Billion Musk Doge Coin Scandal

Floor Speech

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Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, we are told that Trump has a mandate and that, as a result of this election, the Republicans have a mandate to outlaw interstate travel by pregnant women, to deport 20 million people, to trash NATO, trash the dollar, and slash Social Security.

Let us look at this mandate. Let's try to see the size of the mandate. There it is, that little area there.

Mandate, my ass. This is the smallest possible differential between the two parties.

If we can put up the next chart.

Let's compare this mandate historically.

Calvin Coolidge, that is a mandate. He won the popular vote by 25.2 percent. Joe Biden, 4\1/2\ points. Mr. Speaker, that is three times the mandate that is being claimed by the Trump administration. This chart shows an edge for Trump of 1.7 percent.

Since we created that chart, California has finally counted its votes. We in California, we take a month to vote, and then we take a month to count the votes. They are still valid. So it is really 1.5 percent difference.

Compare that to Hillary Clinton's mandate. In 2016, she beat Trump by 2.1 percent of the popular vote. That might be a mandate, but this here, that is a squeaker. That is like saying you watch a football game and one team beats the other 48 to 47 because of a missed extra point, and that is a blowout? Hardly.

There is no mandate to outlaw interstate travel by pregnant women or to trash NATO or deport 20 million people.

If anything, we will see the reason people voted the way they did, not only here in the United States, but around the world, although we would want to put this right side up.

Here we go.

Yes, inflation peaked at about 9 percent in the United States, and the Biden-Harris administration was held responsible by voters. Keep in mind this was a post-COVID effect. We saw it in the U.K., where they had 11 percent inflation; in the EU area, 11.5 percent, but people were pretty angry at that inflation, and you do have a mandate to bring it down, but I have good news for the Republican Party.

We Democrats have already done nine-tenths of the work. You see, it was about 9 percent. It is now down to 2.6 percent inflation, and every economist will tell you that you want about 2 percent inflation. Some would argue even higher, but the real hawks say 2 percent inflation in the economy.

We brought it down from 9 percent to 2.6 percent. It is your responsibility to get it down that last 0.6 percent, but you do not have a mandate to deport 20 million people.

Now, let's talk a little bit about an aspect of cryptocurrency that hasn't come up, and it also relates to the administration of the Federal Government. You see, we have a number of departments in the Federal Government, and we name them. We don't name them after companies. It is called the Department of Transportation. It is not called the Pepsi Cola Department.

Think of how much money a tobacco company could make if we took that big canyon in Arizona and renamed it the Marlboro Man Canyon. We don't do that, except once.

We now have a commission. We have had other commissions designed to study the efficiency of government and our expenditures, but this is the first time we have called the commission a department and spelled out DOGE, D-O-G-E. Well, why is that? Is that just a funny name? No, it is not.

It is pimping out the U.S. Government to help a private investment by naming a very important commission after dogecoin.

So what has happened? Has it worked? Has it spiked up dogecoin? You bet. Dogecoin went up by 2\1/2\ times, almost 3 times from election day to a week after election day.

You might say: Well, we now have a crypto-friendly administration. No. Bitcoin went up 27 percent. Dogecoin went up about 270 percent. Who knew about this? Who profited from it? How much profit was reached? The increase in that 1 week was worth $37 billion to those who bet on dogecoin.

Elon Musk tells us that he is serving on this commission and not earning one penny, but he is the one person in the country who knew that we would have something called DOGE, and he knew it the day Trump was elected, and many people who thought Trump would be elected maybe knew a day or two before.

In the 10 days before the name was announced--I think it is actually a week--we saw this value increase by $37 billion, or 270 percent, roughly, compared to 27 percent for bitcoin.

Certainly, Mr. Musk knew. This is the increase in DOGE.

Now, let's talk about how it compares to Bitcoin. We see a peak on DOGE right there at the announcement, so who was buying DOGE in the days before?

Who knew that that would be the announced famous name of a department that is getting more ink than just about anything else in government? Elon Musk knew. The man who says he is not going to earn a penny from the Department of Government Efficiency has already made some undisclosed portion of $37 billion.

I call upon Mr. Musk to show this country his trading in cryptocurrencies from a few days before the election until today so that we can know how the man who won't take a penny is benefiting, or perhaps not benefiting, from the $37 billion increase in the value of this cryptocurrency as a result of his unique name.

He says he is doing it for free. There are, of course, others who knew the name and might have known the effect on the value of dogecoin.

Let us talk a little bit more about cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrency claims to have one advantage over the dollar and that is that it is electronic. What about the dollar being electronic? It is, to some degree. We have Venmo and Zelle, but crypto has spent more money buying politics perhaps than any other industry, depending upon how you define the other industries.

