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It's time to take the quiz. Five questions, five minutes a day, five days a week. Take the quiz every weekday at thequiz.fox and then listen to the quiz podcast to find out how you did. Play, share, and of course, listen to the quiz at thequiz.fox. Well, welcome to the Jason in the House podcast. I'm Jason Chaffetz and appreciate you joining us. I think you're really going to like this one because you have seen the product of his work. You have heard it referred to, I don't know how many times,
But you've probably never heard of an interview because he does them so rarely. And that is the Inspector General for the Department of Justice, Michael Horowitz. He's going to be joining us now. You've probably seen him testify.
And, you know, he's a steady hand. He's very thoughtful and thorough in his answers. But I look forward to having a conversation about him, about what inspectors general do, because I can tell you as the former chairman of the
house oversight committee they were pivotal in getting our job done so we're gonna have a conversation with him we're gonna highlight this stupid and then uh because you know there's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere but let's kick things off with um a little bit of my take on the news because i try to highlight some things that maybe maybe get your attention maybe don't um and i i just want to highlight right now with its simplicity because i keep watching
All the debate, all the discussion, and by the time this podcast comes out or that you hear it maybe later, don't know where it's been. But if you look back over the last, I don't know how many days or weeks, you're going to find these very weird, strange discussions about the national debt. So there was initially a lot of concern and criticism. Now, let's understand that
The deficit is the annual number, right? Deficit is the difference between revenues and expenditures. And when expenditures outpace revenues, that's your annual deficit, which has been north of a trillion dollars for far too long.
So when Joe Biden goes out there and said, I got the deficit, you're still running and adding to the national debt because the cumulative number of all those deficits is the national debt, which is north of $30 trillion. And you've heard me say, if you spend a million dollars a day every day, it would take you almost 3,000 years to get to $1 trillion. And now we've got $30 trillion in debt.
And so we pay close to $2 billion per day servicing that debt. That is paying the interest that is due on that debt. So you go back and say, look, not only do we have to balance our books at some point, but we have to start paying off the debt. That number doesn't go away until you actually have revenues that exceed expenditures. And that has been decades upon decades before since that has last happened.
So when we go and have these discussions about the debt and the debt ceiling, the question I think is, well, okay, so what point do you actually talk about where the books are going to balance? We don't have a new revenue problem. We've been breaking records on all time revenue to the treasury. We have a spending problem.
That's my take on it. But here's the interesting thing. Nobody thought that Kevin McCarthy and the House Republicans could pass a debt ceiling package. But now that they have, I think the simple, easy question is Chuck Schumer, Mr. Majority Leader there in the United States Senate. Why don't you put that bill up for a vote? Democrats can yell, scream and pull out their hair all day long and say they want a clean debt ceiling vote.
But the one that is actually passed, the United States House of Representatives, includes some provisions to cut some spending. So why not? And get some energy going in this country. Why not vote on that? I think the dirty little secret for Chuck Schumer is there are Democrats who would vote for that bill and it would pass. All the Republicans would vote for it. So for all the exasperation about the debt ceiling, there is a bill that has passed. House Republicans have done the right thing.
vote it up or down. If it fails, hey, it fails. Back to the drawing board. But until you actually put it up for a vote, I think all these hollow yelling, screaming concerns, you know, Joe Biden not willing to negotiate. It's up to the House and the Senate to put a bill on the president's desk. Let's see if the president, if he thinks the calamity will ensue if there is a
default on the national debt, which doesn't have to be there, then let him veto that bill. But there is a bill that is passed that will alleviate this problem, at least for a few more months. That's what I think should actually come before the Congress. All right. Next thing I want to talk about is not nearly as serious, but it does bug me. And if you look at foxbusiness.com, they had a story about this.
They had some day trader, Sean McDonald, and his quote was, I feel like there's an automatic question to ask for tipping. There should be fine print stating where these tips go. And I think Sean's actually totally right.
Don't you just hate it? You go up, you order a sandwich, maybe even ordered online. You got to go pay for it. Maybe they're in person. You just say, Hey, I want the number 13 with some extra mayo and add some bacon. That's usually what I do. And then somebody flips it around and says, here, you want to add 30% as a tip. The point is, where does that go? Who's putting that money in their pockets? There's nothing. It says that the employees get that. Is that a tip for the owner?
Is it the chef in the back who's actually doing the hard work? Is it the stock boy or girl that's putting the stuff in the... Where does all that money go? And who's paying taxes on that? It's actually an interesting question. All right.
