Elon Musk, DOGE team talk government cuts | LiveNOW from FOX
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (2)
Transcript
0:01News Anchorto turn our attention to the DOGE team. Of course, we've been hearing about some of the slashes they've been making to certain government agencies. And today they set down.
0:10News AnchorMembers of the DOGE team sat down with Brett Baer on Fox News, including Elon Musk as a part of this panel. Let's listen into a bit of that report here on LIVE Now.
0:22Bret BaierHaving us and doing this, I know there's a lot of interest in this. You know, first let me start with you, Elon. What are, what are the budgetary savings goals and how much do you think you've achieved so far?
0:36Elon MuskOur goal is to reduce the deficit by $1 trillion. So from a nominal deficit of 2 trillion to try to cut the deficit in half to 1 trillion or looked at it in total, federal spending to drop the federal spending from 7 trillion to 6 trillion.
0:51Elon MuskWe want to reduce the spending by eliminating waste and fraud. Reduce the spending by 15% which seems really quite achievable. The government is not if not efficient and there's a lot of waste and fraud.
1:05Elon MuskSo we feel confident that a 15% reduction can be done without affecting any of the critical government services.
1:14Bret BaierI'm going to talk to all the
1:15Elon Muskguys making it better and talk to
1:17Bret Baierall the guys here about the specifics. But for you, what's the most astonishing thing you found out in this process?
1:23Elon MuskThe sheer amount of waste and fraud in the government. It is astonishing. It's mind blowing. Just we routinely encounter wastes of a billion dollars or more casually. You know, for example, like the, the simple, the simple survey that was literally 10 question survey that you could do with Survey Monkey cost you about $10,000.
1:46Elon MuskWas the government was being charged almost $1 billion for that?
1:51Bret BaierFor just the survey?
1:52Elon MuskA billion dollars for, for a simple online survey. Do you like the national park? And then there appeared to be no feedback loop for what would be done with that survey.
1:59Elon MuskSo the survey would just go to nothing. It's like insane.
2:01Bret BaierYou technically are a special government employee and you're supposed to be 130 days. Are you going to continue past that or do you think that's the what you're going to do or.
2:13Elon MuskWell, I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within that time frame.
2:19Bret BaierSo we're in that time frame 130 days. And the process is a report at some point, 100 days, not really a report.
2:28Elon MuskWe are cutting the waste and fraud in real time. So every day like that passes Our goal is to reduce the waste and fraud by $4 billion a day, every day, seven days a week.
2:37Elon MuskAnd so far, we are succeeding.
2:39Bret BaierAnd we're going to talk of the specifics, but there obviously are Doge critics who are reading all kinds of stuff. Obviously, lawmakers on the other side of the aisle are attacking you.
2:50Bret BaierAnd they characterize the approach as this. Fire ready, and then aim. And how do you approach that? How do you respond to that?
3:01Elon MuskWell, I do agree that we actually want to be careful in the cuts. So we want to measure twice, if not three, and cut once. And actually, that is our approach.
3:14Elon MuskThey may characterize it as shooting from the hip, but it is anything but that. Which is not to say that we don't make mistakes. If we were to approach this with the standard of making no mistakes at all, that would be like saying someone in baseball's got about a thousand.
3:29Elon MuskThat's impossible. So when we do make mistakes, we correct them quickly and we move on.
3:36Bret BaierSome people say this shouldn't take a rocket scientist. Steve Davis, you are a rocket scientist.
3:43DOGE Team MemberUsed to be.
3:45Bret BaierAnd now essentially you're the chief operating officer of Doge Day to Day Operations. Fair to say.
3:52DOGE Team MemberYeah. Part of the Doge team.
3:54Bret BaierSo how did you end up here? What's the biggest challenge? You see,
3:59DOGE Team Memberthe reason I'm here, which is probably for many, is that I think the goal is incredibly inspiring. I think most of the taxpayers in the country would agree that in order to have the country going bankrupt would be a very bad thing, and therefore the country going not bankrupt is a good thing that all of us are willing to kind of put our lives on hold in order to do.
4:17DOGE Team MemberI think the thing that's special right now is we actually believe there's a chance to succeed, that there's an administration that's supportive and a great Cabinet and just a great group that will actually make success a possible outcome.
