unions and the government become in bed together. the taxpayer is paying the bills. we vote. they are more or less leaning in a fashion that helps the democrats and it is kind of a

payoff, pay for play scheme. i want to see the unions eliminated. what is your perspective on this problem, dealing with the budget? guest: there is going to be a significant debate on something called schedule f, a new classification of federal employees that the trump administration wants to put in. any bureaucrat that has a policymaking role should be subject to firing from the administration. if they go through with that, they could eliminate a significant part of the workforce. we have done deep dives on all the agencies. if you think about epa, for example, there are 14,000 staff at the epa. we found since 2018, we spend $100 million on two and a 23 public affairs officers. why is that? in coburn's office, we had two pr staffers, me and one other assistant. i think the caller is getting

at, there are these protections that keep these people in place that are probably inappropriate. the administration will absolutely go after that. host: you use the words bureaucrats, does everybody fall under that category working for the federal government? guest: what has happened with the administered estate, congress has not wanted to take a ability for decision-making authority. when they outsource that, it is a heads i win, tails you lose game. if the bureaucrats make a decision they like on members of congress take credit for it. if they don't like it, they blame the bureaucrats. what trump is trying to do, this is not an executive power grab. the biggest power in washington is not executive overreach, it is legislative under reach. by downsizing the administrative state, the president is actually moving power out of the executive branch and putting the onus back on congress to own the responsibility.

one of the cases that vivek and elon have highlighted is epa versus west virginia. back when that was decided, some members of congress blasted the supreme court on the democratic side, said this with a death sentence for the planet because it took power away from the epa to regulate power plants. never before has one branch in government been more mad at another forgiving their power back. the founders what this general -- jealousy and rivalry between the branches. that is what i think this d.o.g.e. project will restore. host: it is a scenario but do you see an instance where there will be more of a workforce reduction or elimination of whole departments, and do you think that's a good idea? guest: i think it will be both. the sequencing they have laid out, they will start with executive orders. the purpose of this op-ed they wrote it is to lay the groundwork for those executive orders. to say they have legal action. they can take fairly dramatic

steps to do that. that would be upheld. congress will look at that and think, if we are going to pass appropriations bills, maybe we shouldn't provide the same level of funding if we are not going to have the same size workforce. there will be a back-and-forth debate. hopefully in 18 months, they will come out with a reorganization plan of some kind. that will have to go through congress to restructure federal agencies. host: i will ask you about what congress thinks about that once they get it. but here is eva from mississippi, calling on our line for democrats. also a federal worker. go ahead. caller: i want to know why they are downsizing federal jobs? they have the military. donald trump, they are talking about insurance and everything. we have insurance now. we have a union. they broke that. it is nothing but privatizing

jobs and giving it to somebody else and taking all the rights away from federal workers. we pay him to go out and play golf every day. he brought his whole family in. he pays his family but we want to downsize? how can you downsize the government when you get more people in the united states? you cannot downsize anything. host: if i may ask, what do you do for the federal government? caller: i work for the veterans affairs. host: thank you for the call. guest: she mentioned veterans affairs but the biggest agency is department of defense. dod has not been able to pass an audit for seven years. there are needs to downsize everywhere. they will do this in a very thoughtful and compassionate way. their goal is not to drive people out of their jobs, their goal is to transition people into different kinds of employment.

history is full of technology changing how economies work. we are in the ai era now. back in the industrial revolution, gay people more muscle power. the ai revolution will give us more mental power. that means we will have to downsize and redirect and organize a lot of the jobs that used to be done by people will be done both by people and ai. that is not going to destroy the total number of jobs, it will create a whole new sector of jobs that i think will give that caller more opportunity, people like her, more oornities than we have today. host: a story on the pentagon, the seventh in a row, the pentagon has said but has made progress. guest: we have spent years looking at the pentagon. one of the things that is interesting about defense spending, we called the dod the department of everything. the pentagon doesn't just do

defense, it does a lot of things, education, they have invested within dei and the pentagon that has nothing to do with war fighting capabilities. even apart from the pentagon, we found more federal agencies with law enforcement and weapons authority there there are u.s. marines. we have given federal agencies the authority to carry firearms and we have spent $35 million at the r ask for example -- irs for example on military style equipment. there are a lot of waste in the pentagon, other agencies. host: john hart joining us with the organization open the books, he serves as ceo. peter in new york. democrats line. good morning. caller: mr. hart, thank you for the work that you do. there was a very good article in the wall street journal dated september 12, 20 24, entitled "welfare, it is what is eating the budget."

means tested programs, not medicare and social security, are behind today's massive debt. there are well over 100 welfare programs in the federal government and local government that cost $1.6 trillion in 2023. they keep talking about social security and medicare, but in 2023, social security from a fund paid out 88.9% of the benefits. these are benefits that we were taxed, and that money was put aside, it is not just coming out of -- i understand it is coming out of the general fund, but these were funds that were already appropriated for this. 49 point 7% of medicare was already funded by the american people. host: if i may, what is the question for our guest? caller: the question is, i keep

hearing from commentators -- one other thing before you cut me off. that it is social security and medicare that are really the big problem. it is not. it is other funding. i never hear anybody talking about a balanced budget amendment that needs to be passed, and only extra spending to be done when it is absolutely necessary. we need to have a balanced budget. host: thank you. i want to follow up because the american prospect talking about this d.o.g.e. effort, in their recent piece on line. the only possible way to achieve musk cost goals wod be to take a wrecking ball to programs includin medicare, medicaid, sociurity, sayderal spending which is determined annually1.6 trillion which the caller mentioned, 26% of spending, and the said even if that number were zero, fully abolishing the epa, usda, nasa, and others, musk would be short

of his goals. if they take a look at everything but entitlements, will they do the job? guest: it will be difficult to get to 2 trillion dollars without rethinking -- how do we protect the safety net? the challenge for social security and medicare, we are promising people to dollars in benefits for a dollar of taxes. i am not in favor of raising taxes, so is there a way to restructure these programs to protect them for lower and middle income americans? that is the debate the simpson bowles commission had. there was a senator who made the statement, the only way to save medicare as we know it is to change medicare as we know it. that was not a republican, it was joe lieberman, al khor's running mate. there is an understanding that if you want to protect these programs for future generations, particularly low income americans, they have to think about should we have means testing, where some of the benefit is redirected, and you

protect the people that need the program the most. the debate on entitlements comes down to, is it going to be a universal entitlement or a welfare program? i think the future will be a hybrid of both of those. the argument in favor of entitlements is that a program for poor people is a poor program. i don't think that's true. you can shift and have means testing. there are higher income americans who understand that there is an interest in society do not have people destitute. i think the d.o.g.e. commission will bring those things to the surface whether they want to or not, and the president has said that he will not "go after social security and medicare" but if we don't look at how we make them sustainable, we will have massive benefit cuts in the future. host: always known as the third rail. do you think the mentality changes when it comes to the sanctity of these things, willing to take on these issues? guest: there is a potential for