And then the last thing that I really want to mention, which everybody needs to pay attention to, because there has been a foundation laid on digital currency. And I'm telling you, folks, this scares me to death. Digital currency is a way for government to regulate, control, manipulate, and
and get into your life to a degree that I don't think anybody wants. Now, Governor Ron DeSantis, they're taking action, one of the very first states, if not the first state to take action on digital currency in the state of Florida.
Everybody should be working to push that back. That's my take on it. Digital currency, look out for it because, oh, it does this, it does that. I'm sorry. I don't want government regulators, all these people knowing my business to every dollar that I have and every dollar that's moving. I know they want to know it, but it doesn't mean I want them to know it. I think as an American...
you have a fundamental right to privacy. And unless there's probable cause, articulable suspicion, you get to maintain that degree of secrecy and privacy. And I don't need the government watching every dollar and knowing exactly what I have and don't have in the bank. All right, let's transition and bring on the stupid because you know what? There's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere.
All right, I got to go. Now, it's a prestigious university, but Howard University a little while ago gave an honorary doctorate degree to President Biden. Yeah, look, a president will show up at a university, they'll give him an honorary doctorate. But what is pretty comical is the reason that they stated that they were giving President Biden a honorary doctorate.
It was for his, quote, analytical intellect and popularity on both sides. Now, I don't know how they do that with a straight face, but he is not popular on even in his own party. He's not as popular on the Republican side of the aisle. And to suggest that his analytical intellect is driving this country forward and he needs to get a doctorate degree for that.
You could pick a lot of reasons like, well, you're the president. That would have been sufficient. But to suggest that analytical intellect is his strong suit, that's pretty stupid. All right, let's move in on to the vice president because she's usually on this list. Kamala Harris, putting her in charge of artificial intelligence?
Really? Like, she hasn't done and accomplished anything that I can see thus far. Certainly not the border. The borders are. Went there one time. Taking on a big weighty issue like the border and border security and the root causes of the border crisis. And, you know, one little trip and showing up nowhere else. Not talking to the border patrol. Amazing, right? Don't even talk to the...
20,000 plus Border Patrol and certainly Brandon Judd, who's the Border Patrol Council president, can't speak with him. Anyway, to put her in charge of artificial intelligence? Aye, aye, aye. Seriously? I don't even know that she can spell AI, let alone be able to tackle this. This is a big, weighty issue, and I really do worry about that.
Other thing I want to highlight, by the time this comes out, she will have spoken at West Point. But when she spoke at the Naval Academy, that didn't go well. She was out there talking about solar panels and whether people in the military would much rather carry batteries or solar panels. And she was making the case that, oh, they're having to, you know...
go around with, you know, tens of pounds of batteries on their back. But there was a better way to do it. The better way to do it is to carry solar panels. But she was oblivious to the idea that the solar panels have to connect to batteries in order to store the energy. That's the person who's going to be in charge of artificial intelligence and the rules of the road that we're going to put in place to potentially one of the most innovative, but potentially one of the most destructive forms of technology that's ever come our way.
Aye, aye, aye. And that's bringing on the stupid. All right, I want to transition now to bring on somebody who I'm really thrilled that he agreed to do this because he doesn't do many of these types of interviews. But I got to know Michael Horowitz when I was involved in the Oversight and Government Reform Committee interview.
Certainly when I became the chairman, I remember there was a time I invited Trey Gowdy, the congressman from South Carolina, to come over and join me. And Michael Horowitz wanted to introduce himself. And he sat on our couch for, I don't know, 45 minutes or whatever it was, just introduced himself. Now, in the federal government, there are 72 inspectors general. They oversee about 15,000 people.
and they are essentially the internal auditors that have access to be able to go in, look under the hood, and see what government employees are doing and how they're doing it. But there are carve-outs. There are special places where they can't go and look. There are certain people they can't interview. And that's part of what I want to talk about. So this podcast may be a little different than some of the others. We're going to talk a lot more about the job and what they do and what it entails here.
and how it works rather than dive into the specificity of any one particular case. And we'll get to know Michael Horowitz a little bit, but this one is really more about IGs and how they work and how we as concerned citizens shed light on what's going on with the two plus million federal employees and the multi-trillion, six plus trillion dollar employees
of money that we are spending on an annual basis. So with no further ado, let's dial up Michael Horowitz, the Inspector General at the Department of Justice. Hello? Hey, Michael Horowitz, this is Jason Chaffetz. Hi, Jason, how are you?