4:31DOGE Team MemberAnd I think that's given the inspiring mission and given the non zero chance of success, it was worth doing.
4:37Elon MuskI'd just like to sort of reemphasize that point. The success of those is only possible with President Trump and with the outstanding Cabinet that he selected. It would be impossible without the support of the President and the cabinet.
4:50Bret BaierBut you're finding the money. I mean, it's big numbers, right?
4:54DOGE Team MemberYeah. Like Ian said, the minimum impulse bit is often a billion dollars. So, for example, the $830 million, which was the online survey, that's an enormous amount of money that wouldn't have been found if the DOGE team wasn't working with it, in that case, the Department of Interior.
5:07DOGE Team MemberBut then, taking it one step further, DOGE then publishes these things on our website for maximum transparency. So now the general public, it would have been impossible for the general public to have seen that.
5:18DOGE Team MemberNow anyone can just log into doge.gov anytime and see these payments. They're not yet in real time. They're close, but they'll probably be in real time within the next few weeks.
5:26Bret BaierBut the process still involves Congress, right? At some level, we try to keep
5:31Elon MuskCongress as informed as possible, but the law does say that money needs to be spent correctly. It should not be spent fraudulently or wastefully. It's not contrary to Congress to avoid waste and fraud.
5:44Elon MuskIt is consistent with the law and consistent with Congress. And we've seen actually great support, at least from the Republican side of the House and occasionally some Democrats, too.
5:56Elon MuskYou know, it's nice to see people cross the aisle once in a while, but usually when they attack Doge, they never attack any of the specifics. So they'll say what we're doing is somehow unconstitutional or legal or whatever.
6:11Elon MuskWe're like, well, which line of the cost savings do you disagree with? And they can't point to any. And we list them all on doge.gov, and the Doge handle on X and you'll see just outrageous things, one outrageous thing after another.
6:26Elon MuskJoe.
6:26Bret BaierGabby, besides Elon, you're one of several billionaires here, co founder of Airbnb, and you wanted to help out.
6:37DOGE Team MemberI bumped into Anthony and Elon, probably back in February, and they told me something about a mine that dealt with retirement, and they said they needed somebody to help out to fix retirement in the government.
6:50DOGE Team MemberI loved the challenge, so I jumped on board. And it turns out there is actually a mine in Pennsylvania that houses every paper document for the retirement process in the government.
7:00DOGE Team MemberNow, picture this giant cave, has 22,000 filing cabinets stacked 10 high to house 400 million pieces of paper. It's a process that started in the 1950s and largely hasn't changed in the last 70 years.
7:15DOGE Team MemberAnd so as he dug into it, we found retirement cases that had so much paper, they had to fit it on a shipping pallet. So the process takes many months, and we're going to make it just many days.
7:27Bret BaierWill it be digitized or how?
7:29DOGE Team MemberAbsolutely. So this will be an online digital process that will take just a few days at most. And I really think, you know, it's an injustice to civil servants who are subjected to these processes.
7:40DOGE Team MemberThat are older than the age of half the people watching your show tonight. So we really believe that the government can have an Apple Store like experience, beautifully designed, great user experience, modern systems,
7:53Bret Baierbecause right now it's by hand.
7:56Elon MuskYes, the retirement process is all by paper, literally with people carrying paper and manila envelopes into this gigantic mine.
8:04Bret BaierSo they can't retire more than a certain number every month?
8:07DOGE Team MemberYes, about 8,000amonth.
8:09Elon MuskThat's how we the reason we discovered it was we were saying, like, well, let's encourage voluntary retirement. They said, well, the most you could do is 8,000amonth. And even under normal circumstances, it can take six to nine months just to have your time and paperwork processed.
8:26Elon MuskAnd they often get the calculations wrong. So like, well, why would it take so long to retire? And they're like, well, because of the mine. You're like, what do you mean, a mine?
8:34Elon MuskWhat's a mine got to do with retiring? And that's where we discovered that all the retirement stuff is done by still done by paper in a process that looks identical to what occurred in the 1950s.
8:45Elon MuskLike, we took a snapshot of the mine when it first started in the 50s to today, it looks the same.
8:49Bret BaierIt's amazing. So how long do you think it will take to turn over as fast as we can?
