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robert weissman
A Modest Proposal From Two Longtime Defenders of the Common Good: Let Us Join DOGE
"We can offer views that are untainted by the appearance of corruption or self-dealing."
Jan 13, 2025
Public Citizen co-presidents Lisa Gilbert and Robert Weissman on Monday requested to serve on U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency "as voices for the interests of consumers and the public who are the beneficiaries of federal regulatory and spending programs."
Shortly after Trump's November victory, the Republican announced that he asked billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to co-lead DOGE, a presidential advisory commission that he said would work "to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies."
Since then, numerous watchdog groups, Democratic lawmakers, and others have sounded the alarm about DOGE and its leaders, blasting the commission as a thinly veiled attack on federal programs—including Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security—connected to the GOP trifecta's effort to pass more tax cuts for wealthy individuals and corporations.
"Public Citizen has concerns about DOGE's structure and mission," the group's co-presidents wrote to Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon, co-chairs of Trump's transition team. "In structure, an advisory committee led by individuals such as Messrs. Musk and Ramaswamy who hold financial interests that will be directly affected by federal budgetary policies presents substantial conflict of interest concerns that threaten to undermine public confidence in the committee's recommendations to the administration."
"Mr. Trump and OMB should take steps to ensure that DOGE's advice and recommendations take into consideration the viewpoints of the consumers and citizens who would be directly affected."
Musk, the world's richest person, has leadership roles at companies including Tesla, SpaceX, and X. He has often been at Trump's side in the lead-up to next week's inauguration. Ramaswamy, who ran for president in the latest cycle before ultimately backing Trump, has founded a pharmaceutical company and an investment firm.
Gilbert and Weissman wrote that DOGE's mission to advise the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) "on how to 'slash excess regulation' and 'cut wasteful expenditures' puts at risk important consumer safeguards and public protections, because it focuses only on eliminating rules and spending without considering the other half of the picture: more efficiently regulating corporations to better protect consumers and the public from harmful corporate practices, and making sound and efficient public investments."
"In light of the significant influence that DOGE is expected to have on the administration's fiscal and regulatory policy," they argued, "Mr. Trump and OMB should take steps to ensure that DOGE's advice and recommendations take into consideration the viewpoints of the consumers and citizens who would be directly affected by the regulatory and spending proposals that DOGE will advance, not only the viewpoint of wealthy businesspeople."
The pair made the case that their appointment to the commission "would not raise conflict of interest concerns."
Before Gilbert joined Public Citizen, she was an advocate at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and worked as a campaign director to pass legislation on social justice and environmental issues for various organizations. Weissman previously directed the corporate accountability group Essential Action, edited the magazine Multinational Monitor, and worked as a public interest attorney at the Center for Study of Responsive Law.
"Unlike Musk, neither Rob nor I, nor Public Citizen, has a financial interest in federal government contracts and spending. In bringing the consumer and public perspective to DOGE, we can offer views that are untainted by the appearance of corruption or self-dealing," Gilbert said in a statement.
Weissman emphasized that "all signs suggest the nonrepresentative DOGE co-chairs aim to use 'efficiency' as a cover to drive a pro-corporate, anti-regulatory agenda, and an ideologically driven social service cuts program. This would constitute an anti-efficiency agenda."
"On the other hand, Lisa and I are prepared to offer a range of evidence-based efficiency proposals—to slash drug prices, end privatized Medicare, reduce the wasteful Pentagon budget—that would save American taxpayers and consumers hundreds of billions of dollars every year," he explained. "We also have recommendations for smart, efficient public investments—in human development and to address climate change—that will have a positive monetary return for the government and society."
As the letter highlights, Public Citizen—which "has worked to hold the government and corporations accountable to the people, including by focusing on research and advocacy with respect to regulation of health, safety, consumer finance, and the environment" since its founding in 1971—has already offered DOGE some recommendations.
"Consistent with Public Citizen's mission—and that of DOGE—Public Citizen on December 20, 2024, sent Messrs. Musk and Ramaswamy a letter proposing two measures that would save the government and taxpayers billions of dollars, while improving health and access to medicines: authorizing generic competition to anti-obesity medications and implementing the Medicare drug price negotiation and inflation rebate programs to lower drug prices," Gilbert and Weissman wrote.
They also noted that appointing them to DOGE "would be an important step towards compliance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which requires 'the membership of the advisory committee to be fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented and the functions to be performed by the advisory committee.'"
In addition to outlining concerns about Musk and Ramaswamy, they detailed that "DOGE member Katie Miller's background is in handling press relations for government officials. William McGinley worked as a lawyer for various Republican Party groups and big law firms. Other people reported in the media as connected with DOGE also appear to have corporate backgrounds. These individuals lack the consumer and public interest perspective needed if Mr. Trump expects DOGE to have any hope of complying with FACA."
