Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) said he “won’t apologize” for telling a former federal worker who was fired that he “probably deserved it” because he’s a “clown.”
On Tuesday, a video went viral of Mack Schroeder, who worked for the Department of Health and Human Services, confronting Banks in a Senate hallway, asking him if he’s going to stop the so-called Department of Government Efficiency from illegally cutting more government jobs that help Americans get social services.
In the video, Banks tells Schroeder, “You probably deserved it.” Schroeder responds in disbelief: “I deserved it? Wow. Yeah, that’s great to hear. Why did I deserve it?”
“Because you seem like a clown,” Banks responds as the elevator doors close.
After the video drew criticism, Banks doubled down on Wednesday, saying in a video posted on social media that Democrats and the “left-wing media have lost their minds.”
“A clown is a clown who’s chasing senators through the halls with a cellphone complaining about losing a left-wing woke job in the federal government that should have never been a job to begin with,” Banks said. “I won’t back down. I won’t apologize for it. I support President [Donald] Trump and the DOGE effort 100% to cut wasteful spending and woke jobs out of the federal government, and we’re just getting started.”
Schroeder, who worked as a budget analyst for HHS, said in an interview with FOX59/CBS4 that he was surprised by Banks’s response.
“It just really surprised me and took me aback because I know there are going to be a lot of people in the state of Indiana who are losing services as of today with these huge cuts to HHS,” Schroeder said. “I would hope that he would care more about his constituents to have concerns about a lot of these programs changing.”
Allison Robbert/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Led by billionaire Elon Musk, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has been causing chaos in the federal government by firing workers — then sometimes rehiring them after court orders or after the administration realized how critical their roles were.
In Schroeder’s video, he said he was fired on Feb. 14, which was when officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were told about 1,300 probationary employees were losing their jobs, according to The Associated Press.
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Other HHS employees received notice Tuesday that their jobs were being eliminated, according to the AP. The job cuts are expected to save the department $1.8 billion annually, which is about 0.1% of the department’s $1.7 trillion budget. The cuts are wide-ranging, with impacts on medical research, programs aimed at preventing smoking and gun violence, and the office handing Freedom of Information Act requests.
