Title: The GOP's Beleaguered Budget

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. It's the morning after an all-nighter for the United States Senate as Democrats and Republicans battled over spending cuts and tax cuts. It's the morning after a Republican congressman in Georgia faced angry constituents who complained about a chainsaw approach to cutting needed services. The taxpayer who used that term may not even have known what was going on at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, around the same time where Elon Musk was posing with an actual chainsaw to celebrate what he's doing.

Here's part of the exchange between a constituent and Republican Congressman Rich McCormick as recorded by the Atlanta Constitution in NBC News. This runs about a minute.

Constituent: CDC workers working on the bird flu being fired by DOGE and then having to be rehired when someone realized, "Oh, gosh, we need those people." [inaudible 00:01:09] Why is a supposedly conservative party taking such a radical and extremist and sloppy approach to this?

[applause]

Rich McCormick: A lot of the work they do is duplicitous with AI. Once again, one of the problems we have-- [background noise] I happen to be a doctor. I know a few things. If we continue to grow the size of government and we can't afford it, it's going to have shortfalls in your Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other things that we can't afford guys. We have to make some decisions.

Constituent: I understand you're trying to do more with less. That's reasonable. What's not reasonable is taking this chainsaw approach, which they obviously admit when they fired these people and then decided, "Oh, we fired the wrong people. We got to bring them back in." Why is this being jammed down the pipe so rushed and sloppily?

Brian Lehrer: There was that North of Atlanta, even as House Speaker Mike Johnson at CPAC was framing it like this. Note that he says the firings are being designed by an algorithm.

Mike Johnson: What Elon and the team are doing is what Congress has not had the ability to do. They have cracked the code. They're inside the belly of the beast of the bureaucracy and the algorithms are crawling through. That's right. They're exposing this massive fraud, waste, and abuse that we have not been able to uncover because the deep state has hidden it from us. This is a revolutionary moment. It really is.

Brian Lehrer: House Speaker Mike Johnson. Did you hear how the algorithm got applause? Johnson is maybe about to face rising backlash in affected GOP communities but framing it like that anyway. Now, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer framed it like this as the Senate's all-nighter began.

Chuck Schumer: Mr. President, the Senate is in for a very long day and a very long night. Over the next day or so, Senate Republicans will try to advance a budget resolution that clears the way to cut taxes for Donald Trump's billionaire friends. Democrats are going to hold the floor all day long and all night long to expose how Republicans want to cut taxes for billionaires while gutting things Americans care about, health care, jobs, public safety, national security, housing, education.

Brian Lehrer: Chuck Schumer there. With us here, Meredith Lee Hill, Congress reporter for Politico covering GOP leadership. Her latest article goes to the backlash that's beginning in Republican districts, like in the clip we heard from Georgia. The article is called The Private GOP Panic Over the Slash-and-Burn DOGE Firings. Meredith, thanks for joining us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Meredith Lee Hill: Hi, thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Your article came out before that Town Hall meeting, I believe, for Congressman McCormick in his district North of Atlanta, but listening to that clip, is it an example of what you wrote about?

Meredith Lee Hill: Yes, I think we're hearing certainly a variety of reactions from Hill Republicans right now. Publicly, they're very interested in supporting the president and all of these efforts to rein in federal bureaucracy and really the slash-and-burn that we're seeing across the federal government, but privately this weekend, there was a litany of lawmakers who were highly concerned about these indiscriminate firings across public health and safety rules, especially some of the Veterans Affairs roles that were hit with this as well.

They started calling White House officials, anyone who would pick up the phone. The White House legislative team got the brunt of this, but they furiously worked behind the scenes all weekend to make sure that some of these roles were reinstated. In particular, you mentioned bird flu earlier. That was one of their big concerns, but also jobs across public health and safety rules across rural counties and other places are really top of their mind right now. We're hearing a lot of public support.

Certainly, there is a general consensus that the federal government, the size of it should be reined in is a core GOP principle, but really, the more of the slash-and-burn tactics are starting to really generate a ton of constituent concern calls coming into these Republican offices, and then also these Republicans trying to reach out frantically to any White House official that they can get on the phone.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, any Republicans listening anywhere in the country who are now questioning whether what's happening is what you voted for? Is the chainsaw massacre complete with Elon Musk's chainsaw photo op really it? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or you can say if you support the way things are being done despite what's been reported as the false accusations of poor performance in form letter emails, or the firings and then calling back to work of staff needed for bird flu and nuclear safety is another one, or do you really want to abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that polices abuse of Americans by the finance sector, to take another example?