a change. back to the point i made earlier, these two trends and dynamics, the gop is now the party of the working class. when you have the trust and support of the base, working-class americans, you can speak to them in a way with credibility that you couldn't if the shoe was on the other foot, which was the case during the simpson bowles era and during the grace commission. i think there is a new political dynamic and remains to be seen whether they will take advantage of that and come up with creative ways that attacking these problems. the caller is right. when you pay into a system, you have the right to expect that money back. but we need to tell future generations the truth, we live in a world of finite resources. we are putting our national security at risk and the security of lower and middle income americans by not having a way to fund these programs without raising taxes massively. host: let's hear from melvin,

florida. democrats line. good morning. caller: good morning. i was sitting here and listening. the first thing that he brought up was ronald reagan, what he did with his budget. i guess he must have forgotten that ronald reagan tripled the debt and deficit when he got into office and left the country in recession. then we come along, trying to work with trump, and his last administration, they spent twice as much as any other president in one term, 8 trillion dollars. i really don't understand what he is talking about with respect to how he is going to follow these particular individuals and trying to monitor the budget and see what they are spending or cut down on the money the federal government is spending. a lot of people will find out, when you start cutting federal people, a lot of things will get different and harder for them to get the services they really need.

host: that is melvin in florida. guest: both parties are guilty of overspending. the tax and spend party and then there is a tax cut and spend party. democrats and republicans are both guilty of driving up the deficit, for sure. in reagan's defense, he did drive inflation way down during his term. but it is true that democrats and republicans have together increased spending. we passed the bipartisan transparency law with barack obama. when i look at this is a 100-year trend, this is an opportunity to reverse something that is bankrupting the country. it is going to produce incredible amounts of economic growth. we tend to focus on these buckets as fixed items but the federal pie is not fixed. the federal pie can grow based on progrowth economic policy.

if you shift more funds to the private sector -- coburn believed every dollar saved in washington was a dream realized somewhere in america. politicians want to grow the federal agencies that we are trying to grow your agency, your ability to pursue happiness on your own terms with your own resources. if that is the mentality that prevails, we will have economic growth that will far exceed any cost of cuts to services. host: it is a cause and effect and his perception. you cut things, people will be affected on the service end. how hard is it to change that perception? guest: people chain perception based on lived reality. if democrats are so upset after the election, they said the economy was doing well, there is inflation but it is global, but people didn't feel like they were doing well. the size of government has about quadrupled in terms of per capita spending and by quite a

few measures purchasing power has flatlined. people feel they are not able to afford the basic things of life. groceries, gas. when they see federal agencies quadrupling insides size, they scratch their heads. why do we have 14,000 employees at epa? it does not compute with them. host: nelson end in florida as well -- nelson is in florida as well. you are on with guest john hart. go ahead. caller: mr. hart, as you know, the reason it was launched against donald trump's because he shook -- is because he shook the apple tree of the status quo and some of the apples fell. they panicked and have been trying to destroy him ever since. i believe that is going to continue. the fact they are attacking

numerous of his picks for the cabinet is indicative of that. with that in mind, do you believe the trump administration will actually be successful in making some of these changes and eliminating such departments like the department of education , which has done a wonderful job of destroying our educational system along with the teachers union, and i would be curious to hear what you think as to the possibility the national debt will actually begin to be controlled and the deficits we are generating for future generations will begin to subsist and perhaps even not

just slow down but even be reversed? host: thank you. guest: i am optimistic. this is a unique time in history. not since grover cleveland have a president won, lost, and come back in office. significant accomplishments happen in the first year, even if you have eight years in office. this is trump's first term in a way. if he makes this his top priority, this can be his defining legacy. it can be something historians will remember for decades. if you change focus, it will be difficult to do a lot. congress will have a lot to say about this as well he needs to build on the momentum, in my opinion and move as quickly as possible. congress, it is in their interest as well to move quickly

and not wait until 2026. take action now in this year that is going to support the findings they can officially report on in 2026. host: republican house, republican senate. what do you think is the willingness to make the changes? guest: i think they will end up doing budget reconciliation. it enables congress, when you are dealing with the size and scope of overall spending, and allows them to pass things on a 51-vote threshold in the senate. the senate includes 100 ceo's. they are outside ceo experts which is wonderful, but every senator will have their own perspective. typically, it takes 60 votes to get anything done in the senate. but you can do a lot with 51.

the house has a narrow margin. this is a reason for moving quickly and to focus on things that are progrowth. the mandate is to increase affordability and lower inflation. a lot of that could do it quickly. it will lower the price of everything. typically, the party in charge does not do well in midterm elections. there has only been one election in the last 40 years, bush in 2002, where the party in control gained seats in the midterm. typically, they lose seats. typically, there is overreach and the public punishes the party in charge. they should assume they only have two years to do this. host: there was an announcement this week marjorie taylor greene is going to head a subcommittee working on doge specifically. what do you think about that? guest: i hope every member of congress puts out there to truly dollars plan -- two dollars

trillion plan. every member is a part of the commission. people tend to look at washington and think there is this carefully orchestrated plan behind the scenes. the truth is washington is not "house of cards." it tends to be "house of chaos." people look around and ask, what should we do about this? there is not a master plan. if marjorie taylor greene has a great plan, go for it. we should let all of those great plans compete and the american decide what is the best -- and the american people will decide what is best. host: let's hear from tom in pennsylvania, democrats line, for our guest. caller: really love your show and guest. with pennsylvania, of all the federal tax dollars generated by the citizens, how much of those actually come back to the state?

my one concern is if they are going to try to push all of the agencies out at the state level, will a smaller state with a smaller tax base get shortchanged and a larger state get more of the money back? guest: there is an idea to shift some of the agencies back to regions. i think that is probably a good thing to do. it will put people more in touch with their government to do it that way. it remains to be seen whether they will be effective in doing that. host: one of the criticisms or highlights both the lawn and mr. emmer swami -- both elon in vivek ramaswamy make is this once a month. guest: we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars.

if you are going to allow work from home, you need to close down federal agencies. joni ernst has done a lot of great work on that. we will be following that closely as well. host: i am pulling up your website. this is just one of the highlights. how often do these types of reports come out and what do people get? guest: we do these reports sometimes once a week. we have a report coming out on this information where the federal government is spending government combating misinformation, $275 million, which raises the question of why the government is playing referee in the public square. fauci had $15 million in special security protection. why are we spending $15 million on falchuk?

sometimes we will do a deep dive on an agency every month or two. we do small reports consistently, sometimes once a week. host: linda is in utah, independent line. caller: thank you for taking my call. good morning. i want to know why major contractors were receiving government contracts and how much the u.s. government is paying for the medical research handed over to the pharmaceuticals and they get to charge whatever amount they want when we paid for the research. i wanted to see how much was spent on bombs and airplanes. i could not find it. it is not broken down by contractors. guest: it can be difficult. that is a great question. we will look into that.

there is a bit of a scandal on royalty payments or there is a big kickback n.i.h. and other agencies are getting through big pharma. you can find that on our website. host: rich is in ohio on the republican line. caller: good competition going on with the big debt. it seems there are common since things we can do really quick. one is on energy. if we preempt our energy, we do not have iran and russia getting money and send terrorists into all of these other countries. these bad countries get a lot of money. it gets to be a real problem. another one that could be done quick is close the door on immigration. we will not have a problem.

