host: at our table, congressman pete sessions, republican of texas, 17th district and the cochair of the delivering outstanding efficiency caucus. what prompted you to start this caucus? guest: the need that became apparent not just me but i think the country came as a result of the performance of the last four years. as the chairman of the subcommittee for government reform and oversight on government operations and federal workers, we saw a very early on the impacts of the president, whether we say covid or not, the president having almost every single government operations and figure out a weight that you can stay at, or you can not only operate from home but see if you can use that as your main estate.

what happened is, we immediately saw the first public casualty of this. the american people needs a government that provides goods and services that they illegally are responsible to do but also to make americans lives better. as people stayed at home, we dug in on the subcommittee of what is the plan? how are you going to make sure you serve the american people. what do we do about these problems, and the more we found out, the more we found out that thousands of people in operations were inefficient, not meeting their mark and became a problem. then we tried to get under that and that is where it developed, this idea with got to deliver a

better product. host: your caucus will support elon musk and vivek ramaswamy. as lawmakers came out after the meeting, we heard that the problem is in the room. it is republicans who are going to be the problem with having doge being responsible. there could be truth behind what they are saying. the bottom line is we are kicking off an idea that is not partisan. we now have four house democrats that have said i want to be a part of this also. government efficiency, whether you are a publican or a democrat needs to work for the american people. government has services that it provides that a lot of people

are inefficiently being provided. so when they want to make these comments, they are right. if we are going to include any members congress that wants to be available and we will include an email address. we are going to take feedback and solicit feedback and specific problems or ideas that people have and we are going to work on them. the difference that they are not giving credible viewpoint and the president of the united states has not just commerce and industry but two titans who have jumped into this with the own personal time to say, we have run larger companies and we may be here but we need to go there. i think it is going to be at

least successful for us to say, we need to be held accountable by the american people and tell them why we are doing what we are doing. host: it was said there is no statutory authority fordoge and it is not a department. a lawyer said it is illegal. and she is quoted of saying that they haven't asked to meet with them but the funds appropriated by congress is unconstitutional and illegal. there is no such department of government efficiency. it is made up so good luck to them. guest: i know her and she is very thoughtful and articulate leader for the democratic party but she is also one that would recognize that she will get an invitation. we will allow her to provide her feedback and i think she would help make it better because if

we assume it is ok to have the irs, the office of professional management to take month after a person were to retire from the government before they started receiving benefits and to wait five months for these offices to do these, only to find out they are operating from home with no real direct supervision over what is awaiting them. we had conversations about government all the time and ask them, do you recognize this backlog? and they said there are just more people. we said how are you managing people and holding them accountable. if there is a problem, we will point plenty of them out. host: we want to invite viewers in this conversation. where is the government waste

fraud and abuse. how would you make government more efficient? we have congressman pete sessions, the cochair of the delivering outstanding government efficiency caucus, a complement to the front of government efficiency. roger in phoenix, democratic caller, you are up first. good morning. caller: good morning, mr.. i know you are a southwestern man, so go pirates. so my question is specific to the federal workforce. i know you are going to be receiving feedback specifically from constituents but are you going to be doing any hearings on doge specifically? i know this from working on the hill and for federal contractors

, would your committee be open to fellowships? i know there are a lot of fellowships at the agencies and fellowships coming into congress , but more fellowships to help alleviate the brain drain. i look forward to hearing your answer. guest: what a thoughtful young man. i think the insight he is providing not only where i went to college and living in waco. but then he referred to a brain drain. it is something we do need to pay attention to. there have been an incredible number of schools, universities, masters programs that have developed themselves here in washington dc and provides many government workers being brought up to date with not only the

newest processes and procedures but the code and computing necessary behind all of this. what we have got to do is look at making sure that every person who is hired is qualified and this has been an issue that republicans have made over the kinds of people that were running these departments and making these decisions. you may recall that nine days after president trump with the attempted assassination in pennsylvania, we had a head of the secret service and she essentially come in my opinion and i think others, did not offer the american people nor congress nor her agency the kind of leadership that is needed to lead. we really caught her flat-footed in front of the committee.