Thanks so much for joining me. I do appreciate it. You know, there was a time where I talked to you pretty regularly. I'd see you pretty regularly. And then, you know, since I left Congress, wasn't doing the oversight and government reform thing anymore. Rare to none, I get to chat with you. But I do appreciate you joining us on the Jason in the House podcast. It's great to be here. A little more informal than when we usually used to meet. Yes.
Yes, ties tied tight. Yeah, some big hearing about to happen or an investigation that usually involved something that was very unpleasant. But I got to tell you, when I went into Congress, really didn't know about inspectors general. When I left Congress, huge amount of respect. You know, when I first ran for office, for me, it was all about respect.
Fiscal discipline, limited government, accountability, and a strong national defense. And when I got there, I didn't really know how I could get after the accountability part. But that's why I was attracted to the Oversight Committee. But then very quickly figured out that the only way to really get into the depth and the bowels of the federal government were through the Inspector General community, which was larger than I thought it would be.
And very impressive in what do they do. Slow is molasses in some cases. But I really did enjoy it. So let's step back before we kind of get into Michael Horowitz and the Department of Justice where you're the IG. Let's just take it 60,000 feet. What IGs do, how many they are. And I think people will be fascinated as to what you can do and what you can't do.
Absolutely. So there on the federal level, Congress created inspectors general in 1978. It was one of the post Watergate reforms.
and what Congress did was at the time create 12 inspectors general there are now 74 federal inspectors general they're also by the way as you know many states have implemented inspectors general created inspectors general positions and many localities have done so as well so what we've seen over the last
40 plus years now has been a broadening and a real respect for the importance of inspectors general. And Congress, as I said, created us by statute and gave us a very clear mission, which was to make sure that
We were overseeing the agencies we were in. I'm in the Department of Justice, and my job is to oversee department programs and operations as well as its personnel to make sure the programs and operations are running effectively and efficiently. That means waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement, as well as how can a program, even if it's being well run to some extent, how can it be made even better?
And then on the individual side, we're making sure that there's accountability and that when individuals engage in misconduct, if it's criminal, we investigate it. If it's non-criminal, we hold people accountable by writing reports about what they've done. And one of the key elements, principles that we follow is transparency. And so when we complete our work,
We make sure to the greatest extent possible, consistent with other federal laws like the Federal Privacy Act, that we make our information public. So we're about transparency, about accountability and importantly, independence. Now, I know you have some limitations here, man. I don't. So, you know, we can I can opine on some of this stuff.
At the Department of Justice, one of the things that drove me nuts is your inability to actually investigate and fill in the blank there because there's a lot of things you really can't dive into. Yeah. And so I am the only federal inspector general who is limited in my ability to investigate wrongdoing, non-criminal wrongdoing by department lawyers,
when they're working in their jobs as department lawyers. What's that about? So for example, if a federal prosecutor engages in professional misconduct during the course of their work, violates the department's rules when they're investigating someone criminally, that matter doesn't come to me as the statutorily independent federal inspector general. Instead, it goes to a entity created by the department many years ago called the Office of Professional Responsibility.
The head of that office is selected by the department's leadership. The head of that office can be removed by the department's leadership, neither of which, as you know, can be done with me. I report I can only be removed by the president and I'm not appointed by the department's leadership. I can't be removed by the department's leadership. They don't control my pay. They don't do annual reviews as opposed to the head of the Office of Professional Responsibility where they do both of those things.
Okay. So this is, for those of you listening at home, this is what drove me nuts, right? Okay. So, you know, when you become an inspector general, you have to go through a rigorous process, right? It requires Senate confirmation. And how many times did I appear before your committee as well as other committees? I'll just tell you. I've testified and I've been here now just over 11 years, almost 60 times before Congress in those 11 years.
I don't think the head of the Office of Professional Responsibility testified once during my tenure in Congress. Yeah. So how is it? So the Department of Justice has roughly 110,000 employees, right? Yeah. And I don't know how many of them are attorneys.
But to take that part of it off the table and say, oh, no, we're going to have a different group who responds to the attorney general or in its office of professional responsibility. And we're going to determine whether or not you have a job. That is such a conflict of interest. It's something personally I believe has to change in the law because, you know, as a member of Congress,
doing these investigations, a lot of the frustration, always talking to people, doing town halls, they would come back and say, yeah, well, how come that person's not in jail? So I'd say, well, I remind you that, you know, as a member of Congress, they don't give us handcuffs, but they also don't give Inspector General a handcuff. So
When somebody you find or you're investigating, you do think should be maybe has stepped over the line and that maybe should be prosecuted for their misdeeds while as an employee of the Department of Justice, what can you do with that?
