There are so many currently serving members of Congress who are so jaded, so corrupted, so cynical — and so old — they should have done the right thing and retired from office years ago. One of them is “Mad” Maxine Waters, California Democrat, who has demonstrated in recent years her inability to cope with many things in her life, especially her Trump Derangement Syndrome. With that in mind, it’s no wonder she lost her mind during a House hearing this week with the mild-mannered Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as she struggled to understand why he charged staffers in his agency to safeguard Americans’ personal information, not DOGE boss Elon Musk.
Bessent was scheduled to testify before the House Financial Services Committee on the state of global trade and the progress of President Donald Trump’s tariff initiatives. While Bessent was expected to highlight an impending trade agreement with Great Britain, the hearing took a sharp turn when Waters redirected the discussion to criticize the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, warning of potential threats it poses to the personal data of hundreds of millions of Americans.
The 86-year-old Waters began her speech by asserting that Musk and DOGE have been granted “unfettered” access to America’s financial systems. This claim has been widely echoed in the mainstream media, prompting Bessent to quickly address and clarify the situation. “Do you know the level, type, or nature of the clearances and security training required for individuals to access the information held in the computers of Treasury, IRS, or [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau]?” she asked Bessent. “Yes, I do, and I think we would have a disagreement over the definition of the word ‘unfettered,’” he replied.
Waters was unsatisfied with that answer, of course, so she continued her convoluted line of questioning, which was pointless and unnecessarily time-consuming. The Democrat tried to ask again if untrained DOGE staffers were running amok at Treasury. “Again, they were granted read-only at Treasury. There were two…” Bessent said before Waters lost what’s left of her mind.
“Please! You can’t filibuster here. This is not the filibuster playground,” she said with a glare. “What you did was, you let these strangers into our Treasury with access to all of the data, all of the personnel information, and you just opened the door! Why’d you do that?” The Treasury secretary went on to remind the elderly lawmaker, “there’s no such thing” as a DOGE employee and that everyone she referenced was under his direct supervision. At that, Waters finally moved on. But first, she sneered: “I tend to disagree with you based on the information I have.”