Treasury Secretary Bessent: I Completely Support DOGE, "It's The American People's Cheese"

 BESSENT: “With DOGE, I am completely aligned with what @elonmusk is doing … I said to Elon … you know, people are mad at you because you're moving their cheese. And he goes, it's not their cheese. It's the American people's cheese.” pic.twitter.com/6ekgot59Ku

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) March 19, 2025

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks about the goals of DOGE with the "All-In Podcast."

TREASURY SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: With DOGE, I am completely aligned with what Elon is doing. Everyone says, “Well, do you have to do it so fast? You have to do it.”

I’ve only been in this business for 7 weeks; I’ve only been in DC for 8 weeks, but the thing I can tell you is, if you don’t move fast, the vested interests will weigh you down, like the quicksand will come up, or the claws . Everybody’s got lobbyists, everybody’s got—

I mean, think about it, within a 10-mile radius of here, 25% of the GDP of the US pulsates through here every day, and everybody wants to just skim a little.

I said to Elon, we were in a meeting, and I said, “You know, people are mad at you ‘cause you’re moving their cheese.” And he goes, “It’s not their cheese; it’s the American people’s cheese.”

HOST: Every dollar spent goes into someone’s pocket, and that person’s going to fight tooth and nail to get that dollar to keep flowing into their pocket. There is no winning in Elon’s role. Every single time he takes action, there are people that are going to come after him, that are going to come after the administration. Obviously, it gets recast, reclassified in the media as being something different, but there’s nothing but downside as you make these changes to individual organizations that participate, and then it takes a while for the flow of that money to find its way, or those individuals to find their way back into the productive private economy. That’s where I think there’s a big gap and a big challenge in the perception of the actions that are going on with the changes right now. Everyone sees the cuts, but they don’t see the benefits, and that’s nine months, 12 months, 15 months down the road, and that’s a really hard thing to reconcile for most.

TREASURY SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: I’d say there are a couple of things, too. One, like, everyone’s hearing “cuts,” and they think government services -- and they’re not. I keep saying it’s the Department of Government Efficiency, not government extinction, not government elimination. And can we make it run much better with fewer people, with fewer costs?

I don’t want to demonize any of these federal employees, because I'll tell you, in this building, I’ve been so impressed with the quality of the people. I would have hired them in my private firm; they are great public servants. "I need you to stay for the weekend, and I need a 25-page memo in 72 hours, super high quality.

I actually think that, when all this is done, there will have been two big savings. One will have been on these contractors—

HOST: We were just talking about this, we were with Elon just now with an incredible stat. He said, “I’m not going to name the firm," so that I don’t want to, but he said this one organization gets 98% of their revenue--

TREASURY SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: It was in the newspaper, so we can say it—it’s Booz Allen... What kind of risk management is that, by the way? But it tells you that they didn’t manage the risk. It tells you how entrenched they believe they were, and how good it is for them.

The way the grift works, you can only have six-month contracts, but there are people who have had 40 six-month contracts. Like, they’ve been in situ for 20 years. And it’s this whole.

HOST: I’m so happy there is transparency and visibility into this. If for nothing else, the administration providing this level of insight and data, I think, is so important for taxpayers and individuals in this country to see, to recognize, and, importantly, to understand just how much of this grift is going on.

You can watch the full discussion here:

It is your cheese https://t.co/g5bnpqq10l

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 19, 2025

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/03/19/treasury_secretary_bessent_i_support_doge_its_the_american_peoples_cheese.html