Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast. I'm your host, Will Walden, and if you're new here, this is a show all about Elon Musk and his groundbreaking work that he's doing with his various companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and of course, X. And before we dive into today's episode, I wanted to share a quick insight from our shows analytics. It turns out the 45% of you listening right now are subscribed to the show. And thank you for that.
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for the show. Much of it's been misinformation, and I'd like to address some of that and the importance of this effort here in the next few minutes. We had a very informative meeting with Mr. Musk and his team about the work they're doing on behalf of the American people. I first met Elon Musk maybe 15 years ago when he came to my office and said he had a new company called SpaceX and he wanted to be able to compete with other companies that had all of the NASA contracts for
space for space. And I guess looking back on it, that was quite a long time ago, but it see how far SpaceX has come, which now carries the vast majority of payloads into space for the United States government and for the private sector.
Interestingly, and to the point of the Department of Government Efficiency, Mr. Musk had to sue the federal government in order to compete, which tells you a lot about the problems that the federal government has that is not open to competition, and thus creates a lot of the problems now that I think the Department of Government Efficiency is now looking at. But in addition to all that, Mister Musk has now moved, his moved personally and his family and his businesses to Texas.
So I'm happy to have him as a constituent. And he's creating a lot of jobs in my state, everywhere from Boca Chica, South Texas, and Cameron County, which is now, I think, officially renamed Star Base. And the Tesla Gigafactory, which is right outside of Austin, which I visited a few months ago with Mr. Musk. Starlink, obviously providing Internet access to people in remote parts of the planet that would never hope to have that
access. All sorts of interesting things that he's involved in. And certainly I think we can all acknowledge whether you like Mr. Musk and what he's doing or you don't like it, he's obviously a brilliant individual and certainly among the most brilliant people I, I know. So you have to ask yourself, why would a guy, maybe one of the richest, maybe the richest human being on the planet do what he is doing for the US government? I think that's an important
question asked. Certainly he's not doing it for the money. He's certainly not doing it for the glory. Because all of the you can, anytime you start messing with the status quo here in Washington, DC, you can be assured you will become a target. You will be criticized, you'll be demagogued against, you'll be lied about. It's just goes with the territory and something I'm sure that he has not necessarily experienced before.
And frankly, I'm glad he's willing to put up with all of that in order to do some important things. What, of course the Department of Government efficiency is focused on. Is efficiency something that we can we purport and claim to be focused on here in Washington? Waste, abuse and fraud. But we talk about it a lot, but that's basically what we end up doing is talking about it and not doing much, if anything about it. Right now, the US national debt that's like our credit card sits
at over $36.4 trillion. Now. I'm sure that the American people, certainly it's true in my case, can't really get your head around how much money that really is. To me, one of the most telling indications of how big a number that is, is we're now spending more money on interest, on our national debt than we are on our defense, which is the most fundamental and important role that the federal government plays.
I know sometimes when you have such a big number or a big challenge or big problem, it's easy to say, well, it's just too hard. We can't do anything about it.
And in the case of politicians, some may say, and I bet there are more than a few who say, well, it's too politically risky to try to deal with the status quo because I'm sure they're going to be some sacred cows or some pet projects that individual members of Congress or maybe constituent groups or special interest groups want to preserve. And so they don't want you looking at that. They don't want you disrupting the status quo.
But as we, the reality is, and as we heard from President Trump last night, as well as news reports, there are many examples of outrageous expenditures of taxpayer dollars that need to be exposed and they need to be addressed. And there's no time. We have to start somewhere. And I would submit that there's no time like the president.
Well, if you spoke to someone struggling with a substance abuse problem, an addiction, you would never say to that person, well, the situation with your addiction is just so bad that it's hopeless. It's simply too hard to change. There's nothing you can do. Well, the truth is, Washington, DC is addicted to spending and has been for a long, long time. And we have no responsible choice but to address it. So I'm glad that Mister Musk and his team has stepped up.
And while DOGE may not erase that national debt overnight, they are certainly highlighting the problems that that those taxpayer expenditures present. And I think this effort will be part of the answer to how we get back on track and correct our fiscal challenges here in our country. Now, of course, there are many in Washington who want nothing to change. I think we saw some of them last night sitting on their hands during the president's State of
the Union speech. They like the way things are. They like the status quo. As a result, there's been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth and frankly, dissemination of a lot of erroneous information, again, which is just simply not
reality. Now, some in the media have created, for their own reasons, misperceptions that Mister Musk and his team are going in and making personnel and financial decisions on their own or forcing these decisions on the respective agencies that they are researching. But that's simply false. Let me say that again. Some may have the perception that Mister Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency team are themselves making personnel or financial decisions on their own.