8:54DOGE Team MemberProbably next couple of months we'll have this overhauled. And you know, I really think, again, like, why are we subjecting our federal workers to processes that they actually have to go through a training just to retire from the government?
9:06DOGE Team MemberThere's a whole training program that people have to go through in order to retire. I think we can do better for them.
9:11Bret BaierARAM Moganassi DOGE ENGINEER you go into these places, one of the more than a dozen engineers, first people to go into the agencies and view the computer data sets.
9:23Bret BaierTell me what you're finding. And for people who don't understand how that process works, explain it for.
9:29DOGE Team MemberYeah, I'll say the first thing that got me really excited about Doge was learning basically the state of government computers. By some estimates, government it costs about $100 billion and it's funding systems that are over 50 years old in the case of something like Social Security or the irs.
9:49DOGE Team MemberSo really critical systems are old, they cost a lot of money to maintain, and they could be the efforts to improve them are often very delayed. So I thought, I'm a software engineer that maybe could make a difference here.
10:05DOGE Team MemberAnd that's really what inspired me at a high level.
10:11Bret BaierI gave you a lot of history about Social Security. And a lot of words about it from. Here's what Democrats have been saying about it.
10:17DOGE Team MemberIt's absurd that Elon Musk is trying to eliminate billions of dollars from Social Security.
10:22Elon MuskElon Musk and President Trump have set
10:24DOGE Team Membertheir sights on cutting.
10:26Elon MuskTheir goal is clear. Destroy Social Security from within.
10:32Bret BaierYou're in the building. I mean, you're in the computers. What's happening there? What are you doing?
10:37DOGE Team MemberYeah, it doesn't line up with my experience on the ground. And I'll say the two improvements that we're trying to make to Social Security are helping people that legitimately get benefits, protect them from fraud that they experience every day on a routine basis, and also make the experience better.
10:56DOGE Team MemberAnd I'll give you one example is at Social Security, one of the first things we learned is that they get phone calls every day of people trying to change direct deposit information.
11:07DOGE Team MemberSo when you want to change your bank account, you can call Social Security. We learned 40% of the phone calls that they get are from fraudsters.
11:15Bret Baier40%?
11:16DOGE Team MemberThat's right. Almost half. Yes.
11:19Elon MuskAnd they steal people's Social Security is what happens. They call in, they say they claim to be a retiree, and they convince the Social Security person on the phone to change where the money's flowing.
11:34Elon MuskIt actually goes to some fraudster. This is happening all day, every day, and then somebody doesn't receive their Social Security. It's because of all the fraud loopholes in the Social Security system.
11:46Bret BaierHow do you reassure people that what you all are doing is not going to affect their benefits?
11:52Elon MuskNo, in fact, what we're doing will help their benefits. Legitimate people, as a result of the work of doge, will receive more Social Security, not less. I want to emphasize that as a result of the work of doge, legitimate recipients of Social Security will receive more money, not less money.
12:10Bret BaierAll right, I want to emphasize that
12:12Elon Muskpoint and let the record show that I said this and it will be proven out to be true. Let's. Let's check back on this in the future.
12:20Bret BaierSo, Washington Post, the Social Security administration website crashed four times in 10 days this month because the servers were overloaded. Blocking millions of retirees and disabled veterans from logging into their online accounts freaked people out.
12:35Bret BaierIs that gonna change?
12:38Elon MuskYes, we're gonna make sure that the website stays online.
12:41DOGE Team MemberYeah.
12:41Bret BaierI mean, but is it a result of going in there or something you're doing.
12:46DOGE Team MemberThe amount of issues that were the Social Security system are enormous. As an example, There are over 15 million people that are over the age of 120 that are marked as alive in the Social Security system.
12:59Bret BaierAnd that's an accurate figure?
13:01Elon MuskYeah.
13:01DOGE Team MemberCorrect. 15 million. Correct. This has been something that's been identified as a problem again pre existing problems since 2008, at least from an IG report. So there are some great people working at the Social Care Administration, Social Security Administration that found this 2008 and nothing was done.
13:18DOGE Team MemberAnd so 15 to 20 million Social Security numbers that were clearly fraudulent were floating around that can be used only for bad intentions. There'd be no way to use those for good intentions.