we will save money. we will not have people coming in for north korea -- from north korea, china, russia. once upon a time to come into our country, you had to be for our country and not figuring out ways to blow up our buildings. i will listen to your answers. i will talk about energy -- guest: i will talk about energy. the best way to make something expensive is for the government to make it affordable and the best way to make something unsafe is for the government to make it safe. with energy, what the trump administration wants to do, and chris right is a wonderful pick. if we have more energy dominance, that will help create good environments outcomes for the public. when you think of the size of the administration, a good example is the nuclear

administration paid one of the mistake we made is not building nuclear plants 50 years ago. had we done that, we would have lower energy prices we would be exporting fossil fuel. one of the reasons russia invaded ukraine is europe decided not to produce their own energy but to buy it from russia. that was one of the factors that led putin to invade ukraine. the caller is right. there is a global dynamic at play. host: would you cut out climate research and things associated to that? guest: here is what i would cut, the regulatory footprint. 2000-2020, there were 460 deaths associated with cole plants that would not have otherwise happened. that is 1000 more people that

died than from chernobyl. had we both nuclear plants 50 years ago, how many lives would have been saved? when agencies say that one technology is not safe, it increases the cost and human suffering in ways that are hard to calculate. i think we need to make all of the above energy more abundant and affordable. host: one more call, this will be from whitney in washington state, democrats line. caller: thank you for taking my call. my question is about, if we are removing a lot of federal employees from many different agencies, a lot that do data collection, data management, data analysis, used by congressional members to help them form and pass laws, does that all get outsourced into the

private sector? it seems like then there is -- is that just going to lobbyists and corporations that have the money to pay for those studies? it seems like it becomes a very ambiguous and could be greedy style of government where there is no public input and no public openness about how these things are designed and how data is managed. guest: we built the largest database of governnt spending in human history. we want to make that database more robust. we absolutely want to have access to clear data and we will fight for that. she raises an important point. when you think about cutting government, across-the-board cuts are the worst way to do it.

if you have ever garden, you do not mow the flower bed, you pull the weeds. you have to get down on your hands and knees and look at the ground and figure out this is a weed, this is good growth, and make smart, informed decisions. i think elon and vivek will do that. it does not mean they will not be dramatic with what they do. there is this idea that you cannot use a machete, you have to use a scalpel. a scalpel can have a long blade. i think that is how they will approach this. you do not want to eliminate key functions. one of those is data. the american public has the right to know how the government is spending their money. host: openthebooks.com is the website for our guest, john hart. we hope you come back. we will get another perspective

from everett kelley talking about the future of the federal workforce under the incoming trump administration. we will have that conversation when "washington journal" continues. ♪ >> attention, middle and high school students across america. it is time to make your voice heard. the studentcam documentary contest is here. this is your chance to create a documentary that can inspire change, raise awareness, and make an impact. your documentary should answer this year's question. what issue is most important to you or your community? whether you are passionate about politics, the environment, or community stories, studentcam is

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these presidents. the other presidents included are f.d.r., dwight eisenhower, john f. kennedy, and ronald reagan. 71-year-old talmage boston lives in dallas, texas. >> talmage boston with his book "how the best did it" on this episode of booknotes+ with host brian lamb. it is available on the free app or wherever you get your podcasts. >> c-span now is a free mobile app featuring your unfiltered view of what is happening in washington live and on-demand. keep up with the biggest events with livestreams of floor proceedings and hearings from the u.s. congress, white house events, the courts, campaigns, and more from the world of politics, all at your fingertips. you can stay current with the latest episodes of "washington journal" and find scheduling

information for c-span tv networks and radio, plus a variety of compelling podcasts. c-span now is available at the apple store and google play. scan the code and download for free today. c-span now, your front row seat to washington anytime, anywhere. >> "washington journal" continues. host: this is everett kelley, national president of the american federation of government employees come here to talk about the incoming trump administration in the future of the federal workforce. good morning. houthi represent? -- who do you represent? guest: i represent about 800,000 government employees. scientists, doctors, nurses,

d.o.b. workers, department of education, federal prisons, border patrol, you name it, every occupation you can think of, we represent those employees. host: a union, so to speak. when they hear of the efforts of the incoming administration it comes to impacts on the workforce, what goes through your mind? there is a lot of guest: -- guest: there is a lot of uncertainty. we know from the last trump administration that we had tough times. we know that people were fired for no apparent reason. we know union representatives was not able to represent the employees represented. kicked out of our offices. a lot of things came directly at us. host: this time around, whole new organization looking

directly at the idea of cutting the size of government, led by elon musk and vivek ramaswamy. when you heard about this, what went through your mind? guest: it is a little patronizing to even think of the possibility of cutting 75% of the federal workforce. i see it as a direct attack against veterans. i am a veteran myself. about 642,000 of that workforce are veterans. when you say you are going to cut 75%, that is a direct attack on veterans and i am appalled by that. host: when you say every federal employee is a necessary -- wouldn't you say every federal employee is a necessary employee? guest: absolutely. think of the people at the v.a. we provide a service to veterans returning from war. that is a necessary job.

when you think about social security, they take care of the most prized possession of the nation, our elderly, making sure they get their social security checks on time. think about fema. they are not running away from disaster. they are running to disaster to provide a service to the american people. when you think about the bureau of prisons, these guys are making sure the communities are safe every single day. we sleep easy at night because criminals are behind bars. we make sure we are servicing the american people. host: if cuts are made to employee size are departments, what is the potential impact on those services you talk about? guest: it would be a drastic impact. we are the ones making sure social security checks get out

on time. you start cutting 75% of that, it will not happen. we make sure veterans are taken care of. you start cutting 75% of that, it is not going to happen. the truth of the matter is not that they are trying to make the government more efficient. what they are trying to do is contract out these jobs. when they do this, it is a matter of not the patriotism of the people i represent but it is about the bottom line. it is about making a dollar. that is what it is all about. i am a retired department of defense employee. i remember the saga when i was with the department of defense when contractors was bidding on our jobs, bidding on portions of our jobs.

the sad thing i remember is contractors were charging the government $600 for a hammer. this is the type of thing you get into when you start contracting out things like that. it is not cost savings at all. i would enjoy the opportunity to sit down with the administration to talk about how we make the government more efficient. we are not saying it should not be. we are saying we should sit down and have a conversation. if you really want to talk about making government more efficient, let's look at medicare. i think there is an opportunity where we can save about $60 billion there. let's have this conversation. there is about a $1 trillion saving in taxes just this year. let's have those conversations and talk about how we can be more efficient. host: everett kelley is here.