212-433-WNYC. Anybody may call or text 212-433-9692 with Meredith Lee Heal from Politico. Your article includes part of the Mike Johnson clip that we played. I drew the listeners' attention to the word algorithm in that clip. Do you know what he meant by that? Are mass layoffs of government workers and public safety departments like the FAA, 400 layoffs, and the Transportation Safety Administration, they dropped 200 more people yesterday, all this just after the recent series of plane crashes, being decided by algorithm rather than by humans in any way?

Meredith Lee Hill: We've heard the speaker say the word algorithms a couple of times now. I think in his goal to frame this as a very methodical data-driven exercise-- I think what we've seen in particular across some agencies is people even with obviously some of these positions that if a human would go through and maybe these are humans on the DOGE team who are unfamiliar with some of the operations of the federal government and why it's important to keep some of these roles as they're laying off other folks.

Microbiologists within USDA who are working on bird flu would pop up to a person looking at that as a pretty important job at this point, obviously, as the threat of that is expanding across dairy farms and poultry farms in the country.

I think we've also seen some people are getting flagged because there are certain descriptions in their titles that include even the word trans, as in transnational or something, but because they have these words in their titles and descriptions, they are getting flagged by algorithms or folks going through these long roles at agencies as somebody who's a a problematic employee or someone that they should essentially look at firing when really their title is something that's not dealing with that kind of issue at all.

I think it is unclear about how these firings are happening. I think part of the concern that we're hearing from Republican lawmakers is that there's just been so many people swept up in the firings that aren't necessarily going through in a vetted way. That is part of their concern. At some agencies, we're seeing that there have been four or five master lists floating around with thousands and thousands of employees' names on them.

You might have a senior official intervene and say, "Oh, that person actually is essential. Take them off the list," but then they're on four or five other lists still. It's just this really odd scenario where there's all of this data being combed over, but not necessarily in a way, I think some of these Republican lawmakers point out, that is the most efficient at this point.

Brian Lehrer: Speaker Johnson defended in the clip the way things are being done on the basis of finding waste, fraud, and abuse, but I'm seeing so much reporting, Meredith, that describes how they can't justify hardly any of these firings by specific examples of waste, fraud, or abuse. In fact, many people are getting form letter emails, as you know, that say they're being let go because of poor performance when their performance reviews have been excellent.

That actually sounds like abuse, falsely tarring those innocent and high-performing workers. Are you seeing any evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse driving most of these cuts that they're actually presenting as opposed to say, just not liking what some of these agencies do, like USAID with foreign aid or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or yesterday's launch of what the Washington Post says will be 7,000 layoffs at the IRS?

Meredith Lee Hill: I think there have been specific interests of the Trump administration to go into some of these agencies, cut jobs in particular at places that they feel don't really serve Trump's mission. That's been a real source of concern with lawmakers on Capitol Hill who are supposed to be the appropriators or who are supposed to be in charge of many of these programs and agencies. I think the one thing, obviously Republicans are supportive of limiting the size of the federal government, and some of these efforts, I have identified things that could be cut.

I think some of the concerns that we are hearing are that there's been such an indiscriminate slash-and-burn across some of these places that it's concerning to lawmakers at this point.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Tammy in Livingston, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Tammy. Thanks for calling in.

Tammy: Thank you for taking my call. Good morning. I always feel like I have to preface when I talk with anybody that I didn't vote for Donald Trump. I consider myself a conservative/independent. I wrote in Nikki Haley. That said, a small government is a traditional conservative value like your guest said, and cutting government never really feels good because these programs were designed to help. In general, I'm not against looking for waste, cutting waste, but Donald Trump is just opening himself up to all kinds of attacks because he's doing it just erratically.

Now, erratic is a term that describes him. Disruption, move fast, and break things, that's what he does. He's probably trying to meet some 30-day historic record, "In my first 100 days, we did this," but the value that might be there in cutting waste that is traditionally a value is being lost because it's being done without explanation, without enough thought, without enough care, I think. I also have similar thoughts on the immigration front, which we won't go into now.

Brian Lehrer: Tammy, thank you. Call us again. I think we have a similar sentiment on the phone from Earl in Manhattan. Earl, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Earl: Hi, good morning. It's nice to talk to you, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. I got to tell you, I need where I start and where I end because there are so many things. There's a lot of waste, according to reporting that I've seen in the free press about USAID aid, basically financing Hamas against the American interest on one side of that, but that's one thing. That's clear waste right there.