So when we're doing an investigation and if we find it involving non-lawyers usually, right? Because most of the lawyer cases start elsewhere. Sometimes lawyers, if they've, for example, stolen evidence or did something outside the office. But when we develop evidence and we think it's criminal, right?
We bring it to usually a federal prosecutor. Sometimes it's a state offense, but usually it's a federal crime that we think was committed. We bring it to federal prosecutor's office and they decide whether or not to pursue the matter. And I'm just telling you folks, having read the reports and I continue to read because they're public, you can sign up for them. What's the website again that you can go to?
So you can go to our website, oig.justice.gov, or to oversight.gov, either of those, and watch all of our reports. And if you go to oversight.gov, you will see every federal inspector's journal. Yeah, and they also have Twitter accounts that you can go to that will pop up and
And you can start to see these reports. Now, if you're nerdy like me, actually go through and actually read those things. And the part I try to flip through to are the recommendations. But far too often, I mean, it is rare to none. Outside the Bureau of Prisons, I'm going to kind of qualify it. The Bureau of Prisons, they tend to prosecute that group more than the others. That's just my non-scientific look at it.
But when it comes to the FBI or marshals or some of these other agencies, almost never does anybody actually get prosecuted. And I feel for those inspectors who will go spend six months, a year, two years investigating something and then make a criminal referral or a referral for potential criminal prosecution.
And the department just denies it, doesn't pursue it. I mean, it's rare to none that I ever see anybody actually pursued by the department. And I think it really hurts the institution as a whole because there's no message that's being sent other than, yeah, you'll get your retirement. You'll be just fine. You know, one of the challenging parts of this, as you know, is there are instances where you feel like a case should be prosecuted.
um i'm a former federal prosecutor so there are times when you feel like it should be um i have to keep in mind i'm now working with the investigators not the prosecutors right right forward um there are a lot of cases that we present to prosecutors um because there could be a federal offense but we're not really sure there is one and we think they should make the decision so that it does account for a fair amount of them
But as you said, there have been times certainly during my tenure where I felt like
Like, I probably would have taken that case if I was sitting in the prosecutor's chair. Yeah, because you're handing them information that, you know, after a thorough investigation and testimony, you can compel people. But let's talk about the other component of people, because, I mean, how frustrating is it to go through and be pursuing the truth and then just have somebody hand you a piece of paper and say, well, I'm retiring and I'm done. Now you can't touch me.
It's very frustrating when we do. Obviously, if it's a criminal matter, we can keep going, but most times it's in the administrative context. And remember, the cases we're taking are usually the cases involving the more senior officials, the more senior officials being the ones with the most time in as government employees and therefore the ones who are closer.
to retirement or at retirement eligibility and can retire. Some people simply quit, even though they're not retirement eligible. And the impact on that is we can no longer compel them to speak to us. When they're working at DOJ, we can compel them to speak to us.
So two things happen when they quit. One is there's no discipline that can be imposed because they quit and they can get their pension if they're eligible. And the second is we're often stuck at that point, unable to question them. And some of these cases involve whistleblower retaliation, sexual assault, sexual harassment, other misconduct that's pretty serious.
And we can't get at that. And as you know, we have advocated for, and you've supported, our ability to get testimonial subpoena authority so that individuals who do walk away, we can subpoena and compel them to speak to us in a way that ensures that you can't just quit and walk away from things. And we keep hoping that that will make its way through Congress. That's
It's gotten far in the past. It hasn't quite gotten over the line. Congress last year, by the way, gave that authority to the Veterans Affairs Inspector General. Previously, the Defense Department Inspector General has that authority. So I'm hoping we get it as well, because that would at least allow us to get the evidence from these individuals. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Michael Horowitz right after this.
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Well, yeah. And I think the argument here is that there's a continued benefit that the taxpayers are paying for. If you're going to continue to get your pension, which is paid for by the taxpayers, then you as an investigator, I mean, you have to have, you know, articulable suspicion or cause to continue to do that. You can't just, I mean, these are not willy-nilly cases. You should be able to continue to pursue that and compel testimony to
And the consequence, in my personal opinion, should be, well, then you're not going to continue to get the benefits of your public service if you're not going to answer the questions related to work or proximity to work that you had done. I mean, that's the only way we can police this because I have seen it time and time again where people just, they know, they know they're caught. They know they're right in the thick of it. And they just say, yeah, okay.