That's false. The reality is that those working for the Department of Government Efficiency are doing so in compliance with the law. Each agency's DOGE employees have gone through the Presidential Personnel Office onboarding process. They have appropriate security clearances and are direct contract employees of these agencies. And they must abide by the same guidelines and rules as other employees to ensure the protection of sensitive information.
The reality on the ground is that DOGE employees are reviewing systems, processes, data, personnel and making recommendations. Recommendations to the agency heads, then the agency head. In the case, most cases, a Cabinet member appointed by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate is the one with the authority to make those discretionary calls. Now, of course, this is a tremendous, it is a tremendous project, as I indicated earlier, to reform our government's giant bureaucracy.
And with any undertaking of this size, it's a given that there will be some trial and error, some mistakes that are made, but hopefully those that can be readily addressed once pointed out. And the administration has made those course corrections and they can, should continue to do so and I believe will do so. But there's much to be hopeful about. One example that Doge identified, and it is just to me a symptom of the problem, is reforming software licenses and subscriptions.
We were told at the meeting at the White House with Mr. Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency that some agencies are finding out that they're paying for as many as 37,000 software licenses, but only about 10,000 employees are responsible for functions that require those licenses, 37,000 licenses, but only 10,000 arguably would be required. Now think about what this means for a minute. And again, this is just a symptom, I think, of a larger
problem. This means taxpayers are paying for a lot of licenses, software licenses that are sitting around and are not being used. Imagine if a private company let's something like this go unaddressed. So of course they wouldn't, because if they did, they eventually would go out of business. They'd go bankrupt and cease to exist. But the federal government doesn't work that way. Some of these things that Mister Musk and his team are finding
should be an embarrassment. I can tell you that my constituents back in Texas are paying close attention and mainly like what they see. But the perennial problem is that the federal government just is very slow to change. And part of that has to do with the incentives that exists in the private sector that don't exist in the public sector. As I indicated, a private business couldn't do what the federal government does, or they'd go belly up.
This is part of the reason that our national debt has been growing by leaps and bounds without any credible effort by the Congress or the federal government to change. And change we must. It's unsustainable. Now here in Congress, we have a certain amount of accountability because we run for election. We have to stand for re election. Our constituents get to vote for us or against us. And we naturally want to be responsive to what our constituents are telling us.
There's always sensitivity, for example, and what we spend in our offices, we take great care, I bet to a person not to waste the taxpayers dime. Now, that's the sort of accountability that democracy provides. Government of the people, by the people, for the people. But when you look at the bureaucracy, a word that literally means rule by the desk, there's no such incentives. There's no accountability.
Until now. So to have someone like Elon Musk and Doge come in and shake things up is just exactly what Washington needs. And again, it should be no surprise to any of us that there's some folks here in the in town who don't like what they see. There are many people who want nothing to change, and we're definitely hearing a lot of speculation in addition to the misinformation about where what this means and where it will
ultimately lead. But many of these stories have turned out to be nothing more than that, stories. We know there's always been waste, fraud and abuse within the government, but it does not have to be that way. The problem is big, but it's our job as elected members of Congress working as part of the federal government, working for the American people, not to ignore it, not to to give pretty speeches talking about how bad the problem is. But actually our job is to do something about it.
And that's why I appreciate what the Department of Government Efficiency and the Trump administration are doing. I truly believe this is a once in a generation opportunity to actually get our fiscal house in order. This is not easy. If it were easy, we would have done it before. This is hard, it's politically risky, but it's absolutely critical that we do so.
If we look at what the voters told us on November the 5th of last year, we saw an overwhelming desire of the American people to change the direction of the country. They gave President Trump and us a mandate for change. And I think what Doge is doing, along with the Trump administration is very much in line with the mandate that we got from the voters on November the 5th. So I support the efforts that the Department of Government
Efficiency are undertaking. And I look forward to continuing to work with Mr. Musk and President Trump as a member of the Senate caucus on for for DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency so that we can get our nation's fiscal trajectory back on track. It's absolutely essential that we do so. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I would note the absence of a quorum. Hey, thank you so much for listening today. I really do appreciate your
support. If you could take a second and hit the subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening on right now, I greatly appreciate it. It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never miss an episode. And each episode is about 10 minutes or less to get you caught up quickly. And please, if you want to support the show even more, go to patreon.com/stage Zero. And please take care of yourselves and each other. And I'll see you tomorrow.