loeffler, will appear for her confin hearing. she was a fundraiser for trumpcare duri eleion, and was also the founder of a political organization designed to assist vati candidates in federal, state and local elections. from the senate small business and entrepreneurship coittee, watch the hearing live on c-span at 3:30, c-span now, our free mobile app, or online at c-span.org. ♪ announcer: c-spanshop.org is c-span's online store. browse through our latest collection on c-span products, apparel, books, home decor, and accessories. there is something for every c-span fan, and every purchase helps support our nonprofit operations. shop now or anytime at c-spanshop.org. >> democracy.

it isn't just an idea, it's a process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. it is where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation as co-course is charted. democracy in real-time. this is your government at work. this is c-span, giving you your democracy. unfiltered. ♪ journal" continues. host: lisa gilbert is the copresident of the group known as public citizen here to talk about the agenda of the trump administration a little more. how would you describe your group to other people? guest: public service it is a consumer watchdog. our focus is to, corporate power on behalf of regular american and we do that in many different areas. protecting the environment, to improve democracy, working to improve health care and so much more. host: how are you funded? guest: very diversely but

primarily by regular people. we have individual members across the country to give us $15, $20 to support. also grant funding, occasional awards, that kind of thing. but certainly we depend heavily on regular supporters across the country. host: you said you fight against corporate power. a lot targeted at the trump administration. what is the goal overall? guest: unfortunately our mission has never been more important. this is an administration that is coming in full of people who got rich at the heads of corporations, and so corporate power is taking center stage in terms of what their goals are and urgently, as often opposite of what regular people need when we think about fewer regulatory protections on the books. that means less clean air, less clean water, a less tsay financial system. those are things that if you are ceo of a company it makes sense, you don't want to be regulated and have to do things and have guardrails in place. but if you are a regular

american citizen that is exactly what you need and what government should do for you. so we are in a much more adversarial posture than we have been in a while. host: specifically how? guest: looking at some of the folks were coming in, for example, elon musk. coming in as literally the wealthiest person in the world. he is being tasked through this external entity to give recommendations to government. so those recommendations are going to be things like slashing programs and policies and agencies that people depend on, which may benefit him, may benefit other corporate cronies, one thing we are sure of is it won't help you and me. host: the idea of cutting or at least decreasing the amount of government, is that a fundamentally wrong approach in your mind or is there some value to it? guest: i think it depends i you talk about it. certainly most regulations the goal of that is to help people. they are the endgame of legislation. if you're passing a bill, it

goes to an agency and the implement it and those rules are how government goes out to the world and protects us. so generally we think that is a really good thing. that's not to say there is no waste, no fraud, no inefficiencies, there certainly are. there are a lot of ways we could save money and streamline processes if we wanted to, but is not the same sorts of policies that must and his folks are putting forward. we think maybe we could cut the pentagon budget. there's a huge amount of waste in defense spending. we could save millions of dollars really quickly, that give final back to help regular americans. that's not the type of expection we're -- suggestion we are affecting from doge. host: if they all get appointed than others previous, fundamentally what is wrong with that? guest: you are right, 13 billionaires chosen to be part of the cabinet, that is unprecedented. someone was tallying up the wealth, it is more than the gdp of 172 individual countries, so a serious amount of money we are talking about.

it's not that there is something inherently wrong with the rich or wealth, it is what it changes about your incentives. if you are thinking about government and thinking about the role of government from the posture of someone who hasn't had to see how much eggs cost right now, you have different incentives and different ways of thinking about the role of what your agency should actually be, so that is what we are concerned about. host: if you want to ask questions about her group's efforts, (202) 748-8000 democrats. (202) 748-8001 republicans. independent, (202) 748-8002. you can always text us at (202) 748-8003. public citizen making an effort to have a seat at the table, so to speak. what is the ambition there? guest: myself and my copresident, we sent a letter to the trump transition before they were inaugurated saying we thought that we should have a seat at the table as a part of doge.