I'm done. One of the things that was interesting, I don't know if you remember this, but one of the things we unearthed through my time there is that people would simply change departments or agencies. And I was shocked to learn that their personnel file would not follow them. Now, any corporation that I've worked at, I've worked at big ones, I've worked at small ones, been, you know, have my own business, but
In a big corporation, you move from one department or another, your personnel file goes with you. But in the federal government, no, no, no. They couldn't even ask you. If you were involved and engaged in some sort of sexual harassment, for instance, and one of the solutions was, well, we're going to transfer. You're going to work now. Instead of DOJ, you're going to work at the Census Bureau or you're going to work at Commerce.
your personnel file and those details would not follow you. And that's actually something we got changed. Yeah. Yeah. We issued a report a little over a year ago, looking at the FBI's system of investigations and adjudication involving employees who engage in misconduct right on this issue. And your listeners can go on our website and find it. And again,
That is precisely what our concern was, or one of our many concerns, which is it showed how many people were retiring while the matter was going on. And the fact that the FBI wasn't in most instances completing the investigation or adjudication so that there was this problem where even if another agency went and said, hey, can you look in the file? What happened to that person?
There might be a reflection of the person retired or resigned under investigation, but there wouldn't actually be the finding as to what we found or the FBI found if they engage in misconduct, as well as, by the way, in fairness to the individual, if we had cleared them, that also wouldn't be in there.
It's some of those things that federal government is so different than the private sector. Let's maybe, and one of the things that I agreed to, and I just know by having this interview with Michael Horowitz, the inspector general here for the Department of Justice, is he can't comment on ongoing investigations, nor even acknowledge if there's an ongoing investigation. So with that in mind,
Go back again to 60,000 feet. What do IGs, specifically yours, but IGs in general, what do you do well and what are the biggest frustrations that maybe they don't do as well? I think what we do very well is conduct rigorous independent oversight that the public can rely on.
and understand and allow them to understand how their money is being used. This is all we're all talking about taxpayer funds, taxpayer money. They have a right to know this is where we start from, how their money is being used. And I think we do a outstanding jobs through our audits, through our evaluations, through our inspections and our investigations to allow the public to see how the money is being used. Some of it
well, some of it not so well, some of it stolen or misused or wasted. That's something I think we do extremely well. And we put a premium and I put a premium on making sure we're making public information that the taxpayers may not otherwise see if we weren't doing it, that the agencies aren't doing it themselves.
I think one of the challenges is, as you mentioned earlier, making sure we're doing it in a timely way and having the right balance between timeliness and thoroughness and completeness and making sure that we're doing that. I think the other frustration can be the
timeliness of implementing recommendations we make because your your listeners should know whenever we make issue reports and we make findings that there are problems or issues we also make recommendations that go with it and we then follow up on those recommendations we don't just drop the report and walk away from it we spend months and years sometimes multiple years um
following up on our recommendations to make sure they get implemented. And that's one of the frustrating parts also, you know, as you know, is making sure they're timely implemented because the longer the time goes without them being implemented, the more the problem continues to exist. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Michael Horowitz right after this.
Each of these reports, I did find great value in the recommendations. And what's interesting is they give these reports to the agencies and the agencies can either accept these or they can kind of fight back on it. And it was always an interesting hearing when if there were, say, 13 recommendations and the agency said,
concurred with 12 of them but disagreed on one. Those make for good hearings. That's just good government. If you have an IG making a recommendation and the agency is not buying it and they're not going to implement it, then that's where Congress really should be spending time and looking at it and spending time at it.
kind of address if you will the slowness because there is a perception and you alluded to it just now but there is this perception that oh my goodness okay you're going to start an investigation but you know it's you know we get the sundial out and come back in two years and it still feels like it's going on what why is that why do why are these things so slow and i i
I respect the idea that it's got to be thorough and complete, but why does it end up taking so long? So I'll separate the two, the investigations from the audit, valuations, inspections, review work. The investigations often take time because most of them start out as criminal. And so we're often...
