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  • 4/11/2025
During a CNN town hall on Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was asked about the federal workforce cuts imposed by the Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk.

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Transcript
00:00Senator, what would you say to federal employees who are concerned about the careless workforce cuts being effectuated by Elon Musk and Doge?
00:12I want to say two things about that.
00:14First of all, thank you and your colleagues for your years of service.
00:19The vast majority of federal employees are trying their best to do the jobs that have to be done to protect the American people.
00:28And I thank you all very much for that.
00:31The idea that Mr. Musk goes around and with a chainsaw, that is his metaphor, a chainsaw, slashing jobs all over the place, telling people based on nothing that they have poor performance records, throwing them out into the street is outrageous.
00:51But I want to say something else above and beyond.
00:53And by the way, I was just on the floor a few hours ago.
00:56So they have decided in their brilliance, and I suspect this is a Musk initiative, to lay off their proposal to lay off 83,000 workers at the Veterans Administration.
01:12Got that?
01:13So we made a commitment to the men and women who put their lives on the line that we were going to provide them with the best quality health care that we could.
01:23And generally speaking, I know in my state, veterans are very proud of the health care they get at White River Junction, Vermont, and that's true in many places in this country.
01:31But arbitrarily, throwing 83,000 workers in the Veterans Administration, lowering the quality of care for our veterans, delaying the kind of time in which they're going to get their benefits is a total average.
01:43I want to add one point to that.
01:45I want everybody to think about this.
01:47Most people, we have millions of federal employees.
01:49Most people are not federal employees.
01:51And I think many people are saying, wow, that's outrageous.
01:53I really feel for these federal employees thrown out on the street.
01:56But I want you to think about this.
01:58If Musk can do this to federal employees, some of whom are in unions, some of whom work for years, what do you think he's going to be doing when artificial intelligence and robotics comes for your job?
02:12Guess what?
02:13The job you have today ain't going to be here in 10 or 15 years.
02:17And you think Musk and his friends are saying, oh, my goodness, how do we protect American workers from the explosion in technology that we're seeing?
02:25They don't give a damn about you.
02:28If this is what they could do to federal employees, think about what they could do to people in the private sector.
02:33So bottom line there is I am not a Luddite.
02:37I think technology has many positive things to say.
02:40But we have got to understand that new technology, AI, robotics, has got to work for working people, not just for the billionaires and Mr. Musk.

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