Extra: What DOGE Can Do To Fix DC
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This is the Fox News Rundown Extra.

I'm Chris Foster. Today, former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels on to talk about President-elect Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, a cost-cutting advisory panel led by tech billionaire Elon Musk and former pharmaceutical executive and presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. A post says they're hiring not more part-time idea generators, but super high IQ small government revolutionaries willing to work 80 plus hours a week on unglamorous cost-cutting. In a separate post, Musk says the job pays...

Governor Daniels worked in the Reagan White House, was President George W. Bush's White House Budget Director, and was Purdue University's president. For the last 10 years, he's been co-chair of the Nonprofit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. So, plenty of experience implementing and studying government budgets and waste. We've been on for longer than we can use in the regular weekday podcast and radio show with commercial breaks to worry about. There are no such concerns here on The Extra.

Thanks for listening. There's something new every day. And now Mitch Daniels on the Fox News Rundown Extra. Governor Daniels, thanks for coming on the Fox News Rundown. Look, we don't know how much power and how much leeway this Dodge thing is going to have, but let's pretend it does. How much fat can legitimately be trimmed? I mean, so much spending is locked in, and politically it's hard to cut the military, so even if you think there's waste there, how can this possibly shake out? I think there's more than people have...

have understood. It is certainly true that our long-run problem cannot be solved or even approached without saving the safety net through reforms. But there has been an incredible run-up in the last two or three administrations in discretionary spending. And some of it's pretty obvious. The so-called green, I don't know, slush fund that was created, right there is close to $400

billion dollars and it's not a lot of it is not yet spent. So I think there are some some major targets. This is an unprecedented, I think, opportunity. And I hope by one means or another, it'll be seized. Do you suppose there do you suppose there's a value in having new eyes, new new non-governmental eyes taking a look at this stuff?

Absolutely. So much of what the federal government does is senseless unless you're socialized to its longstanding habits now. You know, I think we can look at this on maybe the commission will through two or three lenses. I think simply put, much of what government, specifically now the federal government, does, it has no business doing.

There's another set of activities that it does, but it legitimately maybe, but it does them so poorly it ought to stop doing them. Think the student loan program, for instance. And then there are a few things it really must do, and it does badly now, and they need to be addressed and reformed. Think government procurement, for instance. I'm sorry, defense procurement. And

So I think fresh eyes, those are the kind of questions you would ask. I spent more years in business than anywhere else. Those are exactly the questions you would ask on an ongoing basis in business. But the government almost never does. It would be a great object lesson to the country if this group or somebody could find a major activity or two, an entire department maybe, just to stop doing.

just to prove that if that can happen in the sky, it won't fall. And believe me, there's a lot of such changes you could make that would not bring the sky down around our ears. I used to say to people all the time when I was serving in government, you'd be amazed how much government you'd never miss. Well, for example, there's talk about eliminating or greatly reducing the size of the Department of Education. The money will still need to be spent on schools, but I suppose the idea there is just to get rid of

bureaucracy, both for choice reasons and for financial reasons. It's a very legitimate place to start the discussion. Education, historically at least, was the quintessentially local state and local responsibility still is overwhelmingly. And you can make a very good argument that

that most of what the Department of Education does, I saw it at the K-12 level when I was in elected office. I saw it as a university administrator for 10 years. Simply imposes costs on the system without leading to any improvement. Just ask yourself, what about the American educational system is better than it was in the 70s when that department was created?

From the Fox News Podcasts Network, subscribe and listen to the Trey Gowdy Podcast. Former federal prosecutor and four-term U.S. congressman from South Carolina brings you a one-of-a-kind podcast. Subscribe and listen now by going to foxnewspodcasts.com. You wrote this op-ed for The Washington Post a few weeks ago that you're increasingly concerned about public debt and the value of the dollar. Yeah.

Has Congress and presidents just had their head in the sand for too long? I guess it's an obvious question, but what mistakes were made as we went along? We haven't had a surplus in 25 years or so. One huge mistake was turning a blind eye to the growth of the safety net programs, which are in danger now. And we have to address it specifically on behalf of those who need those programs to avoid destitution.

And so each time someone has suggested changes that might strengthen the program long term, they've been slapped down. That's got, I hope, that some awakening will happen there. But it's not just there. I mean, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, probably the

most misnamed act of legislation we've ever seen, produced inflation and authorized hundreds of billions of dollars for purposes that

and really are highly suspect. Part of the work of this commission is probably going to be to say to people when the inevitable whining starts, we're not saying that these programs, these expenditures are not nice to do, but we have passed the point fiscally where we can afford to do

nice to do things, we have to start zooming in on must-dos and then do them better than we do today. Yeah, I mean, they call Social Security the third rail of politics every time there's an election. And, you know, keep your damn government hands off my Medicare is the joke. But people are living longer. And at some point, you're going to maybe have to gradually...

