To Shi have eight thirty fift about KIRCD talk station. A very happy Monday today made you an extra special happy because the return of Mandy Gunnas Sakara, author of Y'all Fired, a Southern Bellows Guide. You're restoring federalism and draining the swamp we had around in October when the
book first came out. She's been at the center of the US energy and environmental policy for a full decade from the Senate cloak room of the Oval Office of veteran environmental attorney, energy strategist, and communicator, served during President Trump's first term as chief of staff at the US Environmental Protection Agency, currently a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and welcome back. It is a real pleasure to have you back on the show. Mandy.
Yeah, good to be with you. Brian.
I mean, can I just sort of sum up what I think your perception is that this DOGE Department is like the answer to your dreams.
Yeah, I think you summed it up.
Well, it really is.
And it's man, it's such a beautiful thing to see because having been on the inside, even in my position as chief of staff and the access to the information that I had it was hard to paint the whole picture. You could pinpoint specific types of waste, fraud or abuse, or redundancies and efficiencies. You could pinpoint those sorts of things.
But it really is a beautiful thing where you have someone like Elon and his really talented team of software engineers going and looking at the data and then painting a big picture in ways that all of us can understand and all of us can see, and is an absolute misuse of taxpayer resources. So yeah, it's an answer to a lot of prayers.
Actually, well, sunlight, it's a great disinfect and lord knows, we're getting a lot of it. And one of the problems that I'm sure you probably during your period of time in the administration, we're as frustrated as anybody else the obstructionism that comes when people that are responsible for the oversight of our dollars, subcommittees, committees, the congressmen, the congress women, the senators, when they're told basically go to hell when they ask for information.
Yeah, really, I know, I know, it's really frustrating, and it's you know, that is part of their responsibility. Their responsibility is to report back to the public how they're using these funds and what it's actually doing. But it's not just the members of Congress. I mean, it's also these bureaucrats, these entrenched deep state bureaucrats. And here's the truth. There is a crisis of expertise on Capitol Hill. Frankly, you have a lot of people there that don't really
know what they're doing. So they're wholly dependent on deep state bureaucrats who've been working at their job for thirty years to give them information they don't otherwise know how to get. So that's how the deep state works. They don't give them all the information. Maybe they give them
a little drip drip here. But it's been many decades of this type of imbalance between an agency funded to eight to the tune of eight billion dollars and as EP is an example, with the oversight staff of less than two million dollars trying to perform oversight, and so you just have this massive mismatch and the resulting consequences is just decades of layers of complex and us not knowing how our resources are spent well.
And it's also seemed to be very obviously a just simple lack of care of how money is spent. I mean, Musk over the weekend was talking about, you know, over looking at through the the Department of Treasury, right Treasury department, and he says, you know, I was told that there are currently over one hundred million dollars a year of in timement payments individual with no social Security number, even
a temporary ID number. And see, you know, he pulls the room and Treasury he says, what percentage of that is unequivocal obvious fraud? And the consensus in the room was at least fifty billion dollars of it. That's something that's is simple to fix. Look, no social Security number, no ID, you don't get any money. How hard is that?
It shouldn't be difficult at all. But that's what these agencies, they've just become all about, constantly asking for more money. There is no incentive for the everyday bureaucrat to find ways to be incentive, to find ways to cut costs and to be truthful about the expenditure of those costs. And there's this mentality, this culture in DC that people
are almost entitled to these taxpayer resources. And when you come in and you ask questions, they like to pretend like they're these global do gooders, and they're saying, oh, but this poor person is going to lose access to these resources that they really need. Meanwhile, that person isn't even getting the funds. To the extent they're getting any it's barely enough to actually live. But you know what's
coming off the top. A fair amount is coming off the top and going to nonprofits that either pad them personally or their relatives or just grow the power of the left, which is ultimately what they want.
Yeah, non governmental organizations NGOs, you know, and quite a the ole we're five oh one C three, we're not for profit. Yeah, but you're making a salary of four hundred and five hundred thousand dollars a year. Is president or CEO the five oh one C three? I mean, that's what's happening.
Yeah, that's exactly right. And it's it's so discussing. It's so many of them is going to the spouses of people. Just look at the net worth of someone like Samantha Power. She was the administrator that had essentially of USAID and her net worth grew five times. I think that's right. It's around that it's a significant number. Grew five times her salary has been the same salaries for bureaucrats are typically capped out around one hundred and eighty thousand dollars.
