Jay Weber Show transcript 3-11-25
Let’s talk more about the ‘locked in’ wins related to doge-versus those that would need congressional action on before they could be made permanent.
I went thru this yesterday-and I think it’s helpful to separate out the ‘real’ or ‘immediate’ wins for the American people that Elon Musk and Donald Trump and doge are racking up for the country-
Versus the ones that they are ‘finding’ and ‘identifying’ for future elimination by congress because they can’t be killed off by executive order, alone, but instead need an act of congress to validate. Make it real.
So-remembering that all of the silly wasteful spending that was uncovered related to foreign affairs and this USAID agency- and remembering that it was discovered that the democrats and the activist left were using this secretive agency as virtually a slush fund of tens of billions in spending that congress had never honestly approved-
And remembering that the president, ultimately, has virtually complete control over foreign affairs and foreign aide spending-even that approved by congress-
We can say that the tens of billions of dollars in spending that the USAID was doing to spread the leftist agenda globally- has now been stopped-and we can put ‘foreign aid reform’ into the rock solid ‘accomplished’ category.
Trump and Musk and Rubio have dealt a significant blow to this never-ending scam using our hard-earned taxpayer dollars.
As of yesterday, Secretary of State Rubio announced that- this USAID agency is dead...83 percent of its programs have now been killed off...and the remaining 17 percent...which have been deemed ‘necessary or vital to u-s interests’ will continue under the more direct supervision of the state department.
Fantastic.
Rubio announced:
"The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States,"
And I don’t know if one final vote from congress is necessary to officially kill off the ‘idea’ of the USAID agency and just put its remaining work under the state department, but i believe it is.
Either way this agency has been slashed to ribbons, and to the point that very little of it remains, and it will be under the wing of the state department...where it should have been all along.
Rubio said:
"The total number of contracts is about 6,200, representing programs that were appropriated by Congress in the last budget approval.
The remaining 1,000 or so contracts would be administered by the State Department, which absorbed the U.S. Agency for international Development (USAID) last month."
But the entire point is: funding trans-operas in Columbia and comic books in Peru- or 2-million dollars for Moroccan pottery classes- does nothing to build national alliances and it certainly doesn’t enhance our national security. Does it?
What? Are we going to be attacked by angry trans-Peruvians if we don’t fund a comic book for them?
Is the Iraq war going to flare back up because we aren’t funding a version of sesame street over there?
This was all incredibly wasteful spending that pushed a leftist political ideology- it did not enhance America’s position abroad.
And hey- about one-thousands of these foreign aid programs are going to continue because they ‘were’ deemed as important when it came to building foreign relationships and strengthening our position abroad.
But I want to make sure you caught this: of the roughly 62-hundred USAID contracts that Biden’s regime was pushing out thru this agency- only one thousand were worthy and important spending.
the rest- 52 hundred! Actions! - were all wasteful leftist nonsense. Wow.
Now-that-is a corrupt federal agency.
And that’s not even mentioning the tens of millions of dollars that doge and rubio discovered had gone to supporting terrorist organizations. The Biden regime was-literally-sending our tax dollars to support terror regimes.
9 million in so-called ‘humanitarian aid’ that was meant for Syrian civilians was tracked to an
Al-Qaeda affiliate in Iraq.
15-million went to the Taliban controlled Afghanistan for condoms and contraceptives.
Another ten million ended up funding meal distribution for a second al-Qaeda linked group.
Folks-there are photos all over social media taken over the years that show Muslim terrorists standing in tents that say USAID on them...or eating meals that say ‘USAID’ on the wrapping.
It's something else we never talk about how stupidly our foreign aid is then ‘delivered’ or handed over. Most often, it ends up in the hands of the local warlords, or terrorist leaders, just as nearly all the truckloads of aide into Gaza have ended up in Hamas’s hands for most of this recent war.
So- cleaning up the corruption at USAID is now something that I would label ’80 percent accomplished’. Fraud has been rooted out. The wasteful spending has been stopped. And all congress needs to do is pass some language that will be slipped into a future spending bill that says, any remaining USAID programs are now under the direct control of the state department’...and that reform is 100 percent ‘done’.
But so much of the real ‘doge’ savings and ‘reforms’ come only after an act of congress-which is why Senators Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham and others told Elon last week: you have to send us the changes you want to make- and a list of the fraud or waste you want to stop-and we can ‘make it real’ by passing a package of rescissions.
And huzzah, huzzah- passing rescissions to federal spending doesn’t require anything other than a simple majority vote in the senate- so GOP lawmakers don’t need a single solitary democrat to go along with them- for them to get this done: to claw back a chunk of the excessive spending that musk’s team has identified.
The Wall St Journal says this is based on a law passed in the Nixon era- in 1974.
I agree with this move going a long way toward legitimizing what doge is doing- as well as spelling out for the American people in a more easily digestible form-what doge is doing.
Because-for weeks now-neither Elon Musk nor Donald Trump have really been clear in ‘what they are cutting’...or ‘who they are firing’...or whether these cuts are even real.
Some can be done by trump alone. The most expensive and impactful cannot. We need congress for most of them-and yet- Musk is on X talking about them as if these changes are ‘real’ the moment he says they are. It’s all been very confusing.
And the best way to follow thru and prove to the American people that this has been an effective and organized effort to find the waste, fraud and abuse, is to detail it for them as it occurs.
Give the congress a list. Let them kill off the spending. Then celebrate the savings with the American people. That’s how this should be done.
And no-the DODE effort isn’t going to come anywhere close to the real budget reforms -and real budget savings-that we need to get back to the balanced budget that people like Senators Johnson and Scott are talking about.
Those cuts need to come in the reconciliation bills. Only that sort of significant spending reform can change the trajectory of our federal spending-
But it’s no ‘small thing’ to have DOGE and Musk find hundreds of billions in waste, fraud, and abuse and end it. If he can’t hit his predicted ‘trillion dollars in savings’.... Well, so be it. But every bit of the wasteful and dishonest spending that he is finding is a win for taxpayers.
And related to that-sadly- might be a 3-billion-dollar contract that the federal government has with Oshkosh truck to deliver 50-thousand electric postal vehicles that has turned into a debacle.
DOGE just flagged this for claw backs and elimination-if they can get congress to do it. This was part of Biden and the dems idiotic ‘global warming spending that totaled nearly a trillion dollars and was passed under the intentionally dishonest name of ‘the inflation reduction act’.
As part of that spending.... Oshkosh truck won a 3-billion-dollar contract to deliver 50-thousand electric postal vehicles-but years later- and at ‘last report’ -had only delivered about 93.
So- congress should kill off this wasteful spending and claw it back to be used more wisely. Sorry folks in Oshkosh, but they should.
photo credit: Getty Images
audio version of the segment here > The never-ending scam using our hard-earned taxpayer dollars is over.