start calling in. if you are a federal employee and you want to give your perspective on this, 202-748-8003. you can use that same number two text us. earlier this week, vivek ramaswamy was talking about this effort. i want to get your response. [video clip] >> here is the dirty little secret in the federal bureaucracy today. most people do not even show up to work. if you require most of those federal bureaucrats to come to work five days a week, a lot of them will not want to do that. these are examples. it is a great point you just brought up. sweeping changes we are able to make quickly. >> you could move agriculture somewhere else. is that what you are thinking? >> absolutely. even bigger picture, many agencies should be downsized wherever they are and for

whatever does remain, move them out so they are more accountable to the people. if you have many voluntary reductions of the size of the workforce along the way, that is a good side effect of the policies. our goal is not to be cruel to the individual employees. most of them are individually good people and we want to be compassionate and generous and how we handle the transition. but the real issue is there are too many. we should not have 4 million civil servants who are not elected and cannot be removed from their positions. host: that was him earlier this week. what is your response? guest: he should educate himself on federal employees because to call federal employees bureaucrats, deep state, in is an indictment against federal employees. as i said before, the federal employees you are calling bureaucrats are the nurses that

take care of the veterans that is wounded. they are the social security workers. they are the tsa workers they make sure that our skies are safe. they are the meat inspectors that make sure the food we eat is safe. to say that you are going to cut them without analyzing and see what the federal government needs i think is misguided. i welcome the opportunity to sit down to talk about how we make the government more efficient. and to think that you can take the federal employees and d.c. workers and send them out into the states to work? only 15% of the federal employees work inside of d.c. they are already dispersed throughout the united states. they need to educate themselves on what federal employees really do and where they are located.

host: we have calls lined up for you. this is eric in west virginia, republican line, for everett kelley, good morning. caller: good morning. i worked around that city for 27 years. i lived in college park. i know about the liberal working conditions of the federal government. i do know is a federal worker woke up and looked out and see that it is snowing, they went back to bed. no, my question is, all of these federal employees work from home now. if they wake up and it is snowing, can they turn their computer off and go back to bed and still get paid for it? guest: you asking me? that is so far away from the truth. only about 20% of the federal

workforce has ever even worked remotely. the unguided truth being pushed out to the american public is so untrue. only about 20% maybe have even worked remotely. so many of our employees, most of them, the job will not even allow them to work remotely. so to think that, that is just not true. host: what is the work from home policy generally in the federal government? guest: it is a negotiation between the union and the agencies. it varies between agencies. whatever that negotiated agreement is, we adhere to that. host: is it an average of showing up once or twice a week? i have heard once a month. what is the truth? guest: that is a long way from the truth. [laughter] it varies. a lot of time, people are working remotely two days out of

the pay period which is two weeks. host: ok. guest: the fact of the matter is, of the hours federal employees have to work on site, over 80% of that time is on site. of the 2800 hours that employee has to work, to present at that time is right on site -- 80% of that time is right on site. to have that go out is an indictment against federal employees and should not happen. people making those comments about federal employees should not be leaders. federal employees are being threatened, called names. the idea based on what i am hearing is to threaten federal employees so they will quit and go home. that is not a leadership person

to meet. host: let's go to maryland, andrew, independent line, good morning. caller: as an independent, i feel like i can see criticism on both your guests. your first guest thought he brought up such a great point that vouching had a $15 million security cost -- fauci had a $15 million security cost. but he ignored all the fraud going on. recently, there was a $2 billion medicare fraud from the private industry groups, insurance carriers defrauding the government. your current guest, i think, is supposed to defend federal workers, but i'm sure he will never say anything terrible about buying's 2% -- biden'si gr both your guests. your guests can, now and i'm

curious what he would say. host: andrew, thank you. guest: first of all, i criticized heavily the 2% pay increase. i think that there should be pay parity. i think federal employees should be getting the same as military. that's my opinion. i have made that clear across the board. you can check my record. i am definitely for paying federal employees adequately. what i know is federal employees are about 24% behind of the pay gap right now and i am fighting desperately to make sure we close that gap. host: democratic line, herbert, upper marlboro, go ahead. caller: hello. it's good to call in. pedro, i have a lot of respect for you. i wanted to say a couple of things about what's going on. the caller earlier was talking about snowy vans and things like that.

if it's snowing and you have a car accident, you take more time getting your car repair than missing one day. another point about that, when someone is -- when it snows and we are working remotely, you are required to work. the days when the city might be shut down, you are required to work from home and it might be the entire work pete -- the entire week. working in an office, you might not be able to get in the end work. you are required to do more work. another thing i wanted to mention is that with the epa, for example, there have been hiring freezes with the epa over years. not one continual hiring freeze, but several hiring freezes and things over years. the workload that individuals in

the epa have in many offices is simply overwhelming. we are understaffed. so much work that the individuals are not able to do it. the fact that they need to come in and be more efficient is funny. host: ok, herbert there in maryland. guest: i totally agree with this brother. the data is on the sides of those who are not able to work remotely. the data says more work is being done. for instance, i know in certain instances there are backlogs. there -- the only reason we were able to experiment with remote work in the first place was because a pandemic, ok? data shows we were able to produce a whole lot more work during those times then when we were at the office many times.

people tend to work even beyond what's needed sometimes to get the work done. i agree with this brother. host: the president-elect has said in the past they would re-issue an order released in the waning days of his first administration that merit based hiring for federal jobs on policy create a new class of federal employee that could be hired and fired like political appointees. can you elaborate on what that would do if it is enacted again? guest: you are talking about maybe 500 thousand employees that could be in fact -- affected. what this administration wants is to schedule at will employees that would be loyal not to the constitution of the united states, but be loyal to whomever the president is. that would do away with merit based, it would do away with expertise. you can probably see some of this now.

you have a person running these organizations and are in charge of certain agencies based solely on friendship, ok? not necessarily one with expertise to operate it. so, you are going to have more of cronyism, if you ask me. that is why we are very concerned about that. to replace federal employees, and if i could say, schedule f is for flunkies, fans, things like that. that's exactly what we are going to have. the government should never be based on, you know, whether or not i'm loyal to you as an individual. it should be based on whether or not i have the expertise to do the job i'm hired to do. that's what i feel about schedule f. host: let's hear from clayton in

new jersey. you're talking to everett kelley . hello. caller: i wanted to say good luck with your job, buddy. the thing with elon musk and the other businessman that's going to cut, when they had a business that had 5000 employees, they didn't have 30,000, they had 5000. my mother told me a long time ago to save your money. the reason is, in virginia, foreclosure time, baby. host: ok. can a private industry mentality work in the federal government when it comes to this idea of cutting? guest: i don't think that that will come together. i really don't. number one, these individuals have never worked in the federal system. they don't even understand it. in my opinion, how the federal government works, they are not reaching out to talk to anybody to figure it out.

so, i don't think it will. host: give me an example. why would it be different to be in the federal system? guest: just to use this, the government sets the standards as to how you should work, you know, with employees. they want to set that standard. they say look, treat your employees with fairness, dignity, and respect. they negotiate with local unions about how to do that and in the private industry, sometimes they just don't do that. there's a cut, they say ok, you go, you go, you go. in the government, there is a system that we go by to determine. it might be seniority, veteran preference, a lot of other things that need to be accounted for. that's why i think that the government system works a lot better. it's not about firing my friends, right? it's about the standard set.