we believe it is a federal advisory committee. the way it is constituted and has been reported, that means there are certain rules that apply to it. one of them is that there should be balanced representation. people who are on both sides of the aisle, people thinking about rulemaking from different perspectives. as we were just talking about we have the perspective that rules are very important for the american people so we should be a part of this effort. we don't think that the sole perspective of tech titans and crypto bros is what we need as we are thinking about what regulations and budget lineups we have. host: what response did you get? guest: we've not gotten a response yet, we expect to be denied but certainly we think we should be seated. we have a lot to say. host: what would be the fundamental guidance you give to those on that board going forward with whatever recommendations they have to make and whatever congress decides to approve? guest: we would say that there are ways to make government more efficient, but it is not cutting programs like snap, like meals on wheels, like the funding that goes to support national parks

and teachers. it is that things like fossil fuel subsidies, things that are helping massive corporations, but not really helping regular american for the environment things like cutting back on privatized medicare so that more americans get the care they need. there are a lot of things we could do to improve our government and it is not really what we've heard they are thinking about. host: this book about rules. one of the issues concerning rulings in the last couple of days is the idea of the inspector general and the rules they had to follow. that they should have followed leading up to that. fundamentally, what did you think of the action itself? guest: incredibly problematic. the idea that in the dark of night they would let go inspectors general across government, and actually flies right in the face of what they claim to be doing with doge. inspectors general came into being after watergate. it is a bipartisan reform, still is, to think about fraud and waste of taxpayer dollars and deficiency. so the idea that we will let

these people go, it proves that doge is not what it is intended to be. it kind of pulls back the curtain on what the goals of the ministration actually are and it is scary because we need those folks in place. host: does the president ultimately have the right to take the action to remove them, even if you broke the 30 day resource rule? guest: one of the things we are thinking about is what you just said, that there is new legislation that says you have to notify congress if you're going to remove inspectors general. in some agency seek and remove for cause, some without. we are worried that rules were broken here and we are figuring out what we can do legally and also just continuing to talk about the process. host: i want to play the response of senator lindsey graham asked directly about the inspectors general being let go and get your response. here is what he had to say. senator graham: yeah, he should

have done that, but the question is is it ok for him to put people in place that he things can carry out his agenda, yeah. he won the -- he won the election, what did you expect them to do? this makes perfect sense to me, get new people who feel like the government hasn't worked very well for the american people. those watchdog faulted a pretty lousy job. that makes sense to me. host: so there is a response, what is your response to that? guest: it is not untrue that a new administration can bring in their own people. i think there is a real difference between a friday night firing of 17 people without warning and illegally without informing congress and changing pieces of government. so if there was some indication that one in general or two of them particularly need to be replaced for a certain reason and there was a plan to put someone new into place quickly, which showed the importance of inspectors general, we would be any different posture. but this is a huge number of folks to move to play such an

essential role in government i don't really by what lindsey graham just said. host: this is lisa gilbert. our first call for you comes from new york state on the line for democrats. you are on, go ahead. caller: yes, good morning. i'd like to know what is the agenda for shutting down the fbi see? guest: well certainly referred from folks within the trump administration as they start to come in that there are many people they don't like across the financial sector. that includes the fbi see, the ftc, treasury. we don't know the timeline for many of these appointments and changes, but certainly we are nervous about that. it is a good question. one of the places we watched is the cfpb, the consumer financial product bureau which absolutely matters to regular consumers.

we've been surprised that the head of it has not been removed yet as he is one of our biggest consumer champions. i think we are watching all the agencies to pay attention to when and who. host: we saw the decision by the trumpet ministration yesterday, federal-aid is being frozen in some aspects. as far as the move itself, what do you think about it and what is the long-term and short-term damage? guest: that is a pretty scary move. there's a lot of confusion about the freezing of federal grants. real people are going to be impacted. this is money that goes to universities, to nonprofits. these are the paychecks of regular americans across the country that are certainly -- suddenly uncertain. we are incredibly concerned. if it moves forward it will be effectuate