we find this across government and we found that people were selected for a reason as opposed to learning and using experience on behalf of the american people. we will have feedback. in making sure we are taking care the worker that wants to work for the government but it needs to be done at work. host: will there be hearings led by your caucus and other meetings and will elon musk and vivek ramaswamy testify? guest: i have no reason to include we would not include that. it is not broken out in the new congress yet but we will do that and plan the schedule. we are in essentially the first three or four days of this. it will be open and there is a reason why we need the american people to know what we are doing and why. it has to pass their smell test

and that is why we push of what is in the best interest of the american people. host: let's start with telling the american people what is happening by telling them what happened behind closed doors with house republicans. what did you hear from those two, elon musk and vivek ramaswamy? guest: they had an opportunity to meet 30 people they have never met. 200 members of congress that they had never met and it gave them an opportunity to say we are in this battle come in this fight because we put our companies and invested ourselves in doing things and america is in trouble and if we allow us to go from 30 $5 trillion to $40 trillion to $50 trillion, simply because we are having to pay off the debt, then america is in trouble and we will look at us

as being responsible and they looked at us and said, we are looking at either the problem or the answer. it was not necessarily a comfortable time for a member of congress, especially not someone who is brand-new. we empowered herself to say we will get there and we will make sure it is bipartisan or at least an opportunity to be bipartisan. host: let's go to huntsville, republican. caller: it is a pleasure to speak with you today from huntsville, texas. my question is this, we trust our elections in walker county.

we know the people who run the elections but in some of the larger cities in texas, there are problems that we suspect there has been a lot of cheating going on. it happens not only in texas but in certain counties in georgia in maricopa county, in arizona, and other states where election cheating happens. in what way? caller: it could happen with crooked election officials. we had a gentleman in tarrant county who helped develop the code that enabled chavez to cheat in the venezuelan

elections. so the governments could bring in voting machines and people both and phyllis a recall election for chavez. host: i think -- and people -- and there was a recall for chavez. host: i think we understand. guest: we have had lots of reports of abnormalities and inconsistencies that have happened with irregularities. many of these, while they were in our past could us -- persist today. but many states looked at those abnormalities, inconsistencies, irregularities and they came back and updated the laws. for instance, in georgia, texas and other states, governors as a

result of covid made decisions that were contrary to the law but they put them to a commission and a commission made the recommendation. we now have lots of states that have said, a governor nor any official can waive the rules that are laws of the elections. it is a continuing process. i was here with gore versus bush where there were hanging chad we continue to do things that bring the american people to have confidence in what we do. in texas in particular, we have paper ballots. the paper ballots at least provide a context for a paper trail that would be necessary. we are going to take a look at this. we are open to hearing back from people. i hope that your estate also at

it. host: potomac maryland, mary, independent caller. caller: i am calling to say that donald trump did the most to the national debt. today he is strangling the life out of the republican party. host: the first part of what we were saying, we were talking to representative gwen moore and she was talking about the tax cuts adding to the deficit and then republicans spending during the first term of the trump administration. how do you reverse course in the second trump administration? guest: it is important to note that we had an economy that was losing jobs, that phased high

tech station. as you know, the corporate tax rate was 36%, almost 30 7%. american business found themselves at the back end of becoming not just efficient but adding jobs because they were making the payments to the governments. republicans are not for higher taxes. republicans are for more people having jobs. once we immediately cut those taxes,, we don't have as high rates, more money came into the treasury. almost overnight there was 500 billion dollars that came from overseas investment into america, investing in jobs and opportunity. i will take it for what it is.

the dent of the country rose but it was not because of the tax code, it is because we had people turning 65 and 78 moving to social security and moving out of the workforce into retirement, where the government would have to pay that. that is not something necessarily that the president had to deal with. that is them -- had to do with. that was demographics. the question became are we going to replace those people who retired and moved to social security with younger workers. and that answer was overwhelmingly. so america i believe is better off. we not only made investments but added new workers. so many workers that we had jobs . at one point, 6 million more jobs were available then people

were signing up for it. so this was what the republicans did. they created a successful viewpoint that people could move on that we would replace workers behind them and that american companies would not only make a profit. host: we only have a few minutes here for the house gavels in for the morning session. they are doing so early at 9:00 eastern. i will share this with viewers. this is the new york times, top tax cuts won't help the economy grow. this is from the nonpartisan congressional budget office. that is what they found in their latest report. patricia in chandler, arizona, democratic caller. welcome to the conversation. caller: good morning, everyone. i want to see what is going to be done about the patriotic act.

