The federal government’s out-of-control is the one thing that stands out in today’s American political landscape as clearly as a diamond in a pile of manure. The federal government has expanded beyond its constitutionally mandated boundaries to become an imperial colossus that dominates the country, drains the wealth of taxpayers, runs up mountains of debt, and interferes in almost every aspect of our daily lives.
Elon Musk, the former president (and current GOP candidate) Donald Trump, has some interesting suggestions on how to clean out the Augean Stables.
Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur who is the founder of Tesla Motors, has a plan to create a government efficiency panel. Former President Trump announced Thursday that he would nominate Musk as the head of the commission if the Republican candidate wins the election.
Trump announced that Musk would be the head of the commission in a speech he gave on Thursday, at the Economic Club of New York. This was the first public expression of support Trump had given to the idea. He gave a general description of the tasks he expected from the task force.
The commission will conduct a financial audit and performance review of the federal government, and it will look for fraud and improper payments from government programs. The commission would then make recommendations for “dramatic reforms” to promote efficiency.
This is an interesting concept – we’ve seen task forces and commissions formed ad nauseam, but not much has changed. There is a key difference between this and previous commissions.
It’s not just that Musk is involved in this idea. The idea of an independent, comprehensive audit of all government functions is intriguing. In recent years, we’ve heard a lot of “we did our investigation and everything was fine” coming out of Washington.
The former President said on Thursday:
In his speech, Trump stated that he would create a commission to audit the financial performance of all federal agencies.
This task could take generations. To work, this commission must not only be led by someone outside of the federal government but it also needs to be staffed entirely by uninterested third parties.
The regulatory requirement for companies in the medical device and biotech industries, where I worked for over 30 years, is that they must conduct periodic audits on their quality management system. Audits must be conducted by an impartial third party. This means that the person auditing must not be involved in either the process or function under review. This commission Trump proposes must be staffed by and have all audits performed by third parties who are not interested in the process or function being audited.
We’ve seen it all before: disinterested people can become very interested when there are billions of dollars at stake.
Elon Musk is the perfect person to lead this commission. When they start auditing there will be a lot of “Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes” involved.
