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Is Elon Musk Donald Trump’s Best Choice to Audit the Federal Government?
Let me say first that I’m a big fan of Elon Musk; you might have read my book review of the biography written about Musk by Walter Isaacson. The man is brilliant, creative, rich, and demanding of those who work for him.
But I have to admit that I have reservations about Musk taking the position of auditing the government for a number of reasons. First, he is always accustomed to being in charge. Always. And if he comes on board, he will answer to Trump. I’m not sure that he fully understands that Trump will be his boss.
Second, and this depends on how much interface he will have with federal employees, I don’t think he has the temperament to work with these bureaucrats. And since many of them will probably be from the political Left, they will probably decide to hate Musk anyway. Assume that they will declare that he is creating a hostile work environment.
Third, I doubt that Musk will have the power to fire employees. In his companies, he would calmly fire people if he believed it was necessary. But the federal government’s rules are complicated by civil service regulations, and firing someone might take an act of Congress (literally) to make it happen.
Fourth, both Musk and Trump have outsized egos. Although they have sounded like they enjoy and appreciate each other over the past few months, working together will be a different experience.
Fifth, if Musk is asked to recommend eliminating entire departments, I don’t know if he’ll be able to convince Trump (although Trump has already supported eliminating the Department of Education and sending Education requirements and regulations to the states); what about recommendations to disband other departments? Will Trump be ready to face the hurricane of pushback that will be released?
Clearly, they will need to define Musk’s role before he begins. He will likely bring in people to handle the day-to-day audits and they will consult with him. And maybe it’s worth initiating this audit because of the enormous chaos—oops—positive effect it could have. Then again, you know what Trump can say if it doesn’t work out.
YOU’RE FIRED!!
Published in Domestic Policy
There is no perfect choice. An audit is one thing, a plan of action another. Is Musk the perfect person to determine how many people it might really take to achieve the current work output of governmental departments? He’s definitely a top candidate.
Maybe it is just me, but I would prefer that the person doing the needed audit was not someone who has been the beneficiary of so much government dough.
Musk would be great. Vivek would too. Third choice would be me. Chainsaw, not a scalpel.
Has there ever been a claim that Musk – or whoever might get that job – would be expected to directly fire people? Seems like they would make recommendations, and Trump would take actions if he decided to.
I expect a committee that will write a report, which Congress will quietly disregard. There is too much money and power to protect the money and power involved in government.
Trump rarely does things quietly. I’ll guess that he will announce the results of a report. I don’t know if Congress actually needs to have a hand in the action. But I expect it to be clamorous!
Start by outlawing Federal Public Employee unions.
Or at a minimum, give them a choice. They can have unions, or that can have civil service protections. Not both.
I like it!
You bring up good points. None of them, alone or in totality, suggest that there is anyone better suited, better equipped, better emotionally capable, or better authorized to judge, design and effect a change.
Have at it Elon!
Chain saws and wood chippers at your beck and call.
Never said it would be easy, nor without pain, extreme resistance, and massive upheaval.
The results promise to not be perfect, but most certainly will be better.
It should be every citizen’s job to audit the federal government every day. But the people who are too busy posting McDonald Trump french fry memes to give a thought to Kamala Harris’s $42.5 billion broadband fiasco are not going to do it. The people who wasted a few members of Congress over $60 billion in military aid to Ukraine but who won’t waste a moment to critique Kamala Harris’s broadband waste aren’t going to do it. It won’t hurt to get Elon Musk’s input, for all the good it will do.
I echo and endorse Susan’s thoughts on Elon Musk. He has Napoleonic gifts, but we all hope for something better than a Napoleonic outcome. At the moment, we all love the guy.
There’s a lot to admire. Still, it always gets my suspicious concern when anyone becomes so powerful they might as well be Anthony, the kid in The Twilight Zone episode, “It’s a Good Life”.
Naw, if he was really that powerful, nobody would dare prosecute him/his businesses the way they have been.
I’d like Musk to stay away from government and keep doing what he’s doing, which is something no one else can do. Also, I don’t think making the government do things more efficiently is near important as making government do less things. Eliminate the Department of Education, as Trump said he would (I’m highly skeptical), then Labor, then Agriculture, etc.
I don’t want an audit, I want action!
Best case, Elon (who is a very strange man indeed) inspires a new generation of bureaucracy-busters who start from “let’s abolish this and see what, if anything, goes wrong” rather than the standard “let’s double-down and add more” approach of the last 80 years.
