Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi
speaker
221 appearances
16 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard May 2025
Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And borrowing, spending and borrowing.
Sure, Doge has been a complete and utter failure, okay? First of all, I joined Doge for a couple of reasons in the beginning. One, because, you know, look, the polls were clear, 80 plus percent of Americans believe the government spends too much money and that there's waste there.
I didn't want Republicans to own the messaging war on that, that somehow Democrats were going to defend the status quo and Republicans were the one only that were interested in waste. I wanted to take some of that away, you know, whether, you know, this was going to have legitimacy or not. The American people voted for this, and so it had legitimacy.
But I wanted to make sure that we weren't seeding that messaging war. I also wanted to go to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, be in the room, because I represent a district where 120,000 people get Social Security, 90,000 people get Medicaid. And so it was important for me to go protect that. Well, let me tell you how this has gone. So we're now in May.
The Doge caucus had two meetings. They were both in January. I was at both of them. And they never met again, not once. Elon never included the Doge caucus. We never got any of our ideas. It was completely run out of the executive branch. So the Doge executive committee, something completely different, they're the ones who cut all this stuff. Congress was not involved.
And also Elon fell 85% short of his goals. And now there is data that shows that they saved, they claim they saved 160 billion, but it actually cost us 135 billion to save the 160. So Doge is a complete and utter failure. They also never did the E part, Ben. They were supposed to make government more efficient, E. They just did dog, I guess.
They left out the E. There's not a single department that's more efficient. And now that Elon is gone trying to save his company, the secretaries of these agencies are secretly rehiring. You're not hearing a lot about that. They're rehiring because they have departments that don't work. The State Department needs to rehire because they don't have enough people, right? FAA needs to rehire.
They don't have enough people, okay? You know, so they're trying to rehire these places to make them work. Same thing with the Pentagon. They need to get people in there to make that place working. So Doge was a complete and utter failure, but I wasn't going to let the Republicans own the messaging war because when you're in the minority, the only thing you have is that message.
And I think actually we handled it well. Democrats, myself included, and others said, look, hey, look, we're willing to talk, you know, waste, fraud and abuse. Absolutely. We should look at that. Seven trillion dollar economy. You know, we should a seven trillion dollar budget. I'm sure there's stuff in there. And look, I didn't commit to the other day.
I took I found a billion dollars of savings in the judiciary budget. They want to buy new cars. They want to spend one point three billion dollars. on new lawyers, they wanna do 858 million on bonuses. And I cut that to show them we can find a billion dollars worth of savings just in a quick, and they voted against it. Every Republican in the judiciary voted against it. So they're not serious.
Elon's not serious. Trump's not serious on attacking the debt or deficit. Their tax plan is gonna add three and a half trillion at a minimum to the debt every year. And so Doge, which was supposed to get out our debt is a complete and utter failure.
And you didn't get one of those white binders with with publicly released information.
Then they looked at the list of the people that were in the files and they were like, shit, we know half these people.
Well, look, that's why the numbers are where they are. The truth is, it's not just Democrats and independents that are leaving them. It's some Republicans too, right? Like to get to 39%, you know, yeah, you got your core MAGA base, but they're also losing some Republicans. And look, it's the chaos. It's the uncertainty. It's the distractions. You know, Canada is going to be the 51st state.
Greenland, we're going to vacation in Gaza, Panama. You know, we're going to deport people to El Salvador. And they announced the other day they're looking at Rwanda and the Sudan. These are all distractions to get Democrats and the media to stop talking about the economy and Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. We shouldn't take the bait, by the way. We should stay focused on those two things.
We should obviously defend due process and freedom, but stay focused on from a messaging standpoint, the economy, protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. That's the whole ballgame, in my opinion. But, yeah, not a great not a great 100 days. for the president.
There is something about making a disaster and then trying to clean it up and take credit for the cleanup, but this was all manmade.
I do like long walks on the beach.
One of the most destructive things that the Trump administration is doing at the moment, I'm hoping to work with them and reverse course and save it. But if I'm going off of the words of Secretary Noem, I'm deeply concerned. I'm deeply concerned what they're doing with FEMA. I mean, look, I'm from Florida. I'm a former director of emergency management.
I'm the only director, former director of emergency management in all of Congress. But if they actually do what Kristi Noem wants to do with FEMA, which is get rid of it, which is what she said, chop it up and give it to other agencies, which won't be more efficient. It'll make it worse if she wants to mess with reimbursement. I mean, you could have a state like Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana.
Showing 41–60 of 221 · page 3 of 12
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