Trump’s best idea: Unleashing Elon Musk on government
Donald Trump’s speech on the economy last week was as usual a jumble of good (deregulation and taxes), bad (tariffs), and incoherent (child care). But one new idea he floated is a very good one and deserves more attention: The former President said he’d ask Elon Musk to run a Government Efficiency Commission. Eyes understandably glaze over at the sound of “commission," which is usually intended to duck a hard issue.
The purpose in this case seems to be the opposite—to discover and highlight the countless ways government doesn’t work well, and suggest how to do tasks better, or perhaps not at all. “I will create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government," Mr. Trump said in his speech to the Economic Club of New York.
He added that “as a first order of business, this commission will develop an action plan to totally eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months. This will save trillions of dollars. Trillions." That’s typical Trump hyperbole, but there’s no doubt a huge amount that could be saved merely by fixing loopholes in programs that invite fraud.
The government paid tens of billions in fraudulent unemployment benefits and Paycheck Protection grants during the pandemic. According to the Internal Revenue Service, a California prison inmate allegedly claimed more than $550 million in Covid-era Employee Retention Tax Credits. The ERTC is one of the great Beltway boondoggles and will continue to add to the deficit with dubious payouts.
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