Because you can't just say, okay, 64-year-old, you can't cash in next year. You're going to have to do it bit by bit and year by year, maybe extend the retirement age, for example. Yeah.

I have to make the point that the president-elect says he's not going to go near those programs. And I think that I hope you'll think differently about that over time. The arithmetic is going to force that. But the commission you're discussing here is and should be focused on all the rest of the budget.

And although, yes, it is a smaller portion of what we spend than it ever has been, the so-called discretionary programs, it's still an ungodly amount of money, especially after the last several years. And it is really time, not only in the interest of financial and economic help,

But just simply in terms of liberating the economy from the dead hand of so much government regulation that is red tape doesn't begin to describe the paralysis that I'll call it compliance based regulation has placed on the whole system. And finally, in terms of people's confidence in government, again, showing that there is

somewhere a capability to have second thoughts, to modernize, to get rid of, to stop doing things that have not worked, and liberating maybe some funds to new purposes that are more essential today. You mentioned student loans. Any other ideas on what the federal government is doing that shouldn't be doing simply because it

would be better handled by the private sector or states? So much of the encumbrances we put on infrastructure building, look how long it takes us to build anything in this country compared to particularly some of our adversaries. So dismantling many of the obstacles we have placed in the path of not just the private sector,

But the public sector in trying to states, for instance, in trying to to pursue their own emissions, much of that really needs to go. You know, I'll mention one other idea that probably won't certainly won't attract the unanimous support. But presidents once had the power of impoundment.

It was one of those things changed in the wake of Watergate. It was the ability within certain limits to not spend money just because Congress had authorized it. And I have always thought that now that we're in the fiscal fix we're in, restoring impoundment power or rescission power, the ability to decide that may once have made sense to spend a

a boatload of money on a certain project, but it no longer does on a certain purpose, might enable some meaningful action to happen and happen in a meaningful time period.

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So is the idea there that, yeah, Congress has the power of the purse, but the executive branch has the power to spend it or not spend it? That Congress just does the allocation and then whatever happens from there, there's some discretion in the executive branch. That's right. And that discretion was taken away now nearly a half century ago and

And I always believed that perhaps within certain limits, maybe a time limit, it ought to be restored. You know, I had essentially this authority as governor, and we used it very aggressively. And I have to tell you that the legislative branch may view it,

publicly they may view it as an infringement on their power, but it actually works out pretty well for them because somebody else has to take the responsibility or the blame for any spending reductions that happen. They can say they didn't vote for it, they disagree with it, but meanwhile, a better result happens. Yeah, don't blame me. I voted for free turkeys. The president just didn't give them to you. Exactly.

Earmarks came back a couple of years ago after an 11 year moratorium. First, explain what earmarks are. And is it a drop in the bucket or are there meaningful cuts to be made there? Earmarks are highly specific provisions in an appropriations bill that that

direct exactly where spending should go. So not for instance, to appropriate a certain amount of money for a certain category of scientific research, but actually to direct where that, to what a research organization or university gets that money. I've always thought it was bad practice when I served in the federal government.

A couple of decades ago, we worked against it and eventually had it, as you say, stopped for a while. Dropping the bucket, it's not a lot of money, but I think it is at this point, I'm in favor of almost anything that shows we can begin to move the arrow in the spending arrow in a different direction. And so, yeah,

You know, I think as a matter of both good governance and good fiscal policy, I prefer to see it once again off the charts. Just to end this on an apocalyptic note, you wrote in that Washington Post op-ed that you think this could be,

Eventually, so bad that there needs to be scenarios gamed out for an economic emergency and even civil unrest if the debt gets so bad that we can't meet our obligations and the dollar collapses. Well, I'm hardly the only person. You can find all sorts of very authoritative people, people more expert than I about debt.

global finance and so forth, who are convinced that we've passed the point where we're going to have to have some sort of very serious reckoning. And all I said in that article was that it's always good practice if a serious event might happen to have a plan ready in advance, that I did it as a routine matter in business,

in public life and in university life. It's just good prudence to have, again, a Red Book plan drawn up so you're not making it up on the spot. It is, in my view, more probable than not that we're going to have a crisis of some kind, either economically driven, driven by the inability to keep our promises in the safety net,

military programs, or worst of all, I hope not, of a military and national security nature. And all I said there was when something is as highly possible as those things are, somebody ought to be planning for it. And again, as I wrote, if this government had, I think we'd know about it.

Mitch Daniels, co-chair of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, was a budget director in the George W. Bush administration, governor of Indiana, president of Purdue University, among many other things. Governor Daniels, good to talk to you. Thanks a lot.

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