Speaker Johnson Pressed On Republicans Wanting To Take Back Money They Voted To Spend Months Ago

Forbes Breaking News

At Tuesday's House Republican leadership press briefing, Speaker Johnson was asked about an about-face by Republicans on money they voted to spend.

Transcript

00:00Questions, I can guess what they'll be. Chad.

00:03How can you explain the fact that Republicans voted for this interim spending bill back in March,

00:09greenlighting this money, and two, three months later, then you want to take back that money?

00:13That seems inconsistent.

00:15Well, if you're talking about, for example, this USAID money and this kind of stuff, I mean...

00:18That was approved in the CR back in...

00:20Yeah, yeah, it was. And here's the point. It's a critical point.

00:23When I met with Elon in his office back in early February, he had just gotten into it.

00:27They were just uncovering the USAID abuses, and they went after USAID first for their review, their audits,

00:33because USAID screamed the loudest, opposed the loudest of this accountability measure,

00:39and so they effectively put the scrutiny target on their own backs.

00:43And Elon and I were in his office late one night. We were talking about this, and I said...

00:47He had just started... He had finished USAID. They were just starting on Social Security,

00:50and he was finding all these abuses, and we were talking, and he and I were getting increasingly excited together

00:55about this new era of accountability, and it occurred to me we were excited for different reasons.

00:58And I said, you know, Elon, you're excited because you're looking at this as a data analyst and a scientist,

01:03and I'm looking at it as a constitutional law attorney and a legislator and a novice historian, right?

01:09But, like, this is about more than saving money.

01:12This is about restoring the framers' original vision for the Constitution.

01:16The framers of our magnificent form of government, our matchless Constitution,

01:21what they envisioned, and, in fact, what they designed, was a small, lean federal government.

01:26They wanted most of the power reserved for the states, for the people at a local level,

01:31closer to the people because there's more accountability and efficiency.

01:35And so the Doge effort, overall, what it does is it restores the framers' vision

01:39because what Elon was able to do, what he's been able to do, what Doge is able to do,

01:43its lasting legacy, is they cracked the code. They got inside the belly of the beast.

01:47He was inside the bureaucracy, the agencies, with his algorithms,

01:51crawling, finding all the irregularities and the abuses.

01:53He did something we had never been able to do before, Chad,

01:55not as long as I've been in Congress in nine years and not for decades.

01:59I told Elon that night, I said, you're doing something that we were not capable of doing.

02:03We've tried to perform our oversight responsibility,

02:05but Congress has not been able to get the things that uncovered the abuses that you found.

02:11We didn't know we were funding transgender operas in Peru, obviously, right?

02:15Like, we would have stopped that.

02:16But our committees did their diligent work.

02:18They've done oversight.

02:19They've had hearings with the heads of the bureaucratic agencies, the executive agencies.

02:24Subpoenas have been issued.

02:26But never did they turn over this level of data and this level of detail.

02:29It was unknowable to us until now.

02:32And so, yes, we can't act fast enough on these rescissions to claw back these abuses

02:36because it happened without Congress's knowledge.

02:40And that's a really important thing to point to.

02:42And, look, you give credit where credit is due.

02:43And I credit Elon and the Doge effort for doing that.

02:46Isn't that undercut Congress?

02:47I mean, if that was Congress...

02:48No, no, Chad.

02:49I understand the uniqueness of his situation.

02:52Yeah, but what it's going to do, the lasting legacy of this,

02:54and the reason it's so important, and the reason they deserve accolades,

02:57is because they have done a reset in Washington now.

03:00Everybody knows what the abuse is, not just Congress, but the American people.

03:03And we'll be able to demand and ensure greater accountability going forward,

03:06and that is a huge innovation.

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