Suhas Subramanyam To Project 2025 Co-Author: 'Is This Administration Trying To Implement Project 2025?'

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At last week's House DOGE Committee hearing, Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA) questioned witnesses about DOGE cuts.

Transcript

00:00Nice. Mr. Subramanyam from Virginia for five minutes. Thank you, Madam Chair.

00:09Before I get started on Doge, Mr. Burton, you were one of the co-authors of Project 2025. Is that correct?

00:15Yes. And is this administration trying to implement Project 2025? Yes or no?

00:21In some respects, yes. Okay, because last year we kept hearing about how they wanted nothing to do with Project 2025.

00:27That must have hurt your feelings, I bet. But are you saying that they're trying to implement all parts of Project 2025?

00:33I just said in some respects, yes. Okay, thanks. I just wanted to get that out of the way.

00:37I'm glad there's someone being honest these days. But let's talk about Doge.

00:41So Doge promised us $2 trillion in cuts back in January.

00:47And so far, we have a report card now out. And it's actually cost us billions of dollars, maybe over $100 billion by one estimate.

00:59It's actually costing taxpayers money. And it seems like, you know, they're cutting a lot of things. How is this possible?

01:07Well, the reason it's possible is because they're cutting the very people who are actually there to help get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse.

01:16And they're cutting people who do essential research and run really important programs that save taxpayer money long term.

01:24And so the dashboard that we're talking about, the so-called transparency, was riddled with errors.

01:30There's been article after article about this. And so we know now that that dashboard cannot be trusted.

01:35What can be trusted is that we're not anywhere close to $2 trillion.

01:39In fact, there's another bill that this House just passed that adds $3 trillion to the debt.

01:44And so even if we did all these cuts, even if you cut every single federal employee in the entire government,

01:50you still end up with a situation where you're adding to the debt in this administration

01:54because of the $3 trillion in the bill that was passed a couple weeks ago that's being added to our debt.

02:00And, you know, the examples that I've heard are things like cutting meteorologists at the Weather Service,

02:08cutting essential researchers at NIH, people who are doing groundbreaking research

02:13that will spur entire industries are being cut.

02:17Sometimes the government does research and funds research because the money just isn't there in the private sector.

02:22The private sector mandate isn't there.

02:24And so that actually, you talk about the Internet, for instance, that was a DOD project at one point.

02:31And DOD funded ARPANET, which became the Internet.

02:34And so we are basically, we'll never know all of the things that we missed out on because of some of these cuts.

02:41And I've heard a lot about, you know, we heard earlier about these cuts of veterans' benefits.

02:48There's PFAS inspectors, nuclear scientists fired, although they tried to rehire them.

02:53There's been a lot of firings where they tried to roll them back.

02:57But, you know, I think I, you know, Ms. Davida, I just want to know, if you were to do this,

03:04is DOGE doing what they're trying to do here?

03:07And why is DOGE so unsuccessful right now?

03:09Why has it been such a failure?

03:12I believe that DOGE has been a lose-lose.

03:15It has found, it has failed to find the sizable savings, as you mentioned,

03:19and has only made life harder and more expensive for working families.

03:24You mentioned a lot of the mistakes.

03:26Those don't just cost, there is not just an opportunity cost to loss potential and loss impact from those mistakes,

03:33but there is also a cost to correct for them.

03:36So rehiring and retraining all of the federal workers.

03:39So is DOGE on track to save us money?

03:41Is it going to save taxpayers money long term?

03:43No.

03:44Why is that?

03:46I think DOGE has been making incredibly hasty cuts, and these have consequences.

03:53There are already a lot of protections baked into our federal workforce, our system of regulations.

03:59We can always add more that protect people in even better and stronger ways,

04:05but we cannot take them back without costs.

04:07So I'd ask Mr. Burton or Mr. Dickerson, you know, I have one idea for cuts,

04:15which is the president actually his last term spent $150 million-plus on golf trips.

04:21Do you think that's waste, fraud, and abuse?

04:23Yes, ma'am.

04:24I certainly would think they're more high-priority spending things, yes.

04:29But do you think that's wasteful spending?

04:32Do you think we should cut?

04:33Do you think that's less or more wasteful than cutting veterans' benefits, his golf trips?

04:38I would rather spend money on veterans.

04:40What about $50 million for the Department of Homeland Security's private plane?

04:45That's what they requested in the appropriations bill.

04:47Do you think they should get a new plane for DHS, a private plane?

04:51That's a factual question on whether or not this...

04:55No, I'm going to reclaim my time.

04:56In the end, what's happening is there's more waste, fraud, and abuse since DOGE has come into effect.

05:01It's led to poor services, a brain drain on our federal government,

05:04and it's going to cost taxpayers money long term.

05:07I yield back.

05:08The gentleman...

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