host: have you ever heard someone tell you that if i am a federal employee, i have a job for life? guest: federal employees know better than that. i have heard that stated, not by federal employees. the fact of the matter is, that's so far away from the truth. we are not here to support bad employees. we are here to make sure that rules and regulations are adhered to. host: tell me more. guest: ok, for one, an employee may be late for work. they supervisor says, you're fired, ok? all right. we may investigate and find out that the reason the person was late for work is because they have a medical condition and the doctor had said there might be days where they are not able to get up and come to work. we also find out in many

instances that they called in and someone said you have to be here in 15 minutes, ok? that's not reasonable. host: let's go to christy, on with our guest from georgia, democratic line. hello, kristi. caller: i am a federal employee, i work for the faa. i am not a controller. there is so much i want to say, but you guys don't have time. i'm ex military. i did air force. i went to work for the faa as an electronics technician back in 1990. what i can tell you is what i have seen over my 38 years with the agency. it seems like when i first came in, things were more efficient. that being because it was, everything was inherently governmental. the parts that we received, we

got those from the city, they were repaired out there. went outdoors, went through a vendor to have those repaired. the price of parts went sky high for us to repair our systems, our navigation systems. what i have seen over my time was the inefficiency has been they cut the workers, technicians controllers and other occupations in the agency. they had more layers of management. you ask yourself -- what does that do? i will tell you what it does. no one makes a decision. i mean nobody. i go to my boss and, you know, i need something approved.

he can't do it. he's got to ask so-and-so. they have to ask their management. it's the most inefficient way of doing business that i have ever seen. we have a union. guest: going back to what i was saying earlier, you know, i have nightmares about the fact that private contractors, some private contractors, they bid on jobs for the government, right? they low bid. they low bid the jobs and when it's time to renew one year later, guess what? it's three times, four times the size it was when they bid it on the jobs. that's not efficient, ok?

we know that the private contractors, when you start looking at service contracts, we spend 750 billion dollars on those contracts for contractors. only $200 billion for federal employees, ok? so, to make the statement that, you know, contractor should be doing this work, it's not efficient for the government, you know? when you start bringing the jobs back inside of the government, it changes the focus. host: federal jobs question mark guest: federal contractors spend about 750 billion dollars versus 250 billion dollars for federal employees. host: the congressional budget office in april say 3.2 million workers have jobs up, more than

100 agencies. to your point, fy 22, 270 $1 billion was spent on compensation. how are they compensating compared to the private sector? guest: the pay gap is about 24 percent. private contractors get paid 25% more than federal employees, ok? i will say it earlier, we are trying our best to close that gap. we are constantly encouraging the administration, regardless of which administration it is, we need to close the gap. host: jerry, long beach, republican line. caller: first i want to make a statement. then i have some questions. i worked in human resources for years, straightening out a couple of different companies. one thing i think the government needs to do, it's not just about laying off employees, it's about restructuring to be more

efficient. that's a given. a lot of the stuff that you are saying is red herring stuff, these numbers. i have two questions and i will hold on to hear what you have to say. one, what's your total turnover rate in the federal government? end of that turnover rate, what is percent of retirees versus what percent of people are canceled for performance? guest: i wouldn't know the turnover rate, that's something a special -- hr specialist would no more so than me. i'm sorry i can't answer your question. host: shelley. federal worker, virginia, springfield, on the line for federal workers. hello. caller: hi. good to be on today. like the caller a while back from maryland, i have worked in the federal government for more than 30 years. the idea that we don't work when

it snows is ridiculous. if it snows and you can get on your computer, you work, right? that's just what it is. that myth has long been ended. the other thing, depending on what you do in the government, for instance my job, my job involves sitting at a computer all day long. it actually doesn't matter if i'm sitting at a computer in a particular office building or sitting at a particular computer in my home and i have my government laptop. when they went to full-time remote working because of the pandemic, we all just buckled up, got down, figured it out, right? i just get a little discouraged when i get these same calls, listening to c-span, people disparaging government workers and how we don't do anything.

i mean, i work at all times, all days. i work at night. even when i have had to go home because of a family emergency and i have worked. the people i worked with throughout the last several decades in my organization are some of the best and brightest people i have ever met. i have nothing but praise for these people. people, there's no people sitting there lollygagging, drinking, not getting things done. host: thank you. guest: i agree with this sister. i know that there's a lot of patriotism in the workforce. do people make mistakes sometimes? certainly, they do.

as a pastor for so many years, 31.5 years, i believe that people are subject to make mistakes. in terms of contracts, they can help the employees them i need some help. a major mess up, if you will, certain times in the career. i talked to the individual and found out he had some issues, right? really needed some help. i began to minister to him. i asked the agency to give one more chance and they did. guess what? that individual became the best

supervisor they said they ever had. sometimes people just need an opportunity for someone to listen to them, right, and give them another chance. that is why i am proud of the people i represent. sometimes they need somebody to take a chance and give them an opportunity. host: to what extent have you reached out to the incoming administration to talk about this? guest: we are reaching out and welcome the opportunity to have those conversations. been around for 90 years, we have worked with every president, democrat, republican, doesn't matter, we want to have those conversations, we are reaching out and we welcome the opportunity. host: what was it like working with him on these issues before? guest: we didn't get a lot of response before. i'm hoping that the president has learned, you know, that we all need to work together.

that we need to collaborate. if we are going to really figure out how to move the federal system in a direction that it needs to go. the only way you can figure it out is talk to the people really doing it. the federal workforce. we welcome the opportunity to do that. host: how much have you heard from those who represent since the election's around the future of their jobs? host: there is that uncertainty and lge is the brett -- ready to deal with whatever comes up. host: is there legal recourse as these things come into place? guest: there certainly is. i am proud of the staff and the attorneys that we have. they are already working to make sure that if the event comes to

pass, we are prepared to deal with it, the logistics of it, the legality of it. we are ready to litigate if we have to. host: paul, pennsylvania, independent line. caller: thank you very much. he failed to mention a couple of things, i've been a recipient of it. briefly, he didn't say that there are at least 25, if not more, young people between the age of 18 and 26, something like that, that go into the v.a. after they have served in the carnage of war, in iraq and afghanistan and wherever, they come home and they go to the v.a. for help. they actually, it's 100%, pretty

prudent, they are dismissed or not listened to or given the wrong treatment. they are not being helped. so, they even quit and they go out and take a nine millimeter, 38, whatever they can get, they blow their brains out. for the elderly like me, i'm 86. what happens to us when we go in? they practically laugh at us, they make fun of us, don't listen to us. when we do get diagnosed, most of the time it's not diagnosed. this has happened prevalently since biden got into office. when trump was in office, he was straightening some of this out. this is my opinion now. guest: thank you for your purse -- host: thank you for your perspective. what did you want to ask our

guest? caller: you are cutting me out and that's fine. i want to know from him why he doesn't put those statistics out, thousands of guys who are dying because of this routine. it doesn't happen 100%, it's very prevalent. guest: i'm a veteran myself and i sympathize with veterans and what they go through. what i will say is this, most of what he is describing is due to the fact that some of the service contracts have been contracted out. the ones who evaluate it, that goes to private doctors. that's why you see some of this, right? i think we need to bring those contracts back in house so that you have people that are of like mind. 30% of those workers are veterans themselves. they care. that's the reason why i think to contract out these jobs doesn't