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Public Citizen's Robert Weissman Proposes 10 Crucial Public Congressional Hearings
It is up to you the citizens to demand such investigations by your senators and representatives.
Aug 18, 2024
Twenty-four years ago, Business Week magazine conducted a poll of the American people on whether corporations have too much control over their lives. Over seventy percent of them said YES! Since 2000, big businesses and their CEOs have gotten bigger, richer, less taxed and exercised far more power over the lives of workers, consumers, patients, children, communities, the two major political parties and our national, state and local governments.
That reality answers the question of why our corporate Congress has declined to hold public hearings confronting lawless corporate power with proposed legislation – the first step toward shifting more power to the people.
Weissman has put together a powerful legislative agenda to restore the rule of law over raw power.
Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen, demands ten key Congressional hearings – naming the Committees that can hold them – in the just-published edition of the Capitol Hill Citizen (to obtain a print copy only, go to capitolhillcitizen.com).
Here is a summary of them:
1. Rebuild democracy by ending big money in elections. Besides exploring public financing for elections, the Committees, for example, would make the connections between Big Pharma’s money and charging the highest drug prices in the world, despite the large subsidies given to the drug companies. Also, witnesses would give testimony to strengthen voting rights and eliminate partisan gerrymandering, among other measures.
2. Taxing corporations and the Super-Rich at least to the level of the prosperous 1960s. Tax financial speculation (see: greedvsneed.org), close “a raft of loopholes” and impose a wealth tax on “the outrageously wealthy.” Weissman writes: “How exactly did Jeff Bezos pay $1.1 billion in federal tax from 2006 to 2018, as his wealth grew by $127 billion?” How do so many giant, profitable companies get away with zero income tax for years at a time?
3. Anti-monopoly hearings to strengthen venerable antitrust laws, to catch up with many new forms of monopolization and protect small business, competition and innovation. New legislation should also “restore the rights of victims of anti-competitive practices – whether competitors or consumers – to sue monopolists.”
4. Roll back rampant corporate welfare by exposing the hundreds of billions of dollars a year in subsidies, handouts, giveaways and bailouts. From greatly inflated government contracts – as in the defense industry – to giveaways of public land resources, government-guaranteed giant capitalism must stop, and the savings devoted to public services in great need.
5. More and deeper hearings on corporate-driven climate disruptions. Congressional committees have had numerous hearings, but far more should be regularly held on how the corporate-driven climate crisis is harming people and property around the country, how efficient are the ways to mitigate or prevent such fossil-fuel-led disasters, and how the law must be toughened with stronger enforcement and budgets to forestall this omnicidal destruction that gets worse every year.
6. “Winning Medicare for All” hearings to show how other countries spend far less per capita and get better patient outcomes with far less paperwork, waste, over-billing and denials of care. Weissman notes how conditions are getting worse with “private equity investors rushing to buy up everything from nursing homes to emergency care companies.”
7. Legislative hearings to enact laws that end the over-pricing of prescription drugs in the U.S. that are “roughly three times what they are in other rich countries.” This would build on Senator Bernie Sanders’ hearings by fundamentally changing the conditions that breed ever-worsening “pay or die” unregulated drug industry price dictates.
8. Hearings that place the most obstructive anti-union formation laws in the Western world under reform spotlights. Union-busting law firms and consultants should be subpoenaed to give testimony, produce documents, and answer questions under oath. Long overdue are hearings on the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act (1947) to allow card checks and faster procedures between union certification and contracts with employers.
9. Also, long overdue are Congressional hearings that “shine a light on the victims of corporate wrongdoing who have been denied their day in court or the ability to obtain fair compensation.” On the table would be a “Corporate Accountability and Civil Justice Restoration Act” that protects the constitutional right of trial by jury that has been severely eroded by corporate lawyers and corporate judges.
10. Hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee to confront the surging corporate crime wave with a modernized, comprehensive federal corporate criminal law. One that is adequately empowered and resourced to deter, punish and hold corporate crooks and their companies accountable through a variety of proven mechanisms. Present laws are pathetically weak, easily gamed, and allow ever more widespread immunities for these comfortable fugitives from justice.
Weissman has put together a powerful legislative agenda to restore the rule of law over raw power. He has a Congress Watch group staffed by public interest lobbyists who can swing into action daily on Capitol Hill equipped with a combination of invincible rhetoric rooted in irrebuttable evidence to benefit all the American people.
It is up to you the citizens to demand such investigations by your senators and representatives.