guest: the patriot act originally came about after 9/11 when we recognized a huge number of things that were happening that america had we been balancing processes that we thought were important including the bill of rights. what has happened since then is congress has not only authorized but paid for a huge data center in utah. huge data center collects incredible amounts of data. the question now becomes something that the fiza court is dealing with, the nsa and the fbi and others are tinkering with. i do not see at this time that there is going to be any law change until we see how the new

process works. you and i both know that what happened is under testimony, the fbi director was confronted with five or 6 million, i don't recall exactly, where people were looked at where the records were looked at and he come in my opinion, did not adequately answer t

>> we go to palmer, a republican, georgia. caller: representative sessions, thank you for taking the call.

i appreciate your efforts in trying to reduce excess spending. but i think you're fighting a losing battle overall. i'm an old man and i have heard this song sung many a time over the years. nobody -- it is congress' responsibility to set the standing, but they're irresponsible. there are 535 representatives and nobody is responsible for the deficit. until we change, i think we need a constitutional amendment that would allow the federal reserve to dictate the amount of deficit spending allowable. host: let's take that idea.

congressman? guest: i thank the gentleman, once again, feedback from the earn many people, he represents a lot of viewpoints that i not only hear but i subscribe to. the first thing i'd say is there is something called mandatory, whether you like that term or not, and discretionary spending. the federal government does have to lnch with the larger, dle 65% to 70% of spending that's on pilot. people retire. they're enspite -- entitled to social security. we don't budget how much will be spent. and that spending has accelerated. do we need to deal with the issue? yes, we do. but where we're going to spend our time, pending this president deciding to wander and do other issue, the government is wholly inefficient. they're inefficient because it's not our song. it's the truth. the american people know that government is staying at home.

president biden and his administration just two days ago announced they had concluded that deal with the union that is binding contractually with the union, 42,000 people could work from home. so we openly asked the administration, the biden administration, how do you make it work? what is is your backlog? how do you take new people and have them come and work to learn? we have lots of new people. and how do you manage your business and why are you behind? these are questions that will be vetted by, not just the american people, but the doaj caucus, i think we will make things better. we'll make sure the reorlgnyization that's going to happen comes from the very top. if we don't think that elon musk

can make better a circumstance, then -- and put his good name on it, then i think we're all missing the point. we're going to get there. host: it's in the initial days but what happens first with doge, what do you know? guest: we're gathering ourselves together. finding out who wants to be on the kaw a cus. we have between the three co-chairs of us, a division of labor. who is going to answer the emails? who is going to put together the first meeting? who is going to decide our division of labor about what areas, how do we divide some 63 people up? we can't all work on the same thing. but we have to find ourselves where we then can go and ask questions, come up with ideas and vet them before they come back to an example that we would say is, here's our recommendation. it's a lot of deep water.

i do appreciate and respect people it's nothing new. get egg lon musk and mr. ramaswamy with us is not normal either. that is a deep effort. i'm serious about it. in 1997 i formed something that was called the results caucus. we said at that time, our goal was not to have duplicative issues in government. and i said, every dollar the government needs, but not a penny more. host: all right. congressman pete sessions. republican of texas. hope you come back again and talk to our viewers. give us an update. guest: hope i did well enough to be invited back. host: we want to hear from you and federal employees as well. what are your ideas to make government more efficient? before the lawmakers met on the house side behind closed doors with elon musk and i have vek