13:28DOGE Team MemberAnd so one of the things the DOGE team is doing is carefully and very methodically looking at those and making sure that any fraudulent ones are eliminated.
13:36Bret BaierBrad Smith, working at hhs, and obviously another element is Medicare and Medicaid. Nih, what are you finding?
13:48DOGE Team MemberWell, I'd say there's a couple things we're really committed to in our work at hhs. Number one, making sure we continue to have the best biomedical research in the world.
13:56DOGE Team MemberAnd number two, making sure, which President Trump has said over and over again, that we 100% protect Medicare and Medicaid. But there's a lot of opportunity. So if I take NIH as an example today, if you're an NIH researcher and you get a hundred dollar grant at your university today, you get to spend 60 of that and your university spends 40 of that.
14:14DOGE Team MemberThe policy that we're proposing to make is that you get to spend 85 of that and your university spends 15. So that's more money going directly to the scientists who are discovering new cures.
14:24DOGE Team MemberAnother example at NIH is today they have 27 different centers. They got created over time by Congress and they're typically by disease state or body system. There's 700 different IT systems today at
14:34Bret BaierNIH, 700 different IT software systems.
14:38DOGE Team MemberThey can't speak to each other, so
14:39Bret Baierthey don't talk to one another.
14:40DOGE Team MemberWe have 27 different CIOs. So when you think about making great medical discoveries, you have to connect the data.
14:46Bret BaierTime out, time out. You see 27 different chief information officers.
14:51DOGE Team MemberCorrect? Correct.
14:52Elon MuskAnd most of them are non technical.
14:54Bret BaierSo there's a lot there.
14:55DOGE Team MemberThere's a lot of opportunity. It will make science better, not worse.
14:58Elon MuskAnd when I say that our job is tech support, I really mean it. We have to fix the computers. If the computers can't talk to each other, you can't get research done.
15:07Elon MuskIf the computers can't stay online, people won't receive their Social Security. So what we have here are a bunch of failing computer systems that are preventing people from receiving their benefits, that are preventing people from preventing research from happening, that are extremely vulnerable to fraud.
15:26Elon MuskAnd we're fixing it.
15:28Bret BaierAnd does that include AI? Does that include kind of changing the system overall? That's, I guess what people are afraid of is they don't know what this is all looking like.
15:37Bret BaierAnd is it going to affect me in the long term?
15:41Elon MuskIt's going to affect people very positively. So the changes that we're doing here will ensure the solvency of the American government, of the American, of the United States of America.
15:51Elon MuskThis is what we're trying to do, is ensure that people do receive their benefits in the future. And you can only receive your benefits if the country is operating in a healthy and competent way.
16:08Bret BaierAnthony Armstrong, Doge Office of Personnel Management. You're Morgan Stanley banker M and a guy you know money and this is a lot of money sloshing around.
16:19DOGE Team MemberThere's a lot of money sloshing around. There's a lot of money sloshing out the door. And if you look at the federal government and the way the workforce works, it's really a one way ratchet over decades, it's only going up, it's only going up.
16:30DOGE Team MemberYou never take it away. So that leaves you with duplicative functions, it leaves you with overstaffing and it leaves you with functions in the wrong places. So a couple of examples, duplicative functions.
16:41DOGE Team MemberBrad mentioned 27 CIOs. If you had kept going with Brad, he probably would talk about the communications office. I think got 40 distinct communications offices in HHS, right?
16:51Bret BaierYeah, 40.
16:53DOGE Team MemberYeah. And that's not unusual by the way. Multiple offices like that, it's not making anyone healthy. This is not about the employees there. There's many, many hard working, well meaning people who took these jobs.
17:04DOGE Team MemberThese jobs were out there, they applied for them, they took them, they're doing what's there. And it's just that they're duplicating the effort of 40 offices. So you've got that, you've got overstaffing.
17:13DOGE Team MemberA good example of overstaffing would be the IRS has got 1400 people who are dedicated to provisioning laptops and cell phones. So if you join the irs, you get a laptop and a cell phone, you're provisioned.
17:25DOGE Team MemberSo if each of those IRS officers or employees provisioned two employees per day, you could provision the entire IRS in a little more than a month. So 12 times a year you're going
17:37Elon Muskto read because why would you have 1400 people whose only job it is to give out a laptop and a phone.