I would add serious hearings on the bloated, redundant military budget. Absorbing over half of all federal operating expenditures, this vast appropriation is in violation of federal law since 1992 requiring audited budgets be sent to Congress yearly. The Pentagon is presently out of sight by members of Congress and out of control even by the Army, Air Force and Navy.
Another basic hearing is needed by the Joint Committee on Printing aimed at restoring the printing of Congressional hearings and reports for maximum distribution in depository libraries and use by citizens. Hearing transcripts and very tardy online hearing records give corporate lobbyists an advantage in lobbying Congress. They can afford to pay for rapid access transcripts or personally go to the hearings that citizens may not be able to easily attend. Few citizens can afford such luxuries. (See the February/March 2024 issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen).
By the way, voters should demand that Congress be in session five days a week instead of three days a week with long recesses. More hearings, and the critical information work of our national legislature, requires a full week’s work, for which they get fully paid. (We will have additional proposals for blockbuster hearings in the future.)
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Boeing CEO's Voluntary Departure Is Not Accountability for Corporate Crime: Watchdog
"For real and lasting change to occur," said Public Citizen's Robert Weissman, "Boeing must now be held criminally accountable."
Mar 25, 2024
Embroiled once again in an alarming quality control and safety scandal, the aircraft manufacturing giant Boeing on Monday announced a management shake-up that will see CEO Dave Calhoun step down at the end of the year, the head of the company's commercial airplanes division resign immediately, and the chairman of the board depart after Boeing's annual meeting in May.
Calhoun, who said he decided on his own to resign, took charge at Boeing in the midst of the company's previous high-profile crisis—the grounding of the 737 MAX jet following a pair of crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed more than 340 people.
Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in response to the news of Calhoun's coming departure that "if Boeing had been held criminally accountable after the... 737 MAX disasters, the more recent quality debacles quite likely could have been averted."
Earlier this year, a door plug of a Boeing 737 MAX 9 flew off the aircraft as it ascended, causing minor injuries and forcing the pilots to conduct an emergency landing. More than 170 MAX 9s were subsequently grounded to undergo inspections.
The incident prompted federal regulators, airlines, and journalists to—once again—closely scrutinize Boeing's manufacturing process, cost-cutting efforts, lobbying against safety regulations, and executive and shareholder payouts.
The Leverreported days after the January 5 incident that "less than a month before a catastrophic aircraft failure prompted the grounding of more than 150 of Boeing's commercial aircraft, documents were filed in federal court alleging that former employees at the company's subcontractor repeatedly warned corporate officials about safety problems and were told to falsify records."
The outlet also found that "operators of Boeing's troubled 737 MAX planes have filed more than 1,800 service difficulty reports—more than one per day—warning government regulators about safety problems with the aircraft since the fleet was allowed to resume flying after two fatal crashes."
Alaska Airlines, the operator of the January 5 flight, said in late January that it found loose bolts on "many" of Boeing's 737 MAX 9s.
"The FAA identified noncompliance issues in Boeing's manufacturing process control, parts handling and storage, and product control."
In an update published on March 4, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said its six-week audit of Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems—a major Boeing contractor—uncovered "multiple instances where the companies allegedly failed to comply with manufacturing quality control requirements."
"The FAA identified noncompliance issues in Boeing's manufacturing process control, parts handling and storage, and product control," the agency said. "To hold Boeing accountable for its production quality issues, the FAA has halted production expansion of the Boeing 737 MAX, is exploring the use of a third party to conduct independent reviews of quality systems, and will continue its increased onsite presence at Boeing's facility in Renton, Washington, and Spirit AeroSystems' facility in Wichita, Kansas."
Earlier this month, days after the FAA update was published, a Boeing whistleblower who raised concerns about the company's quality control practices was found dead of what local officials said appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Weissman of Public Citizen said Monday that "of course CEO Dave Calhoun should be dismissed" over the company's latest safety crisis.
"But for real and lasting change to occur," he argued, "Boeing must now be held criminally accountable both for the recent safety failures and the... crashes that took 346 lives."
In 2021, Boeing entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to avoid a criminal charge over an alleged conspiracy to defraud the FAA in the wake of the 2018 and 2019 crashes.
Public Citizen noted in a report published Monday that "such agreements now help the most powerful businesses in the world dodge the legal consequences of their criminal misconduct."
"Instead of facing prosecution—which would mean plea agreements or trial in a public court of law—leniency deals are negotiated quietly between prosecutors and corporate lawyers with little or no judicial oversight," the group said. "Proponents say the agreements are a streamlined way to effectively deter corporate crime. Public Citizen research, however, shows about 15% of the agreements historically involve repeat offenders, casting doubt on their deterrent effect."
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