make sense at all, right? it costs more money. the weight lines are longer. the evaluations are not thorough. in the v.a., it's totally different. i agree that probably some of these statistics are true, but i don't think that the caller understands that it was due to the fact that contractors are making these evaluations. host: bobby, west virginia, democratic line, good morning. bobby, west virginia? caller: good morning. can you hear me? host: you are on, go ahead. caller: i'm a social security recipient, retired united mine workers. i depend on my pension and my social security check. my question to mr. kelly is,

prior administrations, the george w. bush administration, they wanted to put social security in the stock market. that would've ended in disaster from my end. my question to you, sounds like this present, well, the administration coming in, the trump administration, is trying to downsize in every direction they can. they are wanting, sounds like, to privatize, mr. kelly, a lot of the government jobs, lay off a lot of people and everything. i heard you say a few moments ago that when you are contracting these jobs out and privatizing them, the money is excessively more then what you guys normally get right now,

even though you are seeking raises, which is understandable, the cost-of-living. we all face that factor. what can you do to assure us guys out here -- i know you are limited in your position and everything -- to not worry so much about having cuts and losing our medicare and our social security checks? host: before you answer, he talked about privatization. do you think that will be a tool the new administration uses to streamline? guest: i think they will do that, but they are doing it blind, ok? i think that what social security needs is proper funding. they've been deliberate over the years. they talked about back in the bush years, they deliberately

underfunded these entities so that they could make the case of privatization. they understaffed these agencies so that they could make the case. i think that what we need to do, not just as a program, but as a country, we need to call the congress and the senate to tell them to adequately fund the social security. it's not right for us to work all of these years and then have the fear of not even having a pension at the end of my career. that's not right. i encourage every u.s. citizen to call congress, call the senate, say that you need to adequately fund this agency. that's the problem. host: when it comes down to possible future changes in the workforce, have you spoken to members of congress about those concerns? host: yes. host: what responses are you getting? guest: it depends on who the

congressperson might be. some are eager to help. some are kind of nonchalant. we cannot give up the fight. we have got to continue to keep this before congress, that this is what we need. it helps when the entire nation sings the same song. host: john is joining us next in georgia, republican line. caller: in the beginning you said it was a matter of out so sink -- outsourcing and saving a dollar. that's correct, we are trying to save a company money. private companies outsource things because it is more profitable for them, more efficient for them. if the company that you outsource something to doesn't do the proper job, you can fire them and get someone else, another company, to do the job. you can't do that with federal employees. why do you think that federal employees should not be subject

to the same things that a person working for a private company is subject to when the company needs to get itself fiscally responsible? when a company needs to change their ways and do things to make them more profitable, one of the first things they do is lay off people. why should federal employees not be subject to the same thing? host: ok. caller: hold on. you also said that in hiring you should look for someone who has the best criteria for that job. i guess that kind of flies in the face of di. thank you. host: thank you, caller. guest: when you have people that just don't understand, ok, we get these kinds of comments. now, i have never said that federal employees shouldn't be subjected to being fired. it's understood that if you have a person that is not willing to work and do their job, they should be fired. but i said there was a process

that we believe should occur and i will stand by that. i will stand by the fact that -- i gave an example of giving people a chance, right? when it comes to being laid off, downsizing, we do that if that's what it calls for in the federal government. but that process is what we are looking for to make sure that everybody is treated with dignity, fairness, and respect. every single person deserves their rights. host: the website for the american federation of government employees, everett kelley serves as national president of that organization. thank you for your time. we will finish the show with open forum. if you want to participate, here are the numbers. democrats, (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002.

we will take those calls in open forum when "washington journal" continues. ♪ >> he considers himself a full-time lawyer and a full-time historian. his latest book is called "how the best did it:leadership lessons from our top presidents." he chose first four of eight off the face of mount rushmore. in addition, mr. boston chose 24 distinct leadership traits he says were exhibited by these presidents. the other four presidents are f.d.r., dwight eisenhower, john f. kennedy and ronald reagan. 71-year-old talmage boston lives in dallas, texas. >> lawyer and historian talmage

boston with his book. on this episode of book notes plus with our host, brian lamb. book notes+ is available on the c-span mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. >> c-span now? a free mobile app featuring -- c-span now is a free mobile app featuring what's happening in washington. keep up with the day's biggest events with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from the u.s. congress. white house events. the courts. campaigns and more from the world of politics. all at your fingertips. you can also stay current with the latest episodes of "washington journal" and find scheduling information for c-span's tv networks and c-span radio. plus a variety of compelling podcasts. c-span now is available at the apple store and google play. scan the q.r. code to download it for free today or visit our website, c-span.org/c-span now. c-span now, your front row seat

to washington. any time, anywhere. >> the house will be in order. >> this year c-span celebrates 45 years of covering congress like no other. since 1979, we've been your primary source for capitol hill. providing balanced, unfiltered coverage of government. taking you to where the policies are debated and decided, all with the support of america's cable companies. c-span, 45 years and counting. powered by cable. announcer: "washington journal" continues. host: this is open forum and the phone lines are available to you. pick the best one that represents you and if you've called in the last 30 day, hold off from doing so today. as far as events to watch for on the c-span networks today, deputy secretary of state and otr foreign policy experts will talk about the biden administration's indo-pacific strategy.

it's hosted by the center for strategic and international studies. you can see this event live at 3:00his afternoon on a variety of platforms. our main channel, c-span, our free video app, at c-span now, you can also follow along on the website at c-span.org. financial times $has a follow-up story taking a look at those arrest warrants issued by the international -- the hague. this is the headline. hague court issues arrest warrant fournette over war crimes in gaza. and writing about this saying that announcing the decision yesterday, the court said that there were, quote, reasonable grounds to believe that netanyahu and gallant -- host: that's the follow-up story. the issuing of these arrest

warrants prompted a response from the israeli prime minister himself, benjamin netanyahu. here's what he had to say about it yesterday. >> it is falsely accusing me, the democratically elected prime minister of the state of israel, and israel's former defense minister, gal ability, of deliberate -- gallant, of deliberately targeting civilians. this when we do everything in our power to avoid civilian casualties. we issue millions of text messages, phone call, leaflets to the citizens of gaza to get them out of harm's way. while the hamas terrorists do everything in their power to keep them in harm's way. including shooting them. using them as human shields. the court in the hague accuses us of a deliberate policy of starvation. this when we've supplied gaza with 700,000 tons of food, to feed the people of gaza. that's 3200 calories for every man, woman and child in gaza. and these supplies are routinely looted by hamas terrorists who

deprive their people of much-needed food. just in the last few weeks, israel facilitated the vaccination of 97% of the people of gaza against polio. this doesn't prevent the court of accusing us of genocide. what in god's name are they talking about in the hague? the truth is simple. no war is more just than the war that israel has been waging in gaza after hamas attacked us, unprovoked, launching the worst massacre against the jewish people since the holocaust. the decision to issue an arrest warrant against me, the democratically elected prime minister of the state of israel, and our former defense minister was made by a rogue prosecutor who is trying to extricate himself from sexual harassment charges and by biased judges who are motivated by anti-semitic sentiments against the one and only jewish state. host: about those arrest warrants.