I've had family members in state and county government in high positions and they are encouraged to pack up [inaudible 00:14:03] with people and hire more people and [inaudible 00:14:08]. I was a former school board president and in my first two years, we were able to reduce the tax bill to the people because the man that was [inaudible 00:14:23] of the school system was the business administrator, the board secretary, and he was the principal and the superintendent.

There was an old man as a nice president, but they were using stamps. They never even reviewed any bills or looked for ways to cut costs. You just need to have someone with open eyes to take a look. It looks really bad the way they're doing it. It may be illegal some of the things that they're doing as far as firing people or trying to get people off the roles, but you would think that the executive department would be able to hire people and they would also be able to fire people somehow, maybe with the help of Congress. It is a worthy goal, but it is crazy the way it's being done.

Brian Lehrer: Earl, thank you for your call. We really appreciate it. Our guest is Meredith Lee Hill, who covers Congress, especially Republican leadership in Congress for Politico. Meredith, any indication yet that the Republican Congress members you cover have mixed feelings about the IRS layoffs in particular announced yesterday right at the start of tax season? Are they unhappier that refunds could be slowed and constituents won't be able to get the IRS on the phone to answer questions or happier that their constituents can get away with more stuff on their returns because they might be audited less?

Meredith Lee Hill: I think there's generally a sense of happiness among Republican lawmakers who have essentially complained about the IRS and some of the efforts they claim have targeted conservatives in the past. That's something I think they're interested in reining in the IRS. They were not supportive of former President Joe Biden's effort to boost IRS agents and folks who could audit and basically bring in more tax money for the country.

I think that's just something that we'll see play out, especially as we get deeper into tax season. If there are delays in people getting refunds back and everyday folks who are waiting on money who don't get it, they are going to start talking to their representatives and complaining about that and we'll probably see more pressure on them if that is something that happens.

Brian Lehrer: We are getting a lot of interesting mixed-feelings calls and texts like the two callers that we just heard who have some budgetary conservative leanings but really don't like the way this is being done. Here's another one in a text message. It says, "A much more surgical approach is required in eliminating waste and fraud in government," but the listener also says, "Until now, all the audits of the local and federal levels exposed the waste but did not take the next step in actually eliminating it.

Even President Clinton and Obama talked about the problem. It is the system, not the people. Although job loss with severance and adequate notice is common in the private sector, it should be the same on the government level to right size. For the record," listener says, "I was a Republican all my life until 2016." There's some of the mixed feelings. I guess that's part of what you're reporting on in your articles, right?

Meredith Lee Hill: Yes, I think there is an interest even with Democrats on Capitol Hill who want to find access in the federal government and get rid of it, essentially. I think that's something that there is some small consensus on. It is obviously where you start cutting and how you do that. That is the most sensitive issue at this point.

Brian Lehrer: I guess this brings us to the Senate's all-nighter and the Chuck Schumer clip we played. Now, in addition to the DOGE day-one chainsaw approach, we have the congressional process beginning for the actual federal budget. Schumer argued there that the Republicans want to cut services for regular-income Americans so they can give tax cuts to billionaires. I see one amendment the Democrats offered yesterday was no tax cut specifically for billionaires as a first kind of anti-oligarchy line in the sand, but the Republican majority voted down that amendment. Is it too early to see any backlash to things like that?

Meredith Lee Hill: I think we'll maybe see some kind of rolling backlash throughout this process, but it is going to be a long process to get this Republican Party line bill through. Obviously, the Senate cleared their backup plan overnight. The House is planning to take it up or take up their competing plan next week, but those are just the initial plans. After this, it'll take weeks and weeks and months to hammer out a specific massive piece of legislation, what goes in it, the level of the tax cuts and things like that.

Republicans are going to be fighting for this, talking about their priorities and things, but they're also going to be on defense about some of these cuts, including cuts to Medicaid and other safety net programs basically rolling on for several weeks and months into the summer.

Brian Lehrer: Another article that you wrote this week was called Republicans in Hispanic-Heavy Districts Pushed Johnson, Speaker Mike Johnson, Not to Slash Medicaid or SNAP. Can you tell us about some of that?

Meredith Lee Hill: We saw Tony Gonzalez, who is a Texas Republican, normally a pretty staunch ally of GOP leaders, and Speaker Mike Johnson in particular, led a letter this week to Johnson, a public letter, voicing some of their private concerns about the House GOP plan and just the level of spending cuts that are in there, including essentially a last-minute boost that Johnson agreed to, which increased the level of cuts from 1.5 trillion to $2 trillion.

