(DCNF)—Democratic Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett told radio host Charlamagne Tha God on Friday that she does not believe there is widespread waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has cut an estimated $55 billion in government spending, including fraud, according to its website. When Charlamagne, on “The Breakfast Club,” said, “There is a lot of waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government,” Crockett disagreed, acknowledging its existence while minimizing the extent of the issue and its effect on the national debt.
“I’m not going to say that there’s a lot — I’m going to say that it does exist,” Crockett said. “I’m going to say that it exists. I don’t think that there’s a lot.”
Charlamagne asked why the U.S. is “so in debt” if there is not a major issue with waste, fraud and abuse. America’s debt is over $36 trillion, according to the national debt clock.
Crockett blamed the national debt on President Donald Trump’s first-term tax cuts rather than spending.
“We’re in debt because we decided that we’re going to reduce the income, right? So under Trump, in his first administration, we went into debt $8 trillion,” she said. “Now, he wanted to say it was because of COVID — it really wasn’t.”
“Obviously, there was money that we sent out because people were in need during COVID to make sure that we didn’t go into a recession,” she continued. “But at the end of the day, it was because he said, ‘Oh, wait a minute, that income — we’re going to stop bringing that in from the top one percenters.’”
Moreover, the Government Accountability Office has found that the federal government could be hemorrhaging between $233 and $521 million to fraud each year, according to its website. Federal agencies also “reported an estimated $236 billion in improper payments” in fiscal year 2023 and since fiscal year 2003, the combined improper payment estimates have reached around $2.7 trillion.
Democrats launched an eight-figure campaign in January in an effort to combat Trump’s tax-cutting agenda. “Families Over Billionaires,” the nonprofit behind the campaign, intends to act as a strategic “war room” focused on countering Trump and House Republicans’ efforts to extend and expand Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of 2025.
Crockett also said that if Trump is successful at extending and expanding the tax cuts, the national debt will surge further.
DOGE’s largest savings have come from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department of Education, along with mass firings and resignations through Trump’s federal employee buyout initiative, which roughly 75,000 federal workers accepted, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“People ask me, ‘What’s the most surprising thing that you’ve encountered when you go to D.C.? You know, when you’re in D.C.’ and I said, ‘Well, the most surprising thing is the scale of the expenditures and actually how easy it is to, just when you add caring and competence where it was absent before, you can actually save billions of dollars, sometimes in an hour.’ It’s wild,” DOGE head Elon Musk said on Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
“But, obviously, it just shows that they really lack empathy for the average taxpayer who’s working hard, paying taxes,” he added. “Then and then they say, ‘Oh, a million dollars doesn’t matter.’ I’m like, ‘I think it matters a lot to people, you know? So what are you talking about?’”
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]]>(DCNF)—Democratic Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett could not comprehend the idea of the federal government handing out dividends to Americans over the money it has wasted for decades during a Thursday segment on ABC News.
President Donald Trump expressed interest in handing out $5,000 dividend checks to every taxpayer with the money saved by the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) downsizing of the federal government. Crockett said she does not believe $5,000 will help out the average American and appeared to ignore the fact that the federal government has wasted billions of dollars in spending for several years.
“[Trump] is just telling a lie. He’s not the one that anything to do with the $1,200 refunds that people had during the midst of COVID, that was done by a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate,” Crockett said. “Right now, what they’re going to do is say ‘Hey, we want to give you a refund but Congress won’t let us,’ because they already know that there’s just no money for that. The only reason that those refunds came before is because we were living in different times. This was a time which hopefully we won’t ever go through again … So no, we are not in the business of giving out money, and honestly, I don’t know what $5,000 will do for you if you are unable to find a job because I am telling people, we are heading towards a recession because the United States government is the 15th largest employer in the world.”
The congresswoman did not specify how the U.S. government being the 15th largest employer in the world requires it to continue spending billions of dollars on causes that do not benefit the American people.
DOGE reported on Monday that it saved $55 billion in federal spending by conducting mass layoffs and dismantling various government agencies. Trump’s newly established department dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on Feb. 3 to end its spending on left-wing causes abroad, including a $200 grant to fund sex change operations in Guatemala and its $47,000 in spending on a transgender opera in Colombia, according to the White House.
DOGE has launched investigations into the spending conducted by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Social Security Administration and other agencies. The Trump administration fired four employees with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) upon discovering that the agency spent $59 million in taxpayer money to house illegal immigrants in luxury hotels throughout New York City.
The dividend idea, first proposed by investment firm CEO and DOGE adviser James Fishback, would give 20% of DOGE’s savings to the American taxpayer to compensate for their tax dollars being wasted by the federal government. While Crockett does not seem to recognize the value of a $5,000 check, an American could spend those funds on anything from a used car, to healthcare costs, a new smartphone or computer or to pay off credit card debt.
Democrats have attempted to use the court system to block DOGE from conducting its business, including fourteen Democratic attorneys general, who alleged in a lawsuit that Trump and Elon Musk are violating the U.S. Constitution by acting with “limitless and unchecked power.” U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled against blocking the agency in a Tuesday decision, stating there is no evidence to prove that DOGE caused “imminent, irreparable harm” to the plaintiffs.
Musk, who is overseeing many of DOGE’s efforts, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Tuesday that the agency “must be over the target” for Democrats to be so upset about their efforts.
“I guess we must be over the target or doing something right. They wouldn’t be complaining so much if we weren’t doing something useful, I think,” Musk said. “What all we’re really trying to do here is restore the will of the people through the president. What we’re finding is that there’s an unelected bureaucracy — speaking of unelected, there’s a vast federal bureaucracy that is implacably opposed to the president and the cabinet.”