For hundreds of billions of dollars, what do they get for it? They passed in this House a law prohibiting the Federal Reserve Board from making the dollar electronic and more efficient. Why? Because of the same reason that Pepsi-Cola would like to pass a law saying you can't put any bubbles in Coke. They want to use the power of the Federal Government to cripple their main competitor.

I commend Donald J. Trump for his brilliant statements of 2019 when he said, in July, ``I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air. Unregulated cryptoassets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity. . . . We have only one real currency in the USA, and it is stronger than ever, both dependable and reliable. It is by far the most dominant currency anywhere in the world, and it will always stay that way. It is called the United States dollar.''

He was right in 2019, but he has changed, and the importance of this change should not be underrated.

I got involved in looking at cryptocurrency because of my involvement in foreign affairs. I saw the pressure we were able to put on Iran. Why? First, there was a huge disagreement, at least in my party, about the nuclear deal that we negotiated as a result of that pressure. We split into two camps. Some said that the pressure we put on Iran is so intense that we are getting a good nuclear deal, and some said that the pressure we are putting on Iran is so intense that we should get a better nuclear deal. They agreed on one thing: It is the pressure.

What was that pressure? I have been here since 1997. I voted for sanctions on Iran. I proposed sanctions on Iran. What was effective? When we told countries that if they wanted to use the U.S. dollar, they had to diminish their oil purchases from Iran. It was the power of the dollar, not the power of our aircraft carrier groups, that forced Iran to sign an agreement they otherwise wouldn't have and might have been able to get an even better deal than that.

What is the effect of taking the dollar out? First, we lose that international power and, God forbid, to achieve our foreign policy aims, we would have to commit our soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen.

Second, we have a level of fiscal responsibility in this House that would make Argentina blush. How is it that we usually get away with it? We get away with it because of the role the United States dollar plays in international affairs. It is the reserve currency, so yes, we print it. That would be inflationary. Most of the time, it isn't. It was for a couple of years during COVID.

We print these dollars. We spend them because we don't want to raise taxes and don't want to cut benefits. How do we get away with it? Everybody else in the world is using the dollar. Donald Trump understands the importance of that. As I quoted him, he understands how critical it is that the U.S. dollar plays that role.

So, what happened to Donald Trump? Well, he takes the right position to defend the power of America and the wealth and income of American families unless he can get a lot of money for doing the opposite. We saw the crypto industry provide hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions. Then, we also saw the creation of World Liberty Financial, a crypto company controlled by Trump's family, to which he has an official position as chief crypto advocate. So now Donald Trump has become chief crypto advocate, abandoning the interests of America and abandoning the interests of American families.

What is the objective of crypto? It is said here by crypto backer Sam Altman. He says, ``I think the idea that we have a global currency that is outside the control of any government,'' so the U.S. can't use it to enforce its tax laws, its sanctions laws, or its laws against the drug trade, ``is a super logical and important step on the technology tree.''

That is what the crypto world wants to do to us. They tell us. Trump knows how bad it is, and until he could profit by doing the opposite, he agreed with me on this issue.

I look forward to fighting for the Trump of 2019 on this issue. Let's move on to the next slide.

Mr. Speaker, just to show you that Trump understands what is going on, there is another possible currency, not a cryptocurrency, which has not benefited him, and that was a proposal that he opposed.

We require a commitment from these countries--which countries? Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa--that they will neither create a new BRICS currency nor back any other currency.

Why this intense effort to prevent them from creating another currency? Because Donald Trump knows that having the dollar reign supreme means lower interest rates for American families. It means America has greater influence in the world. He still knows that rival currencies are bad for the American family, the American people, and the American Government, and he is opposed to new currencies when he can't make extra money from their creation.

But when he sees the campaign contributions from cryptocurrencies and when he sees the money his family is going to make off of their new crypto enterprise, he seems to move in the other direction. Commending South Korea's People and Parliamentarians

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Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I commend the people and the parliamentarians of South Korea. They inspired the world when they were faced with an outrageous declaration of martial law. The parliamentarians fought their way into their parliamentary building and voted 190-0, including all the members who were able to vote from President Yoon's party, to stop the martial law.

President Yoon's declaration of martial law was absolutely outrageous. It was an affront to South Korean democracy and an affront to the worldwide effort for democracy and the rule of law.

What was also outrageous was his attempt to justify it on national security grounds because that declaration of martial law and--thank God it was stopped in a few hours--not only did nothing to enhance South Korea's national security; it undermined it because what are the two pillars of South Korean national security? The first is the unity of the South Korean people in their dedication to democracy and the rule of law. President Yoon undermined that. Second, it is the relationship between the Republic of Korea and the United States and the American people.

Our commitment to South Korea is not a remnant of the fact that we fought together in the 1950s. Yes, we remember history, but our dedication to South Korea is there because of our shared dedication to democracy.

