The Exchanges

Q unitary executive theory. What does that mean? And I guess it was, uh, this act where they were trying to limit Nixon's power at the time, very democratic Congress. And, and, and basically you believe the constitution doesn't actually allow them to do that. So you're able to go faster here. Are we going to get that to the court eventually? Like what's, what's, what's going on with this thing?

A I expect that, uh, to occur. You know, the president ran on impoundment control act being a constitutional, the notion of, of restoring presidential control over the ability to not spend money. And we obviously believe in congressional power of the purse, uh, the notion that Congress sets a ceiling and, and you can't go above that ceiling. That's a, that's a, a hallmark constitutional principle, but the founders never envisioned in 200 years of presidents never, uh, Had to live under the constraint of having to spend every dollar. And that's really something that was imposed in the 19 seventies with the passage of the Impoundment Control Act. And I'll just note, even when they passed that bill, they had to call it the Control Act and not the Impoundment Prevention Act because they recognized the extent to which presidents had this authority. And it's basic common sense. If you as Congress say, look, we want you to do something for a hundred million dollars. We think it's important for the country. Here's the funding. And we can do it for seventy five million or eighty million dollars just as good. Are you really going to ask us to, to, to buy flat screen TVs and, and copy machines at the end of the fiscal year to get the money out the door? That's insane. Everyone knows that's insane. But ultimately there's more to the story, Joe, in the sense that this became a fundamental asp…

AI assessment note: “I expect that, uh, to occur. You know, the president ran on impoundment”

Q the right, people like Elon Musk were upset. They didn't think it cut enough. Um, you know, as far as I can see, it does contain unprecedented budget cuts, uh, in terms of the mandatory savings. I think it's 1.6 trillion dollars. Obviously, there's a lot more to cut in government. Can you walk us through what's the most important elements of the bill and how to think about that?

A Yeah, I think you nailed it. There's a one in .5 trillion dollar in savings to mandatory reforms, which is some of the big structural drivers that we have. Uh, if you looked at the biggest, uh, mandatory reform in history, it would have been 1997 and eight hundred billion dollars adjusted For inflation. So we very nearly double it at 1.5 trillion dollars. Uh, we fully pay for any spending that's in the bill for the border or for defense golden dome. Um, and we've paid for additional tax relief that's in there as well. Uh, so this was a net reduction in deficits of four hundred billion dollars. And so that would have, that would all go to helping with the debt and deficits.

AI assessment note: “There's a one in .5 trillion dollar in savings to mandatory reforms”

Q Well, I'm really excited to get into some of the stuff you're doing. I've read a bunch of your research from before you were in again. Tell us what were some of the key lessons learned from the first term? Like what, what are some of the things you're doing differently than within the first time Trump was there?

A Well, I think we had a lot of, uh, theses that turned into convictions over the course of the first four years and, and Getting to think about the job, uh, as in, in exile, uh, while we were trying to plan and the president was, uh, running again, trying to get back into office, uh, and one of those was the extent to which, um, you really have to be, uh, uh, a, a, a, a, a describer of the types of problems that, um, The bureaucracy is prone to, and one of those things is just pushing money out the door. Um, and if you don't come out there and say, look, the fundamental, uh, way that the town has functioned on the basis of 50 years, uh, under the Impoundment Control Act, if you don't kind of go out there and, and describe that, and name it, and say, you know, we have fundamental problems with it, uh, you're not setting yourselves up for, to have the moral high ground, uh, to do what's necessary to, to turn the, the funding off. Um, I think that we've learned quite a bit on the issue of, of at-will employment with government employees. Uh, the extent to which we've never really used reductions in force in the first term. Uh, that's something that is, uh, certainly something we've used, uh, extensively. Um, and, uh, you know, the speed, the number of shots on goal, uh, with regulatory, uh, efforts dereg, Uh, all of those things are things that we're just doing at a quicker, quicke…

AI assessment note: “we've never really used reductions in force in the first term”

Q So I want to dig in one more time on this bill. So it was 1.5 or six trillion or one with five trillion or so. Versus the biggest mandatory savings cut before was eight hundred billion, I think in the late nineties with the, with the Republican Congress and Clinton. Like what is that 1.5 trillion in cuts exactly? What are we cutting?

A Sure. There's, there's substantial reforms to Medicaid that protect the program, but also allow us to get illegals off the program to deal with what is essentially a money laundering scam where a state will, uh, have a Almost a fake tax on a healthcare provider, use that to cause their Medicaid, ah, share to go higher, and then turn around and spend more dollars, they pocket, they have some walking around money for things like illegal immigrants in the case of California, but then they use that to then send it back to the states. So they've, they've, they've used the tax, they've tried, they then make the provider, ah, whole, In some cases now, increasingly, we're going farther than making them whole, and then they've also benefited their state by giving themselves more ability to expand Medicaid, uh, and deal with other of their own issues. So it's a major reform. It was put in the Senate. The House had gone a couple steps that direction. The Senate went even further, um, and then just getting a lot of the, the waste and the abuse out of the program. And we, you know, since, uh, Obamacare passed and the, the expansion, uh, Has been causing states to move aggressively towards the ninety-ten match. There's been a complete breakdown in, in oversight of most of the program. And that's why you have so many illegals in there. That's why you have, um, uh, questionable activities. And…

AI assessment note: “There's, there's substantial reforms to Medicaid that protect the program”

Q to the moon. The people running all the agencies used to have to pass pretty hard tests. Most people couldn't pass them. So you had some sense of the merit of people in charge of various things. Uh, and those were taken out in the seventies. Is there any chance we can find ways of putting that merit back in? Are you thinking about that or looking at that area?

A I think it's a great idea. We're always looking for good ideas. Um, you know, in terms of, uh, making it so that you have, uh, the highest possible standards for Our, our career civil servants. Uh, we also want to make sure that, you know, um, we have people that may not have a, the advanced professional degree, but they're just really good at their job and the ability to, to hire and, and to, uh, ensure that look, this is, this is not gonna be fixed overnight. This is one of those paramount progressive movements was to create this expert class that was divorced from the actual management of the president of the United States. Um, From his oversight and we're going to need these kinds of reforms and hopefully we have enough, uh, movement to change events on the ground that we lead to efforts by Congress to lock it in and actually have reforms that are more enduring than what our administration might be able to accomplish in four years.

AI assessment note: “I think it's a great idea. We're always looking for good ideas.”

Q Why is Senator McConnell fighting this stuff? Is he just in a bad mood with the administration? Like, it seems like obvious stuff to vote for.

A You know, I think the, the, we're trying to continue to explain to people what this bill does and what it doesn't do. And if you're, if you're not interested in, um, in cutting this The bare minimum of what we've articulated, um, then, you know, it's a huge indictment on the, on the town. And it's one of the reasons why we've been so clear about our executive tools that we can do more unilaterally through the president. It's like, we're, we're gonna make these cuts permanent. We've got a lot of different options. We would love to have Congress as a willing partner. Um, but they need to prove that they can pass these bills because otherwise we're gonna have to look at other options.

AI assessment note: “we're trying to continue to explain to people what this bill does”