17:41DOGE Team MemberRight. The whole IRS could be handled once a month. So that doesn't make any sense. And President Trump's been very clear, scalp will not hatchet. And that's the way it's getting done.
17:51DOGE Team MemberAnd then once those decisions are made, there's a very heavy focus on being generous, being caring, being compassionate, and treating everyone with dignity and respect. And if you look at how people have started to leave the government, it is largely through voluntary means.
18:13DOGE Team MemberThere's voluntary early retirement, there's voluntary separation payments. We put in place, deferred resignation, the eight month severance program. So there's a very heavy bias towards programs that are long dated, that are generous, that allow people to exit and go and get a new job in the private sector.
18:29DOGE Team MemberAnd you've heard a lot of, a lot of news about RIFs, about people getting fired. At this moment in time, less than 0.15, not 1.5, less than 0.15 of the federal workforce has actually been given a RIF notice.
18:48Bret BaierSo they're selected if they're illegal.
18:50Elon MuskIt is basically almost no one's gotten fired. That's what we're saying.
18:54Bret BaierTom Cross, working at treasury, you are having access to the payment system, oversees all the outgoing payments. Essentially, those payments were going places. We didn't know where they were going.
19:06DOGE Team MemberRight, yeah, unfortunately, that's the case, Brett. You know, as an ex CFO of a big public tech company, really what we're doing is we're applying public company standards to the federal government.
19:20DOGE Team MemberAnd it is alarming how the financial operations and financial management is set up today. There is actually really only one bank account that's used to disperse all monies that go out of the federal government.
19:34Bret BaierTime out. One bank account.
19:36Elon MuskIt's a big one.
19:37DOGE Team MemberIt's a big one.
19:37Bret BaierIt's a big one.
19:38DOGE Team MemberIt's a big one. A couple weeks ago, it had $800 billion in it, but it's the treasury general account. So when you hear, you know, some of my colleagues here, what they're talking about in terms of the fraud, you have to ask, well, why is this allowed to happen at a financial level?
19:54DOGE Team MemberWell, it's actually quite simple, but alarming the treasury up until now, and thanks to President Trump, we're fixing this. In fact, there's an executive order that he just signed the other day which is protecting America's bank account because it really is the taxpayer's money.
20:08DOGE Team MemberYou know, one, we're changing the culture. The culture is then not A lot of caring and not a lot of commitment to doing what's right. Relative to financial operations, there's a $500 billion of fraud every year.
20:21DOGE Team MemberThere's hundreds of billion dollars of improper payments. And we can't pass an audit. The consolidated financial report is produced by treasury and we cannot pass it on. We have material weaknesses.
20:32DOGE Team MemberWhat that means is that if I was a public company cfo, I would effectively be removed. I couldn't file financial statements, I couldn't issue securities.
20:42Elon MuskCan't pass an audit, Right? The federal government cannot pass an audit. It's impossible. In fact, in order to pass an audit, you need the information necessary to pass an audit.
20:54Elon MuskYou need to have the payment codes, you need to have the payment explanation, and you need to have a person you can contact to understand why that payment was made.
21:00Elon MuskNone of those things were mandatory until just recently. Just a few weeks ago, in fact, maybe last week.
21:06DOGE Team MemberWe're serving 580 plus agencies and up until very recently, effectively they could say, make the payment. And treasury just sent it out as fast as possible, no verification. And so what we're doing is what any household would do.
21:21DOGE Team MemberBut imagine you're a household. You have a bank account. Everyone has an ATM card connected to that account. Everyone has a checkbook in that account. It's not just your children, it's not just your parents.
21:31DOGE Team MemberIt's your in laws, it's your extended family. And they all can go to the account and disperse funds. No questions asked, no justification, no verification.
21:40Bret BaierTyler Hassan, Interior Department. You're a former oil company CEO. You're reviewing contracts before they're approved for funding. What are you finding?
21:52DOGE Team MemberWell, Elon and Steve kind of stole my thunder a little bit, but I actually found that customer service survey contract. I actually have an example of one right here.
22:02DOGE Team MemberI could have done this in high school. I found it. I found it on the weekends. Because under the Biden administration, there was no departmental oversight within the Department of Interior whatsoever.