"the washington post" reports, under the headline, warrants could effect the travel of both men listed saying the i.c.c. does the not have a police force, however it relies on its 124 member states to carry out arrest warrants. host: we'll start off this open forum with duane in west virginia, independent line. good morning. caller: good morning. i have just a simple statement to make. social security used to be,

conduct to your guest, used to be charged at 15.2% or 15.6% ands a taken out strictly as social security. which means your employer paid 7.8% and you paid 7.8%. the question i have to the american people, when they changed it to social security separate from medicare, did the corporations still have to pay the 1.6% or did they get a free tax ride of 1.6% taken away? you should tell that to your listeners. and maybe do some research on it. host: ok. john in north carolina, you're up next. independent line. caller: good morning. how are you doing? i'd like to say one thing. the previous segment i think is the issue that we need to put into focus. the d.e.i. and the woke situation is having an effect on

the cost cutting. people see the minority area where people have grown or rose to success, when they didn't want to come into the government, they went other ways to earn their money. and now those jobs out there are scarce and they see the government jobs as one of the ones that enhance the overall ability for children, for families and the military. they put that into perspective, take the woke situation and the d.e.i. situation and put it together, the issue is they want to cut stuff because of the minorities. thank you. host: in texas, we'll hear from laura, independent line. hi. caller: hi. i'm a former federal employee, i've worked for the private

sector and i've worked for the government. and i've seen this playbook that elon musk and vivek ramaswamy want to put in place. and it is not going to save anything. it is going to cost -- it's cost shifting is what it is. they're going to fire a bunch of people, not to enhance the government, but to destroy it. these guys in my opinion are both malignant sociopaths. they don't care whose life they destroy, they don't care about the government or efficientsy. they justen the -- efficiency. they just want bragging rights that they put a bunch of people on the chopping block without cause and cut them to enhance the policy known as starve the beast. they want to ruin government. and they want to make people matter because the systems that are in place which are admittedly working -- just barely working, but it's not because there are too many people.

there are not enough people. the country grows and government has to grow with it in order to stand between us and these oligarchs who do not care about the people whose lives they are about to destroy. and yes, i'm a little bit angry. i've watched it. i've watched it unfold. it doesn't save anything. it costs more in the long run. host: that's laura in texas. we'll hear from rick in montana. democrats line. caller: yeah, good morning. my question regards privatizing the t.s.a. which is represented by the a.f.g. you know, the t.s.a. was created as a result of private security failure leading to the 9/11 air tacks. so -- attacks. so i want to ask, does the american public trust their security and lives to the lowest government bidder? if highly trained and experienced t.s.a. officers are

eliminated by private security? and number two, are president trump, republican senators and house members, along with the heritage foundation, you know, preaching from their ivory tower, prepared to take responsibility for another 9/11-type incident or incidents for the failure of the lowest government bidder? and also that guest from open the books, those are my comments and thank you. host: the philadelphia inquirer this morning has this headline. senator bob kasey kahne seeding his race -- bob casey conceding his race. ending a senate career after three terms. saying that mr. kasey kahne seeded to mr. mccormick on thursday -- mr. yeas conceded to mr. mccormick on thursday.

stdave mccormick sending out on his page, x,ayg that senator bob casey dedicated his career to bettering o commonwealth. dina -- host: it goes on from there. but you can find more on dave mccormick's x feed when it comes to the pennsylvania senate rait race and the conclusion there -- race and the conclusion there. let's hear from marshall. he's in nashville, tennessee. republican line. caller: hey, pedro, how are you doing? this is my first call since the election, of course. and first, i want to addressing is that has been going on over c-span.

i've heard several people, because of what the news media and the democrats are saying, who have called in and i don't question their angst, it's serious. and they are terrified that donald trump is going to send goon squads after american citizens. i want you to know that's completely false. number two, in getting pam bondy instead of matt gaetz, i think the government has more to be concerned about. because she is sharp, she's intelligent and she knows the law. now, as far as who we should go after, and these are the enemies within, i'm going to name names but please don't cut me off because behind those names are distinct actions that they took. we need to look at anybody in the cabinet who was aware of joe

biden's cognitive state for the last three years. and we need to hold them accountable, along with the news media, for hiding that away from the american people for three years. host: ok. larry in nebraska. republican line. hi. caller: hi. me? host: yep, you're on. caller: ok, thank you. yes, there's a few things i want to talk about. but at the end i want to make a suggestion for your christmas program. on christmas day. if i could. first, i would like to talk about severity in this country is very, very poor. and i think we got to, on c-span especially, kind of temper down a lot of these callers that have hate in their heart because that's going to destroy us.

and the one thing i want to suggest is on christmas, if you can ask your democratic callers not to talk about hate for just one day, on christmas we should not talk about hate. just one day. i mean -- we should not bear false witness on a day like that and these democrats have to stop their false witness against my neighbor. host: ok. that's larry there in nebraska. thanks for the suggestion for the christmas program. speaking of which, right after this program or shortly thereafter, the u.s. capitol will be the scene of the arrival of the capitol christmas tree. yearly tradition here in washington, d.c. no christmas tree there yet, obviously. but that is yet to come and we'll show you that when it happens right after this program or shortly thereafter. we'll take calls on this open forum. north carolina next, democrats

line. cara, hello. caller: hey, good morning. i was a federal employee, also a union steward member and the accountability act was enacted under the trump administration and we believe that the v.a. misused that act. it should have come in and done away with upper level management that was abusing their position of power and just coming in and getting paid and not really doing their job but instead they were firing housekeepers, electricians, lower level people. and it was to make that stand out and we don't want to see that happen again. that's why the union is important. we save so many jobs under that accountability act. and i just saw everett kelley on there and wanted to say, people can say what they want about the union, but we save veterans' jobs. whether the agency was abusing something that wasn't meant to hurt employees that were making under $60,000 a year. that's something we don't want to see happen again.

host: "the new york times" headline to show you this morning that the president-elect telling the republicans to stop a reporter shield bill that was passed unanimously by the house. writing that -- blocking a federal shield bill host: the story adds --

host: more there from "the new york times" if you want to read that. let's hear from frank, independent line. he's in florida. go ahead. caller: hello, pedro. good morning. host: good morning. caller: i'm directing this at mr. kelley, ok? the federal workers. the federal workers are promoted by seniority, not performance. so most of the skilled and hardest federal workers are actually underpaid. that's a big -- i'd like to hear him answer that on tv. number two, they also get complete childcare for nothing. ok? the compensation is much higher than the private sector. why won't he allow, mr. trump or anybody else, come in to see if they can trim the workforce? that workforce is embedded with low production and the only way

we're going to find that out is allowing a couple of independent firms to come in to see what's going on. i wonder how many are at home that do not belong at home. that's our problem. it's infested too long. don't promote unionism when it's costing the taxpayers and the corporations money. the corporations pay half of social security and the employees do. so people got to understand that rather than picking on the corporations. corporations are much more efficient than our government. thank you, pedro. host: nicole's next in california. democrats line. caller: hi. this is nicole. i have a theory and my theory is that i worked in mergers and acquisitions, i studied them in college, and i think elon musk is going to go in there and outsource the hell out of government.