required and have to follow all the rules of a potential criminal case. And as you noted earlier, many of those end up not being prosecuted. And so it's at that point where we can undertake additional steps that we might not have been allowed to do when it was criminal. So I think the investigations are kind of in a unique position in that regard. But one of the things that I think the pandemic caused all of us to focus on
in a very real way was the recognition that the luxury of time, which is sort of a misnomer, isn't there for us. That we couldn't begin a review and an audit in March 2020 and take a year to let Congress and the public know how things were going with the pandemic-related
programs that the agencies were running. Everybody needed to know in as close to real time as possible. And one of the things that we all made sure, I think this is fair to say all of us tried to do, was recognize we needed more agile products. We needed to rethink how we did things and get things out in a much faster way. And one of the other hats that I wear is the chair of the pandemic
Response Accountability Committee that Congress created to oversee the $5 trillion or so that went out over the lifespan of the pandemic in multiple bills. And that was something we pushed very hard. So I was very proud of the fact, for example, this is not in the pandemic space, but in our BOP oversight space, we launched an
I'm sorry, Federal Bureau of Prisons, right, which we oversee. We launched a federal inspection program because it has so many problems. We wanted to do an unannounced inspection of the federal prison. And so first week in February, we were up at the Wasika prison in Wasika, Minnesota, all female institution, about 800 inmates. We called the warden at 8:00 AM, the prison at 8:00 AM on that Monday morning.
Told them we were showing up at noon and we're going to spend the week doing an inspection, talking to staff, inmates, inspecting, looking at various parts of the prison, which we did. We found some pretty significant problems. And last week, so three months later, we issued a 30 page report about it.
Three months start to finish. Yeah, that's faster than I was used to. Yeah. And so that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to figure out how to talk about the impediments to that, because I remember and correct me if I'm wrong and maybe you can't talk about it, but it seems like you were doing something with the drug enforcement agency. And you asked for something simple like an organizational chart and they refused to give it to you.
and it was driving me nuts because you could go on their website and print one off but to get them to officially give you one was like pulling teeth and they did not want to do it right so you remember i remember our discussions about that and in fact at a hearing and it was a challenge and one of the things congress did as you know when you were there leading the effort uh was passed the ig empowerment act
that ensured that we got timely access to records. Now, I say ensured, it made it very clear we had a right to timely access to records and that we had a right to all records in an agency's possession or their ability to get possession of. And that has improved things dramatically for me and for us generally, but occasionally,
Occasionally, I am helping other IGs deal with impediments that are thrown in their way on this issue. And it still seems to linger on occasion where folks just don't, and agencies just don't want to give us all the records we've asked for in a timely way. Sometimes it's, oh, I didn't realize you wanted these. When it couldn't have been clearer that we might have wanted those. Right. Right. Right.
If only you had asked, Michael.
both houses of Congress passing that bill in 2016 that made such a tremendous difference. And this goes to what I talked about earlier. Transparency is what brings accountability. I always, I went to Brandeis University, I always quote Justice Brandeis' famous saying about sunlight being the best of disinfectants. And it's true. If you have sunlight on an issue,
Programs get reformed timely and people avoid doing things they should. Yeah. And there was nothing like having a congressional hearing to motivate the production of documents because miraculously they would show up hours before the hearing. And it was amazing how that worked.
I will be critical of Congress though. I think one of the most fundamental flaws of the way Congress currently operates, and I'm looking at the time from I was there and that it is today, is that because we don't go through what is called regular order, that is we don't do appropriations bills in the right way, that we always end up doing an omnibus or a continuing resolution. Congress doesn't use the power of the purse.
There used to be the biggest power or the biggest tool that Congress had, and you always hear this, is we'll use the power of the purse. I remember talking to Justice, actually he's passed away, but Justice Scalia about this very point. I had an opportunity to go to dinner with him once and we talked about this.
It's that Congress doesn't use the power of the purse. They continue to fund these departments and agencies. But the way it would really ideally work is that somebody like Michael Horowitz would come to you and say, here's all the documents we can't get. And then Congress would be able to go back to the department and say, until you cough up those documents, we're not going to fund, I don't know, pick whatever program it is.
and hold that until they actually fund it. But the way Congress is set up, you have like the oversight committee, you have all these authorizing committees, and then you have the appropriators. And the appropriators are totally separate from these 22 authorizing committees, which includes the oversight committee. And they don't seem to talk and communicate. They certainly don't take their cues
from anywhere from natural resources to energy and commerce, to the Department of Defense, to the Oversight Committee in being able to say, "Hey, we got to lean on the administrative side of what's going on in the administration
They just don't do that. And the consequence is they just roll on with no repercussions. And I think that the whole process and certainly your job, Michael, would be a lot easier and a lot better if you had Congress advocating and pushing and
holding funding over their head to compel the production of these documents. Yeah, look, and I can give you an example of that. And I think the other thing I'd add to what you just said, the critical part being bipartisan, which obviously doesn't happen as much as it has in the past. But, you know, it was you and Ranking Member Cummings working together on these issues that made a difference. It was back when
on that issue, on your very point. I remember the hearings early in my tenure where Barbara Mikulski was the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and our Appropriations Subcommittee. Richard Shelby was the ranking member at the time. And being at appropriations hearings where the two of them were doing what you were doing at the oversight hearings, which was scolding department leadership for not timely complying. And then to their
great credit they did just what you said they put in the Justice Department's appropriation bill that a failure to timely provide the IG with the records the IG asked for that was me meant that you couldn't spend any department money and you know what it stopped right away I started getting stuff
Amazing, isn't it? How compelling that is. Right. Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion at the Justice Department saying, if you don't give him the records in a timely way, you can't spend any money. They're right. Well, yeah, that's the way it should be. Listen, I'm eating up a lot of your day. I need to ask you some personal questions. I don't care how many times you've testified in front of Congress.