22:15DOGE Team MemberNone. We are now reviewing every single contract, every single grant. And when things come to my attention that don't make sense, I'm bringing them to Secretary Burgum. And he has been fantastic.
22:25DOGE Team MemberHe's, he's a businessman. He's very supportive of Doge. It's been wonderful to work with him.
22:31Bret BaierIs the battle between government of decades and decades of buildup and business, which you guys are. Is that like a train hitting each other? I mean, it seems like it's pretty disruptive.
22:44Elon MuskWell, this is a revolution. And I think it might be the might be the biggest revolution in government since the original revolution. But at the end of the day, America is going to be in much better shape.
22:55Elon MuskAmerica will be solvent. The critical programs that people depend upon will work and it's going to be a fantastic future. But are we going to get a lot of complaints along the way?
23:08Elon MuskAbsolutely. One of the things I learned at PayPal was, you know who complains the loudest and with the most amount of fake righteous indignation? The fraudsters. It's a tell NGOs that are crazy.
23:22Elon MuskLike the $2 billion to Stacey Abrams NGO that basically doesn't exist and suddenly gets $2 billion awarded from the federal government. She asks why, and there are many such cases like that.
23:33Bret BaierI think that most people, common sense wise, would say the fraud's gotta end. They're concerned about the 94 year old mother who skips a check or somehow doesn't get what she's supposed to get.
23:47DOGE Team MemberRight.
23:47Elon MuskAnd what we're trying to say is actually that the 94 year old grandmother is, is actually, as a result of Doge's work, going to get her check. She's not going to be robbed by fraud like she's getting robbed today.
23:59Elon MuskAnd the solvency of the, of the federal government will ensure that she continues to receive those Social Security checks that Medicare continues to work, without which we're all doomed.
24:13Elon MuskThe reason we're doing this is because if we don't do it, America is going to go insolvent, gonna go bankrupt, and nobody's gonna get anything.
24:22Bret BaierWhy are you guys all doing it? I mean, you can pipe up, but you don't have to be here, right? I mean, you don't have to be doing this.
24:30DOGE Team MemberI have four blessed with four beautiful children, my wife and I, but we have a real fiscal crisis and this is not sustainable. And what's worse, back to my children and everyone else's children, is we are burning them with that debt and it's only going to grow.
24:47Bret BaierSee, there's not a lot of hierarchy here. You guys are kind of all approaching it in different, you know, silos, but with the same kind of goal. Right. I mean, this is really Silicon Valley private sector colliding with government.
25:02DOGE Team MemberYeah, exactly. And we're headed in a bad path, but that the chance of success exists. And just the one that just is in my head right now, which is a fairly mundane one, but I think is very illustrative, is credit cards.
25:15DOGE Team MemberThere are in the federal government around 4.6 million credit cards for around 2.3 to 2.4 million employees. This doesn't make sense.
25:25Bret BaierRight.
25:26DOGE Team MemberAnd so one of the things all the teams have worked on is we've worked with the agencies and said, do you need all of these credit cards? Are they being used?
25:34DOGE Team MemberCan you tell us physically where they are?
25:37Bret BaierI hope they're getting frequent flyers.
25:39DOGE Team MemberActually, on a different note, the rewards program the federal government has is actually not very good. That's a whole other negotiation. Yeah, exactly. But so far the teams have worked together and they've reduced it from 4.6 million to 4.3 million.
25:54DOGE Team MemberSo we're taking it easy.
25:56Elon MuskBut clearly there should not be, you know, there should not be more credit cards than there are people.
26:02Bret BaierYeah, Joe, Middle level employees. Are they seeing a benefit to being empowered by taking out bureaucracy?
26:11DOGE Team MemberI mean, absolutely. I mean, I think what you're seeing is taking the best of Silicon Valley in the business world and bringing it into the government. We're bringing the best practices and the best methodologies and people are inspired.
26:22DOGE Team MemberRight. Especially on the retirement process, which I could speak to. They've been trying to modernize and get off of paper since early 2000s, very unsuccessfully. Every attempt has gone over budget and been cancelled because it hasn't been successful.