ramaswamy, speaker mike johnson spoke with reporters about what he expects from the department of government efficiency, called doge. mr. johnson: we're all -- [video clip] mr. johnson: we're all excited. you've heard what doge is all about. the department of government efficientcism it's a new thing. it's a new day in washington, a new day in america. we have long lamented the size and scope of the government. that it has grown too large. let me be frank about this. government is too big. it does too many things. and it does almost nothing well. the taxpayers deserve better. they deserve a more responsive government. a more efficient government. one that is leaner. more foe kusd on its primary objectives. that's the opportunity we have here now. we believe it's a historic moment for the country. these two yemen are going to help navigate through this exciting new day. elon and i have vek don't need

much introduction here in congress for certain and most of the american people know what they're capable of, what they've achieved. both of these gentlemen have run very successful organizations. they're innovators. and they're forward thinkers. that's what we need right now. host: speaker mike johnson making a plug for the department of government efficiencies, so-called doge, commission. it's not an official department. elon musk and vivek ramaswamy plan to run it and have many ideas to make government more efficient. how would you make it more efficient? that's our conversation this morning on the "washington journal" for the first hour. gallup did a poll at the end of november asking people if they support this idea. 55% of those polled said they do support making government more efficient. recently here on the "washington journal," everett kelly of the american federation -- of federal government employee, the union that represents federal

employees, had this to say about the doge commission. >> we are the ones that's making sure that it cheblgs out on time. you cut 85% of that it's not going to happen. we're making sure that veterans are taking care of. you start cutting 75% of that, you know it's not going to happen. but the truth of the matter, it's not that they're trying to make the government more efficient. what they're trying to do really, is contract out these jobs so that, you know, when they do this, you know, it's a matter of not the patriotism that the people that i represent displayed but it's about the bottom line. it's about making a dollar. and that's what it's all about. you know. and i remember, i'm a retired department of defense employee. and i remember the saga when i was deployed with the department of defense when contractors

would bid on our jobs, bid on various portions of our jobs, right. and the sad thing that 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 jobs, you know, things like that. it's not a cost savings at all. but i would enjoy the opportunity to sit down with the administration to talk about how we make the government more efficient. we're not saying that it shouldn't be, we should sit down and have this conversation. for instance, if you want to talk about making the government more efficient, let's look at medicare. i think there's opportunity we could save about $60 billion back. when you look at the i.r.s., let's look at that. let's have the conversation. there's about $trillion savings looking at people who evaded

taxes just this year. let's look at the conversations and talk about how we can be more efficient. host: everett kelly who represents federal workers, on the "washington journal" recently. how can the government become more efficient. "washington times" front page today, doge leaders visit capitol hill sparking energy for new day in america. rob, a democratic caller, what do you say? caller: good morning. you're doing a great job as usual. thank you for that. thank you for c-span. there's so many simple fixes, i remember hearing a few years ago that they could streamline the paperwork for health insurance companies. for medicare. and save a fortune. but you know, i think that ultimately before you really start cutting, you have to put proper taxes on those earning more than $400,000 a year.

which, you know, the republicans refuse to do. and by the way, oddly, that elon musk and i have vek and even our incoming new president make fortunes off these tax break that was been extended and will likely be continued to be extended. so you know, i believe you have to remove the cap on social security. on those earning over whatever, $126,000. that cap should be removed. and you can shore up social security. so we're not doing the basic things that we need to do, raising taxes on those earning more than $400,000 and i think it's just a big game that the republicans are playing and you know, we don't believe in trickle down economics any longer. so again, thank you for the time. host: thank you. michael, republican, in new

kensington, pennsylvania. can che the government be more efficient? caller: absolutely it can be. thank you for taking my call, thank you for c-span. i do believe that there's so many things that the government can do. even -- this latest report that came out said that 1% of the federal workers in washington, d.c. show up for work five days a week. and it's really -- that's an abuse of our taxpayers' money. and you hear the stories of orgies and all kinds of things going on in d.c. and there's a certain amount of, you hear this federal -- the fellow you had on earlier talking about the federal employees union, i think it's really a shame that the federal

union, there were so many -- i believe it was f.d.r. said there's no reason that federal workers, that the government workers should be in unions. it's just a shame that that has to happen. because they have a dog in the fight. and the last thing i want to say is that you have the department of defense have had seven audits in a row and they could not meet these audits, they could not, they failed every single one of them. the last seven years. 1457bd years before that, they started the audits. and that was the first one they were able to even come close to doing. host: you say elon musk and vivek ramaswamy, look at the pentagon and how they spend money? caller: yes. they're very wasteful. host: so you may interested in this.