You can't get through a Jason in the house podcast without answering a few basics about Michael Horowitz. I hope that's okay. Absolutely. Okay, good. First concert you attended. My gosh. First concert. Uh,
I think other people will make fun of me probably, but since I'm so old, my first concert was probably, I think a Beach Boys concert. Oh, that's a good one. Legit. With my cousins. A lot of my cousins are from the Boston area. My mom was originally from Boston and, uh,
So I think my first, I believe my first concert was in the Boston Gardens. It's the old Boston Garden. See the Beach Boys. Oh, that'd be good. What was your very first job? I'm not talking about, hey, Michael, go take out the garbage, you know, for your parents. I'm talking like first job where you got an actual paycheck. So my very first job was at a home goods store called Rickles, for those who are...
old enough to remember Rickles, like 20 minutes from my house when I was in high school. What were you doing? Stocking shelves, picking up stuff, whatever you pay a college kid. Whatever they told me, I was
One of my first jobs, I was making $2.88 an hour. I don't know if you recall what you were making. It was minimum wage. I don't remember what it was. I didn't have an inspector general to lean on, but I remember when I worked at the General Cinema Corporation, and they had it posting in the back room that said that minimum wage, I think at the time, was $3.35 an hour.
And I was making $2.88. So I asked my dad, I said, Dad, what should I do about it? He said, well, go talk to Mr. Hobie. He was the manager. So I said, Mr. Hobie, I don't make minimum wage. And he said, no, you don't. You're in the entertainment industry. We don't have to pay minimum wage. And I just went back to work. And that was it. And that's still true today. In fact, I had that experience. And we were in some congressional hearing and I was grilling people.
Some people in the administration, I told them, I said, "If you believe so heartily in the idea of a minimum wage, why do you exempt out probably the people who need it most?" Like in the entertainment, circus workers are exempt. Talk about people who probably need a little bit of protection.
There are all these carve-outs that these... Anyway, it just bugged me. I was probably getting paid minimum wage because this was a hardware store before the big box stores. Yeah, that's good. That's good. All right. So if you and your family... I know you're into hockey. Explain to us the depths in which you love hockey. So I grew up loving hockey and playing street hockey, but not ice hockey.
Somehow, it turns out my kids did the same or love hockey as well, but they went one step further and actually loved ice hockey. So I had my oldest, my son, and my daughter, my oldest daughter, both play hockey, play travel hockey. We are or were on the road all the time, in ice rinks all the time, whether it was the
December or June, that's where you usually find me. I don't know how many miles the Horowitz family has put on the family vehicle, but I can tell you the little secret was if you wanted to catch Michael Horowitz to talk about official business uninterrupted, call him on his mobile phone when he's driving to a hockey match because he had to have some time in traffic.
That's right. Absolutely. And of course, you get a lot of downtime while you're sitting in a car going, you know, a couple hundred miles or wherever. Oh, that's funny. That's right. All right. Pineapple on pizza. Yes or no? Pineapple on pizza. Absolutely. Oh, you were doing so well, Michael. The judges hate that answer.
well we'll have to live with it all right two more questions two more questions uh but i could go for pepperoni over that so if that happens i i just find the pineapple wholly unacceptable but you know that's something you're gonna have to live with and you know all right so if you if you went back to the family and said hey family guess what we're gonna have a special treat
you could invite any person dead or alive, anybody throughout history, you can invite them to come break bread with you and have join you for a meal. Who would that person be?