26:39DOGE Team MemberAnd so, you know, I showed up and I feel like I'm here because it's an interesting problem. We can use design to solve it and good engineering and really create a better experience for everybody.
26:49Elon MuskWe're talking about elementary financial controls that are necessary for any company to function. So like if these can. If the federal government, if a commercial company operated the way the federal government does, then it would immediately go bankrupt.
27:06Elon MuskIt would be delisted, the officers would be arrested. The changes we're putting in place will enable the federal government to pass an audit. It will enable taxpayers to know where the money is going and know that their hard earned tax dollars are being spent.
27:19Elon MuskWell, the ways that the government is defrauded is that the computer systems don't talk to each other. So if the computer systems don't talk to each other, then you can, you can exploit that gap.
27:30Elon MuskAnd fraud says exploit that gap. Take advantage. For example, there were over $300 million of small business Administration loans that has been given out to people under the age of 11.
27:43DOGE Team MemberActually to add to it, 300 million under the age of 11 and over. 300 million to over the age of 120, definitely.
27:49Bret BaierSmall business loans, correct?
27:51Elon MuskYes. The oldest American is 114. So it's safe to say if their age is 115 or above, they're fake or they should be in the guns broken world records.
28:03Elon MuskAnd we should not be giving out loans to babies. So the youngest recipient of a Small Business Administration loan is a nine month year old, which is a very precocious baby we're talking about here.
28:17Elon MuskSo obviously it was just fraudulent. And they do terrible things. They actually will see that a kid's been born. They will steal that kid's Social Security number and then take out a loan and leave that kid with a bad credit rating.
28:30Elon MuskThere was literally a baby. The terrible things are being done is
28:33Bret Baierwhat we're saying and how we're stopping these terrible things. And you can stop it.
28:36Elon MuskI mean, we are stopping.
28:38DOGE Team MemberThe reason this is happening is because the two systems are not talking to each other. Right. And so you don't know at the Small Business Administration that you're giving a loan to a nine month old, which happened in one case because you're not cross referencing that with the Social Security Administration data that has birth dates.
28:55DOGE Team MemberSo that very, very simple fix eliminates tremendous fraud. And that there are multiple systems across the government where the systems are not speaking with one another. And if you just solve that simple problem, you would solve a huge amount of fraud.
29:11Elon MuskOne of the key tricks that the fraudsters pull is that they will use the fact that someone is marketing as live and as sort of just that that Social Security number is marked as live in Social Security and then get disability and unemployment insurance for a dead person.
29:28Elon MuskBecause the databases don't talk to each other. All they got was from Social Security is like, is this person alive? Yes. They're not. They're not alive. It's falsely marked.
29:36Elon MuskPerson is falsely marked as alive. Social Security. But they didn't. But that was. A fraudster can now get unemployment and disability from a dead person. This is happening all the time at scale.
29:49Bret BaierAre you surprised at some of the legal efforts and some of the judges that have weighed in? There's about 8 or 10 now of these cases that are at least temporary holds.
30:01Bret BaierThey're being challenged by the DOJ. Are you surprised by that pushback?
30:07Elon MuskWell, the D.C. circuit is notorious for having a very far left bias. And when you look at the people close to some of these judges who are. Where are they working?
30:19Elon MuskAre they working at these NGOs? Oh, they're getting them. They're the ones getting this money. Does that seem like a system that lacks corruption? Sounds like corruption to me.
30:28Bret BaierLast thing, do you guys all see this as a patriotic duty? Is that really what this is about?
30:34Elon MuskIt's essential.
30:36DOGE Team MemberI do 100%. I was running five businesses in Houston, and I left that left great people to do this. And my wonderful wife said, go for it, and here I am.
30:48DOGE Team MemberBut I feel like this is me giving back to the country.
30:51Elon MuskIf we don't do this, we're sunk. Unless this exercise is successful, the ship of America will sink. That's why we're doing it.
31:01Bret BaierWell, gentlemen, I really appreciate the time today. And hopefully, it took some of the myth and mystery out of Doge and what's happening behind the scenes.
31:10Elon MuskThank you.
31:12News AnchorAll right. As you see there, we were just listening into that segment that aired a bit earlier today on FOX News. It was an exclusive with Bret Baier being able to sit down with members of the Doge team, of course, including