Hello and welcome back to Podforce One. I'm Miranda Devine. Joining me today is former senator and current

small business administrator, Kelly Leffler. Kelly Leffler, thank you for your time and welcome to Podforce One.

Well, it's a great honor to be with you, Miranda. I've been looking forward to our conversation.

Yeah, me too. And I mean, you are now at the very

epicenter of the Trump administration's war on waste, fraud, and abuse. And I think that at the

small business administration, you've uncovered a lot of it. Tell us what's the worst.

Well, it's hard to know where to start, but I'll

start with day one. When we came in, we said we have a zero tolerance policy for fraud and waste

and abuse. So we started cracking down on all of it from the start. I mean, let's just talk about

government waste. 90% of our employees had been working from home

for four years. So we had to get everyone back to the office and make sure that the taxpayers

and small businesses were getting the services that they so badly deserved, and also that the

taxpayer's money was being well spent. Well, when we brought everyone back, we found out that

the agency was massively over staff. I cut headcount by 54% in the first year. And yet we went on to

set record volume for the agency in its 72-year history. So that's a great example right there of

just the waste that had happened under the Biden administration.

It was really bureaucracy run amok.

And so it was almost like a hiring agency just to keep their voting blocks happy, I guess.

What the Small Business Administration, what does it actually do?

Yeah, it's an important question.

Look, the small business administration is really an agency that is dedicated to the private sector, which is what I love about it.

And look, our biggest program is providing a government guarantee on small business loans made by local lenders.

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