senator berneie sanders, independent of vermont, tweets on december 1. elon musk is right. the pentagon with a budget of $886 billion just failed its seventh audit in a row. it's lost track of billions. last year, only 13 senators voted against the military industrial complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud. this must change. for all of you watching this morning, would you say that elon musk and vivek ramaswamy, the co-chairs of the unofficial, informal commission, doge, the department of government efficiency, that they should look at the pentagon? should it be first on their list? the caller also mentioned federal workers. i want to share this headline in the politics section of the "washington times." like being on vacation, federal employees are abusing remote work according to an audit done by senator, and republicans are saying that they will make the

federal work force return to their jobs in office, no more work from home when they are in charge of the 119th congress. we also heard from callers already this morning, medicare and social security, pointing to those programs. i want to share this headline and story in the "wall street journal." doge road show receives g.o.p. embrace on capitol hill. president-elect trump promised not to cut social security or medicare benefits. vivek ramaswamy said doge would look for waste and fraud in those programs but wouldn't push for broad cuts to entitlement. let's listen to former presidential candidate vivek ramaswamy in a conversation with thes a spend security forum on wednesday. >> you tweeted about efficiency. what are some efficiency approaches, metrics, you're looking at beyond cutting?

>> you look at whether or not the dollars of the company, which belong to the share holds of the company, are being used in the highest r.o.i. manner or not. i think the way the federal government ought to think about the dollars it's spending on behalf of taxpayers is look at the taxpayer as a shareholder. are we getting the highest r.o.i. possible out of the tax dloors not? i think the answer sun deniably. i think people on both sides would say that. >> where do you start with that? >> it's counterintuitive approach here, where some of the biggest items, right, are mandated, mandatory spending, on entitlements that require congress to change. but also when you're running a business, you have many people coming in turn around ar tyes who would tell you, it's some of the smaller items move more quick by li but add up to be big when you add them together. over half a trillion dollars a year is not even authorized by

congress in terms of spending that's going out the door. the magnitude of waste, fraud, abeuz, error or program integrity issues with even the kinds of entitlement payments we talk about, medicare, medicaid, social security, that alone adds to up to, we believe, hundreds of billions of dollars in savings as well. one of the things i've noticed coming at this not as a politician but an outsider, sometimes you use these traditional political debates, philosophical debates to cut entitlement spending or not, as a way to sidestep, in some ways the harder question but also the more practical question of what if you could just look at what savings we could get to by making sure that nobody who isn't supposed to receive that payment isn't getting it. i think it's irresponsible to begin a discussion around entitlement until we've wrung all that waste and excess error out of the is you'll get into grandiose discussions about whether or not

the president has the power to impound funds. it says the president doesn't have to spend the money if it's known to go toward west, fraud and abuse. i've seen a pat for the washington, d.c., it's a deflection. a conflation, to say that there's a grand political philosophical question that we'd rather be debating or banging our heads on the wall about when many fact there's lower hanging fruit we can all deliver in ways that require real work, require barreling through. host: vivek ramaswamy on wednesday, he and elon musk heading up ethe department of government efficiency. that was wednesday. on thursday the two were on capitol hill, first meeting with senators mind closed door, then walked to the house side and met with house lawmakers behind closed doors. we're asking you to join the conversation here in washington. how can the federal government become more efficient? warren in florida, republican. hi, warren. caller: hi. yeah. one of they ways that government

needs to get out of the way, social security before they took $2.97 trillion away from it and put in the general fund, they said they put bonds in there. they're paying 1.5% interest rate, now it's part of the general fund. they need to eliminate the education department. give it back down to the state they need to pass a budget saying that they won't go over, they're borrowing over $1.6 trillion a year. they need to pass a balanced budget amendment so they only can go over 3% or around there of their budget, no more printing money. and they need to do that, no matter what, there's always an excuse to borrow more money and they need to eliminate.