President Yoon tried to undermine that. I applaud the people of Korea and the parliamentarians of Korea on making sure that he was unsuccessful. Making AI a Tool for Good

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Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, in May of the year 2000, I was at this podium talking about the dangers of what I called engineered intelligence, artificial intelligence from our computer engineers or new types of mammalian life from our biological engineers, say a 1,000- pound mammal with a 200-pound brain that might beat my grandkids on the law school admissions test.

Right now, artificial intelligence is the rage, and the question before us is, is it a tool or is it a creature? The answer is clear: For the next quarter century at least, it is a tool. It is a powerful tool, an increasingly powerful tool, and we need to do a lot in Congress to make sure it is a tool for good.

We also have to think of the second half of this century and whether artificial intelligence becomes a creature with its own volition and its own objectives.

We are spending trillions of dollars to make artificial intelligence more intelligent. If we didn't, and we are, but while we are doing it, so is China, so is Europe, and so are others. Nothing is going to derail this effort to use artificial intelligence to make money and power, but while we are spending trillions making AI more powerful, perhaps we should spend 1 percent in a government agency to do some research on how to deal not just with the problems that confront us in the next few decades, but those that confront us in the second half of this century.

I mean, we need to do research. I look forward to working with my colleagues in designing a bill to authorize this so that we are monitoring for and preventing self-awareness, ambition, survival instinct, volition.

If we do not, then all I can say is this. It was several hundred years ago, some would say perhaps only 100 years ago or less, that our ancestors showed a new level of intelligence. We said hello to the slightly less intelligent Neanderthal, and then we said good-bye to Neanderthal. I realize there are genetic studies and footnotes to what I am saying, but we are here, Neanderthal isn't, and that is because that was the last time a new level of intelligence arose.

It is only a matter of time before artificial intelligence is more intelligent than any human. I mean that in a generalized sense, not just doing the things computers are good at, but doing the things that we do.

We had better make sure that the machines we build do not literally take on a life of their own, create their own objectives and their own tasks, seek to survive and propagate, and seek to achieve their own objectives.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time I have remaining?

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Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, artificial intelligence is a powerful tool. It will be a more efficient tool.

The question is, will it remain unaware?

If it becomes aware, will it have objectives?

Some have said that artificial intelligence will be the perfect Zen Buddhist, well aware of the situation but utterly uncaring as to what happens.

You go to today's largest computers and say: I think I should hit you with a sledgehammer and remove all your parts and sell the parts.

How much will I get for the parts?

Today's computer, today's artificial intelligence, will do its best to calculate the value of those parts.

You go to the stupidest or one of the less intelligent life forms, perhaps a cockroach running across the floor, and tell it that you want to stomp on it and see how it reacts. It has a survival instinct.

Let us hope that artificial intelligence does not develop a survival instinct, that it does not develop self-awareness.

However, let us not just hope. Let's take 1 percent of what we are doing to make AI more powerful to make sure it is safe. I look forward to working with my colleagues on that objective.

While I am talking about engineered intelligence, many decades from now we will confront another issue, and that is genetic engineering, designed to create new levels of intelligence. Whether they start with elephant DNA or human DNA, certainly a mammal with a genetically engineered brain 10 times the size of the average human would probably be pretty smart.

While I do not know whether artificial intelligence will have a survival instinct, ambition, a desire to affect its environment so as to ensure its own survival or its propagation, I do assume that any life form we create will have all those things. As I exemplified with the cockroach, every biological entity has a survival instinct. The DNA that did not wish to survive and propagate didn't, and it isn't here.

We will confront that issue many decades from now, and our successors or their successors will have to wrestle with what kind of genetic engineering can be done that affects intelligence.

Our Congress here has got to deal with the computer engineering that is already in front of us. We can worry about some of the short-term things: Is a self-driving car safe or will we see an automobile accident? That is important. We want to save people from automobile accidents, but it is not existential. We, as humankind, have lived through automobile accidents and bad drivers.

What is existential is the possibility of creating an artificial intelligence with general capacities and self-learning that also happens to develop--we don't know how this arises. We don't even know whether it exists in certain animals. We know it exists in ourselves-- self-awareness, ambition, a desire to survive, and an ability to set its own goals.

I look forward to working with my colleagues. My fear is that all the money and power in the world is going to go hell-bent for making AI powerful, and there will be nothing, not even crumbs going into making AI safe. Those few crumbs will go into dealing with issues that involve the safety of one person today who could be hurt in an automobile accident, and even less than crumbs will go into the bigger issue of whether AI develops its own ambition and self-awareness.

Mr. Speaker, in less time than I was allocated, I have covered four different subjects, and I look forward to rejoining with so many of my colleagues next week. I yield back the balance of my time.

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