Elon Musk: Many Bureaucrats, Like Samantha Power, Are Getting Wealthy At Taxpayers Expense

Elon Musk said there would be investigations into how members of the federal bureaucracy have become rich on relatively modest salaries, during an Oval Office event with President Trump on Tuesday:

DONALD TRUMP: And also, could you mention some of the things that your team has found? Some of the crazy numbers, including the woman who walked away with about $30 million?

ELON MUSK: Well, we do find it sort of rather odd that, you know, there are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars but somehow managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position, which is, you know, what happened at USAID.

We're just curious as to where it came from. Maybe they're very good at investing, in which case we should take their investment advice, perhaps. But mysteriously, they get wealthy. We don't know why. Where does it come from?

And I think the reality is that they're getting wealthy at taxpayer expense. That's the honest truth of it.

So, you know, we're looking at, say—well, if you look at, say, Treasury, for example—basic controls that should be in place, that are in place in any company, such as making sure that any given payment has a payment categorization code, that there is a comment field that describes the payment, and that if a payment is on the "Do Not Pay" list, that you don't actually pay it. None of those things are true currently.

So the reason that departments can't pass audits is because the payments don't have a categorization code. It's like just a massive number of blank checks just flying out the building. So you can't reconcile blank checks. You've got comment fields that are also blank, so you don't know why the payment was made.

And then we've got this truly absurd "Do Not Pay" list, which can take up to a year for an organization to get on. And we're talking about terrorist organizations. We're talking about known fraudsters, known aspects of waste, known things that do not match any congressional appropriation. It can take up to a year to get on the list. And even once on the list, the list is not used. It's mind-blowing.

So what we're talking about here—really, we're just talking about adding common-sense controls that should be present but that haven't been present.

So you say, "Well, how could such a thing arise? That seems crazy." But when you understand that really everything is geared toward complaint minimization, then you understand the motivations.

If people receive money, they don’t complain, obviously. But if people don’t receive money, they do complain. And the fraudsters complain the loudest and the fastest.

So then when you understand that, then it makes sense. Oh, that’s why they approve all the payments at Treasury. Because if you approve all the payments, you don’t get complaints.

But now we're saying, "No, actually, we are going to complain if money is spent badly. If your taxpayer dollars are not spent in a sensible and frugal manner, then that's not okay."

Your tax dollars need to be spent wisely on the things that matter to the people. I mean, these things—it's just common sense. It's not draconian or radical.

I think it's really just saying, let's look at each of these expenditures and say, "Is this actually in the best interest of the people?" And if it is, it’s approved. If it’s not, we should think about it.