During a House Homeland Security Committee hearing, Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL) accused congressional Republicans of giving away oversight authority to DOGE.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Oops, I now recognize the representative from Illinois,
00:03Ms. Ramirez, for her five minutes.
00:04Thank you, Chairman.
00:05And I'm really grateful for the opportunity
00:07to also stay for the second panel.
00:10At our first Homeland Security full committee hearing
00:13a couple of weeks ago, I brought this graphic with me.
00:17And as you read here,
00:21Elon Musk, Elon Musk, Elon Musk.
00:25That is what I believe to my core
00:29is the biggest threat to our national security.
00:31This is the committee on Homeland.
00:33And since then, I've asked the members of this committee,
00:37who is supposed to do everything in their power
00:39to protect the homeland,
00:40to really take seriously the threat that Trump,
00:43Musk, and his army of unaccountable tech bros
00:46represent every day.
00:48So you can imagine my disappointment, not really,
00:51to see that instead, the Republicans on the subcommittee
00:54have decided to throw their Lord and Savior
00:56a parade in the form of a hearing.
00:58And while their Lord and Savior changes from time to time,
01:02yesterday was Donald Trump, today is Musk,
01:05tomorrow might be the next billionaire,
01:07although this guy is about to become a trillionaire
01:09off the backs of working people.
01:11It's something that's very clear for me
01:13is that Republicans have willingly given away their power
01:16to conduct oversight over our agencies
01:19and the dangers that these unelected billionaires have
01:26on our security.
01:27So you see, my Republican colleagues
01:28and their hyper-partisan witnesses sitting here today
01:32have completely ignored that the waste in our agencies
01:35is the millions of dollars spent on the doge army
01:39of unqualified workers stealing our data
01:42and firing dedicated qualified public servants.
01:45The fraud in our government is Elon Musk,
01:48whose greatest achievement on efficiency
01:51is a social media platform
01:53that crashed multiple times yesterday.
01:57The abuse in our nation is a power grab
02:01with which Donald Trump imposes his authoritarian agenda.
02:05They don't have any legal authority
02:07to take sledgehammers to the services and programs
02:09that working people depend on,
02:12and by the way, Congress authorized, we authorized,
02:16but Republicans have allowed it to happen anyway.
02:19So Mr. Roth, I want to ask you the questions today.
02:22As DHS's former inspector general,
02:25could you share with us what are the potential threats
02:28posed by an unvetted doge employee
02:32with little to no government experience
02:34plugging into DHS's information systems and databases?
02:41So I can't talk about the specifics
02:43of exactly what doge is doing
02:44because obviously I'm not involved
02:46any longer in the government,
02:47but I will tell you that the IT systems within DHS
02:52and really across the government
02:54according to the DHS's reviews of those
02:59are extraordinarily sensitive,
03:01are being targeted by foreign adversaries
03:06in a way that is not represented
03:08in private networks, for example.
03:11And you heard the testimony of the GAO witness
03:14on the first panel talking about the vulnerabilities
03:17that exist, the documented vulnerabilities
03:19that exist in access controls.
03:23So having an unknown person or an unvetted person
03:26have access in ways that you don't have
03:28a full understanding of is extraordinarily dangerous
03:32and represents a significant vulnerability in IT systems.
03:36Thank you, Mr. Roth.
03:37And I think in part, you know, when you said
03:39you're not quite sure what their authority
03:41or what they're doing is,
03:43I think it's actually the concern
03:44that a number of us have here.
03:46I've said this in Veteran Affairs Committee
03:47and I'm going to say it here.
03:49I want to know what does doge have access to,
03:51who authorized it, who are they talking to,
03:54what data do they have?
03:55How is it that they can have sensitive data
03:58to our national security
04:00and that it go completely unchecked?
04:03This committee, this subcommittee specifically,
04:06is responsible for oversight,
04:08accountability, and investigation.
04:11And we've already seen the effects
04:12of having unqualified people accessing our data
04:14and making decisions in our agency.
04:16Because look, the day after the DOJ's website was launched,
04:19it suffered a security breach.
04:21Putting our sensitive data in the hands of anyone
04:23with a computer and access to the internet.
04:25And how can we forget when DOJ fired more than 300 staffers
04:29from the National Nuclear Security Administration?
04:33Yeah, that's the agency that's tasked
04:35with managing the nation's nuclear stockpile.
04:40Or the several employees who are working
04:42on the federal government's response
04:43to H5N1 avian flu outbreak.
04:47DOJ doesn't have a great track record,
04:49and whether it's due to stupidity or hatred,
04:52at this point, a better name for DOJ
04:55would be the Department of Obstruction and Gross Errors.
04:58I really hope that this committee takes the threat of DOJ
05:02and Elon Musk seriously,
05:03and I intend to work with all of my colleagues to do that.
05:06With that, Chairman, I yield back.