They are essentially outlining areas that cover Medicaid and SNAP food assistance and other things, Pell Grants, and things like that as potential and very likely cuts in the House Republican plan. Those eight House Republicans in Hispanic-heavy districts, there are six voting members there, they sent a public letter to Johnson saying that they were not comfortable slashing Medicaid, slashing SNAP food assistance, and slashing Pell Grants because those are incredibly important to their constituents especially.

They pointed out that Hispanic Americans make up some 30% of the Medicaid system currently. That's just a huge program that they rely on on this point. Deep cuts and slashing that program is something that they're very wary both in red districts and also in more at-risk Republican districts who are really worried about keeping their seats in 2026, obviously after going through the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act that spurred so much backlash in 2017.

Brian Lehrer: Another thing that's questionable about what they're saying they're doing compared to what they're actually doing came in an NPR report the other day. I don't know if you heard this, but an astute listener just texted about it. I did happen to hear it as well, so I can back this up. Listener writes, "NPR revealed the numbers reported in savings don't match the DOGE reports." Listener concludes, "It's pure shock and awe without actual evidence of change."

If I remember the numbers in that network report correctly, it was that DOGE is claiming $50 billion in savings already for the American people, but when you add up the things that have actually been cut, it's more like 3 billion. Do you know anything about that?

Meredith Lee Hill: Yes, there have been reports that essentially in one contract in particular, I think that the DOGE team outlined, essentially they claimed that they were slashing in the billions of dollars and it ended up being a contract that was in the millions of dollars. That threw the entire total off. I think there's been a fair amount of backlash about exactly how much money is being cut and how they're keeping track of it at this point.

Brian Lehrer: You write that some Republicans are focusing their efforts on the White House as their offices are inundated with frantic calls from constituents, your language, because they consider federal agency officials powerless to call off DOGE. That seems to imply that DOGE has its own power base, independent from the White House and would be unresponsive to Republican members of Congress even. Is anything like that the case, as far as you can tell from your reporting? People are always asking now like, "Who's the real president, Donald Trump or Elon Musk?"

Meredith Lee Hill: I think it's quite clear that agency officials themselves have very little power in deciding who is being cut and if they can get folks rehired if there is a public safety or another issue. I talked to a couple of, across a couple of agencies, Trump officials who some of them actually said, "We actually haven't heard very much from Republican lawmakers. They're not contacting us. They're going straight to the White House because they know that we have very little power here at the agency to really do anything.

I think that's just indicative of the role that DOGE is playing, is really out of the small team of folks who are going around and working on this the slash-and-burn effort, but then also really focused under Elon Musk's purview and his role as what the White House is describing as a special government employee in order to do this. I think that it's just something that we haven't seen before where the agencies themselves aren't really involved in a lot of of these decisions.

Though they're around, they're certainly aware of things going on. We're certainly seeing the center of power here being run out of the White House and then specifically out of the DOGE team.

Brian Lehrer: Elizabeth in Ridgewood, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: Good morning, everyone. This is a little bit of a different take on things. I hope you don't mind. I'm originally from Poland, so I do have some experience with how government runs people in the country. I think this is all about fear. They are basically trying to say, "If you're an individual that's against us, we will destroy you. If you're a group of people that's against us, we will destroy you. Basically, if there's anything that you're doing that's not what we want you to do, we will destroy you."

This is the fear factor. It came into my mind the situation with the mayor of New York. They're basically saying, "If you don't do what we say, we will destroy you." Basically what he said, "Yes, fine. Okay, I will cooperate with you." That's how basically it starts. Our president at the moment, and we know that already, has basically enamored relationships with the people that basically don't think that a population has any rights whatsoever.

We're talking about China, we're talking about North Korea, we're talking about Russia, are the best friends thereof. You don't need to know anything else. All that we're talking about that is like who's getting fired, who's not getting fired. This is about fear. This is about inducing fear in the population. That is the first biggest step to basically losing all our freedoms. Maybe the first 100 days will be those first 100 days when in 100 days, 100 years of democracy will be completely and totally dismantled. I hope I'm not being too grim, but this is basically where we're at.

Brian Lehrer: Elizabeth, thank you very much. No, this is how we're tying in daily on this show, the question of specific policy moves to the overarching question of is this what democracy looks like. I don't know how much you get to that in your specific reporting in the last few days, Meredith, but we have another listener who texted, "Oh, if they're really after waste, fraud, and abuse, why did Trump fire the inspectors general?"