Yet somehow she has a mass a multi million dollar fortune and it just leaves you scratching your head, Huh,
where did that money come from? And it's most likely because it was funnel to nonprofits of which she or her family was sitting on the board, and they get to reap the benefits of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds going into their back pocket, and they cover it up by saying, well, we're helping the poor in the world, We're giving people in Africa access to water and food, but really they are just patting their own personal coffers.
Well, and as I read through the list of these things that the Doge has revealed and the comments from the senators that you know, I had no idea that this money was being spent this way, And I said, wait a second, aren't you responsible for the power of the purse? I mean, you go ahead and you allocate forty million dollars to USA, but then you stop. Somebody
had to approve the project. But ultimately, you know, twenty million dollars goes to a sesame street show in Iraq, And then how much of that twenty million dollars really went to the sesame street show in a rock production. It didn't land in some corrupt officials pocket. They don't follow the trail of the money, and sob it just stops once the aid's been allocated to the general collective us AID fund.
Yeah, that's right, and it's there's no accountability and no oversight. And that's why you see the people who are screaming the most are the ones who have the most to lose in terms of this personal racket or money laundering scheme, if you will. That's that is what it is. These people are using their positions of trust and consequence to
siphon money off to the side to their benefit. And they use the stories of people that most people would say like, yeah, they could use some help, or of course we would want to take care of these vulnerable populations. They use that as a cover for their own sick game.
And those are the people who are sitting outside of USAID or some of these other areas that are throwing up their hands, and the Democrat members of Congress are at the front of the line because they are recipients of campaign donations from these people who are putting taxpayer resources in their own pocket.
Yeah, and that's the to me, that is the most I don't I want to call it comical that they're screaming at the top of their lungs over these funds being identified, these outlandish, outrageous programs that no American could find straight faced legitimate. They're not saying that the money didn't go to these stupid programs like shrimp running on treadmills. They're just screaming about the general focus on USA and the fraud, waste abuse and defending it. For some reason.
There's no denying here. There's no that didn't happen. That's a lie. Elon Musk is making that up.
It's yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's it's just frustrating to see and I will say though, it's it's frustrating to see some of the reaction. But you know, those people are the minority now, and that is a really wonderful feeling, and the cats out of the bag. I mean, again,
those of us who are on the inside. Some of it was the fact that we didn't really understand the links the deep State would go to cover their tracks, and they had decades to figure out ways to cover up their tracks, and they're very, very good at it.
So we were all in there. You know, you're drinking from a fire hose is the words people often used to describe what it's like to go into these positions, And a lot of us went in not knowing that the tricks that the deep State would use not just to confuse, but to try to undermine and to hide
what they were actually doing. All that's over. So it really is great to see Elon Musk, his team, Department of Government Efficiency, and most importantly, the American people see this and they're behind the president and his work one hundred and ten percent.
Yeah, and you know it as well as I do. Yeah, Mandy, that they've only scratched the surface. I mean, Elon Musk has identified some real low hanging fruit just in one USA department I mentioned the Treasury Department. He's worked there as long as he can get his access back centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service, National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, Department of Energy, and Lord Almighty, nobody wants me, that wants
the military spending to be audited more than me. They can't even pass an audit seven or eight times in a row.
Mandy, I know, and I'm sure I'm sure you've seen. There was an interview not too long ago of one of the one of the heads, one of the people who was responsible for these types of audits, and you know, she was just incredulous that people would wouldn't trust them. Yeah, we felled audits, but you don't understand what an audit is is essentially her response, and it doesn't really matter.
Like again, this goes to there's this culture of people in DC that are so arrogant and so flippant about their very real responsibility, and when people come around asking basic questions that they cannot answer, they just they try to belittle you say that, well, you don't really understand it. If you were, if you were like me, you would understand. So yeah, look, Elon Musk is scratching the surface. This type of misuse and and miss expenditure of funds. It
permeates every single agency. So there's there's a lot more to come, and I'm excited to see it for it to finally be exposed.
A lot more to come and maybe even I'll keep my fingers crossed some criminal investigations into where this money has landed. Manny gives the car author of y'all Fired, a Southern bell's guide to restoring federalism and draining the swamp. She had an advance on Doge. This is what the book's about. And I'm sure, I said, I know she's seeing it just come all to fruition with it being
ferreted out. Mandy. I got your book up on my blow page fifty five cars dot com so people can get a copy of it to the extent they haven't done it already, and I'll encourage them to do so. It's been great here talking with you. Keep up the great work and looking forward to another volume maybe uh something like along the aftermath lines.
Yeah, what it's like after y'all fired. Yeah, well we'll come up with a gud talb. But thank you, thanks for having me, and thanks for the support.
Well pleasure, Mandy. It's been a real treat.