Bash Slams DOGE: ‘Unelected Billionaires Trying to Cut the Jobs of Unelected Bureaucrats, It’s Lovely’

BASH: “Two billionaires are gearing up for their new jobs as cost cutters. This week, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will meet with House Republicans about their plans to helm Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, while federal employees wait trepidation. CNN’s Hadas Gold has done extensive reporting on Elon Musk. Nice to see you in person. Let’s start with the agencies and what you’re hearing that they are considering for the chopping block.”
GOLD: “Well, just to put out there, a reminder that this Department of Government Efficiency, it’s an advisory board. It’s not an official agency. So they will make recommendations to the Office of Management and Budget. And I do like to point out the sort of ironic hypocrisy of, you know, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, they like to rail against the unelected bureaucrats making these decisions, but Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy themselves are unelected and they are going to be in this very important advisory role. But they put out, you know, some statements about the agencies and what they plan to cut. They wrote this Wall Street Journal opinion piece. They want to cut $500 billion in annual spending. Some of the agencies and the programs they’ve specifically mentioned are the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — that is a very important funder to NPR, to National Public Radio — Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, international organizations, progressive groups like Planned Parenthood, and there’s elements of plenty of other agencies that they plan to cut. I’ve talked to people in the Department of Labor, EPA, all of them are girding themselves, essentially, for what they expect to be massive cuts. Now, there is a question, because you can’t just cut agencies because they are created by acts of Congress, so you would need Congress in order to cut these agencies as well. And also, the vast majority of the nearly $7 trillion that is spent in the federal budget is on things like Social Security, Medicare, and, of course, defense. So there’s a big question, yeah, you might be able to cut some of these agencies here and there, and that is a lot of money, but it isn’t going to make as much of a dent as they want.”
BASH: “Unelected billionaires trying to cut the jobs of unelected bureaucrats. It’s lovely.”