he wants to get rid of 20% of the budget. he and his cronies and trump and all their friends are going to cream from the crop, like, for example, the h.h.s. is $3 trillion. so if they take $1 trillion out of there, they're going to take the top 5% for their pockets, they're going to fire everybody and they're going to gut it, just like elon musk did to x. how he gutted his own business. and then eventually the quality's going to go down. and i want to know if there's a history of this. because this is just a theory i have. but is there a history of outsourcing government departments, etc.? host: good question. you may want to check out our website, the video library there, if you type those search things into the box, it may give you a better sense of things that have been said over the years in washington about that very question of yours. that's the website there if you

want to do that. tom is on our line for republicans. he's in maryland. you're next up. hi. caller: good morning. i pay attention to your show every morning. and i'm still concerned about the blame that trump has gotten for supposedly not performing on the covid thing. and i want to point out two facts. on january 15, 2020, in a press conference, dr. anthony fauci stated, and you can look it up, he stated, this virus pose noes threat to the united states -- poses no threat to the united states. january 15. on february 1, donald trump banned travel from china. he was castigated, called a racist and a zeanphobe and a reactionary. if he had not moved that quickly, one can only imagine

the death toll in this country. so everybody says he did a lousy job on covid. he saved millions of lives in this country and one can only imagine if hillary clinton had been president at the same time, we'd still be waiting for a vaccine. that's all i have to say. thank you. host: that's tom there in maryland. the "wall street journal" reports that russian president vladimir putin warned the west against further escalation after moscow fired an intermediate range ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads at ukraine for the first time on thursday.

host: this topic of discussion came up during the press briefing at the defense department. here's some of what was said yesterday about it. >> i can confirm that russia did launch an experimental intermediate range ballistic missile. this irbm was based on russia's rs-26rubeg intercontinental ballistic model. in terms of notifications to the united states, the united states was prenotified briefly before the launch through nuclear risk reduction channels. for more i'd refer you to state on that. and i think your third question was on our reaction to putin's comments. i mean, we've seen this type of dangerous, reckless rhetoric before from president putin. what we're focused on is

continuing to support ukraine with what it needs. ukraine, as you know, has been successful in continuing to push back against russian aggression. we just rolled out another $275 million package yesterday. you're going to see more packages continue in the weeks and months ahead left of this administration. so that's what we're really focused on. of course we're going to take seriously the rhetoric coming out of russia. but our focus remains on arming ukraine and supporting ukraine and what it needs. the most on the battlefield, and as a reminder, as this reckless rhetoric continues, putin can choose to end this war today. he can choose to withdraw russian forces and end his war of aggression and his war of choice. so we're going to continue to focus on what ukraine needs on the battlefield. host: there's more available at the website if you want to check out more from the defense briefing yesterday. texas is next. star is in houston. independent line. caller: hi.

yes, this -- i would like to talk about medicaid and this goes out to everybody on medicaid and the politicians that are listening and the powers that be that are listening. yes. i want to say, since trump is a republican and republicans are running the presidency, house and senate in this term, i think that trump could definitely use his power without being overturned to help medicaid being accepted. i think there's a lot of good doctors in texas but none of them accept medicaid. so it makes it hard for people like me who are on medicaid and the veterans can choose any doctor they want. i was hoping that i would be able to do the same. host: this is felicia in georgia. democrats line. caller: yes, i would like to ask the republicans who call this line, why is it that every time there's a republican president, there's chaos such as 9/11 and then the covid. anything they inherited from a

democratic president, they've always destroyed the country with whatever they have in place. trump is going to really destroy this country. his cabinet's all white, no blacks. he says he's for the black people. he's not. he's putin's friend. so i would like to ask the republicans, why is it that they drive up the deficit when they get into office? why is it chaos with them every time? but then they call for the democrats to help them clean it up when it is a mess. that's all. thank you. host: in california, in sun city, roy on our independent line. go ahead. caller: good morning. thank you for having me. i want to speak about the federal government employee system that your other guest was on. there's a big misconception in the public that the government is a for-profit entity. it's not. they're just there to meet the

needs of the american people. and i'll give you an example of an agency that i work for. because the national cemetery administration, which is a wing of the veterans administration, we bury veterans, if they had an honorable discharge, whether they were in war or not, the fact that they served, we bury them and their spouses at no cost. what i find in my years of dealing with the federal government, i've seen them outsource things and the hammer, as the lady called earlier that said was costing $5, when it goes to outsourcing and you bring the civilian contractors in, they are doing a for-profit business. ok? and then that price triples. so the american people really

need to be aware of that. i know there are a lot of people out there that work with their hands at factories and things that feel that federal employees have a gravy train. we don't. we usually work for less money. host: ok. roy there in california. this is randy in texas. republican line. caller: yes. i want to talk about the government efficiency program. i really personally think that it's going to be a big hit and i hope that their podcast is put on national tv on a daily basis so that people can understand and see what they're finding. and i really -- i come by this decision because we live in a time that has a nato airbase. after 9/11 they had to redo the front gates and modify them and they made it look great. well, from this base there's an

f-16 fighter jet that's just a hull, it's not a jet, the mounted up on a pedestal. there's a contract to have this jet, all the paint and body shops, a understand my brother sent in -- and my brother sent in an insulting bid. he didn't want to do this job. and he actually won it. so they went to him and his four employees and painted that jet and came back and everything got inspected, it was perfect. came back and he gave his four employees $8,000 christmas bonus each because of that contract. and they need to cut stuff like that out. we don't need that kind of spending. host: one more call. this will be leon in arlington, virginia. independent line. caller: good morning. i'm thankful for this opportunity to speak. i am a gs-15 analyst at the department of interior. i've been there 32 years. and a few generalities. political appointees that come

in, i found them good on the republican side and i find them good on the democrat side. because they're motivated, they're willing to work hard, and they have policy positions that they really pursue. unfortunately i've been management and i've been below management. i've never in 32 years heard of anyone being fired. in my department. i make $175,000 a year. i probably couldn't make half that on the outside. so government has been really good to me. our secretaries, i probably am surrounded by 12 that i work with. i would -- so,they are mostly hl educated. many of them make $75,000 a year. a pretty much have high school educations and they are extremely difficult to work with. these are the kind of people who

would never make it in the to hartman of ethics. they don't speak well and can't -- the department of ethics. they don't speak well and can't spell. host: we have to keep it there because we have run out of time. thank you to all who have participated today. another edition of "washington journal" comes your way at 7:00 tomorrow morning. we will see you then. ♪ >> a live picture here as the u.s. capitol christmas tree is arriving at the u.s. this morning. it's an 80