Benny Johnson: “I feel like most workers in the federal government are nonessential. I think most of them could be replaced by an AI chatbot, frankly.”
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From the September 30, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube
BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): But let's start with the government shutdown because that's, I think, going to start ticking away tonight, we may be facing a government shutdown. And so the battle lines are that Democrats want to give infinity money to criminal aliens to come here and to illegally break our laws. Is that it?
SEN RICK SCOTT (GUEST): That's pretty much it.
So here's the deal. We are supposed to pass a budget. I've been up here six and a half years. No budgets. So the — Chuck Schumer wants a — I think it's a trillion and a half dollars, health care for illegals. I guess they think that they're going to vote for him somehow. But with Trump's work to make sure people illegals don't have the right to vote, I think that might be a little bit harder going forward.
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JOHNSON: Yes. One hundred thousand federal workers leaving the federal workforce. Can you update us on that? Are those numbers real? What's the status there?
SCOTT: We'll find out. So think about it. How many how many more federal workers do we need? When I was governor of Florida, we went from about, I think, about a 127,000 workers when I got elected and down to about a 112,000. We've got to reduce the size of government. We're running $2 trillion deficits. We have $37 trillion worth of debt. So, you know, it's — look, I love everybody who works their butt off, but government is too big. We've got to get the private sector to grow, not government to grow. So I talked to — I talk to Russ Vought quite a bit. He's doing everything he can run OMB to figure out how do we get to a balanced budget. If this gives Trump the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending and have nonessential workers not employed by the federal government — think about this, how would you feel, right, if in your show — how many nonessential workers do you have?
JOHNSON: We have — most people at my company do, like, the jobs of four or five other people. Right? You know, normal employees in the economy. Yeah.
SCOTT: Right. In the premium sector, every employee is essential —
JOHNSON: Yes.
SCOTT: Otherwise, they wouldn't be an employee.
JOHNSON: Yes.
SCOTT: So how in federal government do we pay for nonessential workers?
JOHNSON: I mean, I feel like most workers in the federal government are nonessential. I think most of them could be replaced by an AI chatbot, frankly.
SCOTT: Yeah. Well, it just looks like that might happen.
But we've gotta get to a balanced budget, we're hurting the poorest families in this country with this ridiculous inflation. President Trump is committed to a balanced budget. I know Russ Vought at OMB is working on it. There's a few of us in the Senate, they're working hard to get this done. We have got to balance a budget. So — and we've gotta understand, we've got risk out there. We got China's a risk. Russia's a risk. Iran's a risk. So we got — at least we have a president who's trying to bring peace.