Amy Walter on Spending Cuts: ‘Voters Actually Like What They Are Seeing’

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
BAIER: “We have seen and heard a lot of outrage from Democrats, lawmakers, and activists. Here is some of it.”
[Clip starts]
SPEAKER: “They are picking us off one by one. Yesterday it was one agency. The day before it was another agency. You know doge is hopping from agency to agency like it’s the plague.”
AUCHINCLOSS: “The federal government, it is not Twitter, right? You can’t move fast and break things and all that ends up getting scrambled is software code. This is real people’s lives.”
ROY: “They protest too much. Exposing all the fraud we have all been watching unfold.”
[Clip ends]
BAIER: “It’s waste fraud and abuse, Amy. I’m wondering how that plays politically across the country.”
WALTER: “Right, I think this is going to be fascinating to watch over these next few months because today you could make the argument that voters actually like what they are seeing. They feel like this is what the president campaigned on and, nobody is going to want to defend something called waste, fraud, and abuse. At the same time, what we’re hearing not just from Democrats but from Republican members whose districts are being impacted by these cuts, whether it is a freeze on hiring and state parks if that’s in New York district or on some of the USAID funding where these farmers are sitting with a lot of grain that they were hoping to ship to these countries and of course the NIH freezes that are impacting research facilities. So right now, you are right, the legislature has left it in the hands of the president, whether that’s going to continue especially if constituents of these Republican members, not just Democrats, but Republican members start to come forward and start to express their dismay.”