Medium case, the blob is so distracted by DOGE they let a Trump administration actually get other stuff done.
Likely case, Trump fills his administration with egos that spend all their time undermining each other.
All this is hypothetical, anyway, because we know the ‘election’ is a foregone conclusion and Trump, Musk and millions of others will find themselves in the Gulag before the ‘counting’ is done.
Would he look at programs like Medicare and Social Security?
All your points are excellent! And I can’t think of anyone else better suited to do the job.
I wish he would! And I’m a recipient!
I seem to never be able to find the quote, but I have a recollection of Dave Barry writing: “The principal purpose of government is entertainment.” And of Scott Adams saying: “The best predictor of outcomes is that which is the most entertaining.” And, of course, entertainment is subjective. But I would say watching Musk interact with bureaucrats from a power position would be entertaining (to me).
I can think of no one better qualified than Musk to lead the long and much needed project involving the wholesale modernization of the federal government’s labyrinthine and antiquated tech systems, the very complexity of which serves to hide billions (perhaps trillions over the decades) of taxpayers’ money “finding” its way into “unintended” pockets, and to make such “mistakes” virtually impossible to detect, let alone correct.
Dangerous choice – find someone completely OUTSIDE of the Tech industry, someone with a more neutral position politically and whose strong background is financial. There are plenty of qualified people I am sure. I agree with your descriptions and he would not be a good choice for this role.
Perhaps one or more of the people who have previously worked or currently work for Musk, rather than Musk himself.
A more efficient, less wasteful government will just oppress the people more efficiently.
I used to work for NASA. They make an annual booklet that breaks down NASA spending by Congressional district. The budget is 2000 pages, because it controls what government does. The number of Congressmen that want to shrink government could fit in an elevator.
At least it’s a start. And we would finally be starting. Probably won’t work, but it’s at least a try.
And I love Elon’s first action at Twitter, of firing 80% of the employees. Saying that if you only do the things the company has any business doing, it turns out you don’t need all that many people.
Federal employees who have not violated any rules cannot be fired. However, appointees can be canned for whatever reason by whoever hirwed them (or is now in that position).
However, you can downsize agencies using a RIF – reduction in force. The rules may have change since I worked, but it’s basically a seniority system where things roll downhill, so to speak. This would have to be authorized by Congress, IIRC. If the Dem hold one or both houses, or enough seats in the Senate to filibuster, then it’ll never happen.
OTOH, you could pay Federal employees not to work. It works for farmers who are paid not to grow crops . . .
don’t we do that already?
Unfortunately, not for the most part.
It is not MediCare that is the problem.
Ah hem. What we have is the huge problem that occurs when the very industries which the American Fed government agencies are supposed to direct their complete and unfettered oversight against become instead hostages to those industries.
So the unregulated FDA and CDC are now the players that determine how American health policies are in place and how they will be enforced.
We just had a hoax that took root inside our society in which a virus with a 99.83% survival rate for anyone under the age of 65 was tackled with hospitalization, ventilation and the administration of toxic & super expensive drugs.
The hoax cost us 8.4 trillion dollars in terms of government funds being spent. On top of that, there is no way to know how much of Main Street no longer gave the government substantial amounts of taxes due to mom and pop establishments being shuttered.
Side note: Japan spent when adjusted for population size differences, one tenth the amount of monies we spent. And their fatality rate was 1/62nd what ours was. Their medical teams employed C Pap machines rather than the pricier vents. No need for surgery and anesthesia for C Paps, either.
They also employed the rather safe and effectyive HCQ plus zinc, at 50 cents a pop rather than 5K a pop, as remdesivir was. Remdesivir was not effective and when combined with ventilation as well as fentanyl, it was deadly.
Now we have the looming semi-universal prescribing of a new drug, Ozempic, which will add three trillion dollars annually to the MediCare budget. Big Pharma plans on seeing to it that every overweight child over the age of six will go on it.
The kids will be taking it along with all older overweight Americans. So MediCal, the state-run side of MediCare, as well as MediCare itself, will see an exponential rise in the need for more funding.
This semi-universal prescription ability is expected to be in place by the end of 2027.
This should be stopped, but will it be? I doubt it. The pharma company producing Ozempic owns the media through its ad monies. It also owns Congress critters through its lobbyists.
The blurring of the line between nominally separate Government and Industry is one indication of fascism. Not judging! It’s happened in India.
(imo nobody is ‘taken hostage’. It’s a mutually beneficial corruption.)
LOL for the most part, yes!