well if we're putting aside say uh you know great grandparent um because I I'd love at some point since never real I had one grandparent alive growing up you know I'd love to know great grandparents who came over from Eastern Europe and learn more about what that uh was like but I do think the hard press not to focus on somebody like Abraham Lincoln for
saving the union and everything he went through from growing up and to where he ended up. I just think a fascinating life story. Yeah, I think between him and George Washington, the two greatest presidents didn't necessarily, the United States necessarily was either falling apart or coming together. And it really depended on their ability. And then to walk away from, you know, in George Washington's case to Washington,
be at the height of power and just walk away and say, well, now here's the challenge. It's just remarkable. But Abraham Lincoln, what he did, how he did it,
The simplicity in which he did it. And he served in the House of Representatives. He was actually, for the two years he was in Congress, he was on the committee that is now the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. That's right. And, as you know, George Washington appointed the very first Inspector General. Oh, that was right at the tip of my tongue. Yes, everybody knows that. Right.
I didn't know that. That's an interesting fact. First, when the Continental Army was struggling, he decided he needed an inspector general to watch over all the goods and everything there. And that's when our first U.S. inspector general came to be. And by the way, Alexander Hamilton was an inspector general.
I did not know that. I know that they formalized the Oversight Committee, again, known under a different name at the time. It went through several. It's still like every time a new Congress comes into play, they change the name. But it was originally founded in 1814.
And the idea was to oversee every government expenditure. And now it's so unwieldy. You know, the oversight committee will have 40 to 50. I think it's authorized for 60 employees. But there's, what are there, 2 million plus federal employees? And if you don't have the inspector general community to go and dive deep, there's just no resources to be able to do it otherwise. Yeah, we have, you know, those 74 federal inspectors general I mentioned at the outset.
employ about 13 to 14,000 people in total and they're looking at programs across the federal government, making sure money is being well spent. And if it's not, making sure it's getting fixed. Yeah. And it's infuriating because the numbers are so big and there's still so much waste, fraud and abuse.
But I can't even imagine how worse it would be without the IG community involved and engaged. All right, last question. You've had a very successful career. You've mentored a lot of people. You oversee a department that has, what, 400 to 500 employees right now? Yeah, 500 plus now. 500 plus now. So you've got a young person coming up. What's the best advice that you ever got?
couple things um first of all treat everyone with respect that you're working with particularly people who are your peers or your subordinates because you might wake up one day and they're your boss and so and particularly in Washington and in companies I was in private law firms a couple times that happens
So treat everybody with respect. The other thing that I've found throughout my career is make sure you take advantage of mentors, formal or informal, the more the better. I've been so fortunate in my career through the mentors I've had and the people I've had to work with. They've helped in innumerable ways from all parts of my experience.
That's something that has been just invaluable. And then I, you know, I think, and this is what we try to do as inspectors general, which is to always be honest, to always tell the truth. Facts matter. The truth matters. And to always be candid and honest with people when they're
Going back to George Washington, when you chop down the cherry tree, tell the truth if you did it. And, you know, the two people we mentioned, right? Honest Abe. Yeah. How you think of people, right? You'll never go wrong doing that. Yeah, you'll never regret things and you'll sleep well at night. That's for sure. And you won't have to remember more than one story. Yeah, that's probably what's fascinating probably with your inspectors get to go through is keep peppering these people with questions because they...
You know, when you find somebody who's doing something with deception, trying to keep that track of all the lies they've told or things they've done, that does unravel at some point. Yeah, particularly with access to emails, texts, and all of that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Exactly. Michael Horowitz, the Inspector General at the Department of Justice, also overseeing the pandemic relief IG efforts and...
I've really enjoyed getting to know you and interacting, got the greatest respect for what you and your team do, and I appreciate you joining us on this podcast. Thanks so much, Jason. It was great to be here and great to be with your listeners. All right. I can't thank Michael enough. He's a very nice guy. He does know what he's doing. And, you know, at some point you have to actually trust some people to dive in, take their best look.
He doesn't get to do everything he wants to do. Nobody does in any job or any work, but the vital information that he and the other inspectors general provide us is a critical part of having a government that is accountable.
So I want to thank you all. Thank Michael. I hope you can rate this podcast. We would appreciate it if you rate it. You can subscribe to it. I want to remind our listeners that you can listen ad-free with a Fox News Podcast Plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon Music app. You can also go to foxnewspodcast.com.
And some of my colleagues like Trey Gowdy, who I mentioned earlier, and Ben Dominich, Will Kane, all kinds of people out there. You can listen to their podcasts. And again, rate it, like it, subscribe to it. We'll be back with more next week with somebody interesting to talk about something a little bit deeper than we normally get to do. I'm Jason Chaffetz, and this has been Jason in the House.
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