>> talmage boston considers himself a full-time lawyer and a full-time historian. his latest book is leadership lessons from our top presidents. the face of mount rushmore -- thomas jefferson, lincoln, roosevelt, washington. he chose leadership traits he said were accepted by these presidents. he included in his fast leadership category fdr, dwight eisenhower, john f. kennedy. 71-year-old talmage boston lives in dallas, texas. >> lawyer and historian, to boston with his book "how the best did it." leadership tips from top presidents, with our

host, brian lamb. it is available on the c-span now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. >> this is everett kelly, the national president of the american federation of government employees, here to talk about the incoming trump administration. good morning. 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 --