I think the implication of that text, like Elizabeth's call, is this isn't really, or it isn't mostly about saving money. It's about imposing Trump's authority over what used to be the multiple branches of the federal government. This brings us in a way to the moment at CPAC yesterday when Elon Musk posed with an actual chainsaw that somebody gave him. The constituent angry at Congressman McCormick in the clip we played was complaining about a chainsaw approach.

I don't know if the timing was that he had seen the Musk photo op or that came later in the day, but it raises the question of when does the enthusiasm for Musk with the MAGA base collide with thinking he's an egomaniac oligarch among Republican voters, maybe not as ideologically driven like some of the calls we got.

Brian Lehrer: I think it'll be interesting to see if there ever is a point where Republican voters themselves either disavow or at least get a little more uncomfortable with some of these efforts. I think, for the most part, we are seeing some pockets of folks in Republican districts who are very unhappy, especially voters who are raising things like public services and other public safety roles that they're worried about. I think Republican voters generally feel like they're happy that the slash-and-burn is happening, that Elon Musk is really trying to right-size the government.

I think that he generally has Republican voter support still at this point. We'll see if there is ever a situation where that changes. I think that obviously will be the question in the weeks and months to come.

Brian Lehrer: Listener backing up Elizabeth from Ridgewood's call writes, "We are all frogs in a pot of water while the heat is slowly turned up. His voters are in this same pot." Another listener, being a clear Democrat, acknowledges feeling a little-- "I'm feeling a little schadenfreude when they say drain the swamp. Some Republican voters didn't realize this also meant them." I think further to that point, George in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, George.

George: Oh, hi. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

George: Hi, Brian. I've hated Trump since I was 10 years old. Dems haven't really done much about the national debt. How can you cut all this spending, cut down the debt, build an iron shield missile defense system, and give tax cuts to the wealthy? That's my question.

Brian Lehrer: Meredith, who can answer that question?

Meredith Lee Hill: I think it is part of the problem of this huge bill that they're working on is Trump obviously wants to do a lot of extending tax cuts, but also some really populist moves. He said he doesn't want to slash Medicaid, but then he also wants to eliminate income taxes on Social Security benefits, on overtime earnings, on tips. I think that is something that Republicans are privately trying to figure out how they actually do, math-wise.

There's a ton of priorities that Trump has and is trying to fit into this bill and do all of these things, including cutting taxes. At some point, there obviously is something really large that they're going to need to cut in order to do this. It's the question of how do you make all this work, including these tax cuts.

Brian Lehrer: There are these tax cuts for regular income Americans, like the proposed elimination of tax on tips, but then when you do the math, correct me if I'm wrong, the large share of the actual money that's going to be removed from federal revenue is from the wealthiest portions of the population because if you have an across-the-board percentage tax cut, that's so many more dollars from people who are wealthy. Right?

Meredith Lee Hill: I think that's the argument from Democrats right now is that the tax cut efforts are really going to support some of the wealthier Americans at the expense of if they do go through with cutting things like public safety net services like Medicaid and food stamps.

Brian Lehrer: Did you see, by the way, before you go, in one of your colleague's articles on Politico about Musk and the chainsaw, that Steve Bannon has called Musk a "Parasitic illegal immigrant who wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country's history, values or traditions." It says on Wednesday, Bannon continued to press his case against Musk, saying the oligarchs will abandon the right. I guess my question is, is there part of the MAGA movement that you can see from your reporting yet that doesn't actually want massive aggressive tax cuts like the Republican Congress is pursuing now?

Meredith Lee Hill: I think that is to be seen. I think generally there is-- Some of the points that Steve Bannon has made is things that will hurt Republican voters. He pointed out, obviously, Medicaid is a huge service in really red and rural districts, and that will hurt Republican Trump voters really, and maybe new Trump voters who voted for him for the first time if Republicans do go ahead and really slash Medicaid. I think there are, at this point, really interesting wrinkles to look at in the issue around the tax cuts.

We really haven't heard very much from Republican voters pushing back on that. There are maybe one or two Republican lawmakers who have pushed back on the idea that these big tax cuts need to be protected and extended at this point and they should focus on other things. Really, the overwhelming number of Republican lawmakers at this point are very invested in the tax cuts and that is going to be a huge fight to come.

Brian Lehrer: Meredith Lee Hill, Congress reporter for Politico, covering this week the backlash that's beginning to take place to the Elon Musk chainsaw approach and maybe now the Elon Musk chainsaw photo op in Republican districts around the country and quietly not publicly, from Republican members of Congress. Meredith, thanks for joining us.

Meredith Lee Hill: Thanks for having me.

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