U.S. Democratic Consultant Mark Pocan plans to introduce a invoice designed to ban “particular authorities staff” like Elon Musk from having federal contracts to allow them to’t steer spending in direction of their very own self-interest.
The proposed invoice is known as the ELON MUSK Act, which stands for Eradicate Looting of Our Nation by Mitigating Unethical State Kleptocracy.
“No authorities worker, ‘particular’ or not, ought to have any monetary curiosity in who the federal government does enterprise with,” Pocan, the Home Democrat from Wisconsin, mentioned in a statement. “Elon Musk is the poster youngster for such a abuse. After greater than $20 billion in federal contracts, there’s no approach Musk may be goal in what he’s doing. Defending the taxpayers must be our primary precedence.”
Musk’s SpaceX holds federal contracts with NASA and the Division of Protection.
The federal authorities has in place ethics guidelines for the way special government employees ought to behave. Musk seems poised to disregard a few of these. For instance, the governing statute on monetary conflicts of pursuits prohibits particular staff from “collaborating in issues that have an effect on [their] monetary pursuits.”
When President Donald Trump entered the Oval Workplace, he put Musk answerable for a controversial new advisory group referred to as the Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE) which has far-reaching energy throughout federal companies, lots of which regulate industries through which Musk has a stake.
The ethics guidelines additionally advise that such staff shouldn’t usually interact in exterior actions, together with employment, that battle with official duties. Along with being the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, Musk additionally owns X (previously Twitter), Neuralink, and The Boring Firm.
Musk’s infiltration of federal companies has already sparked public protests and political opposition as he has demanded unfettered entry to federal authorities company pc programs, together with the Treasury Department’s payments system which handles Social Safety and Medicare.
Home and Senate Democrats additionally introduced a bill Tuesday to dam “illegal entry” to the Treasury funds system, and two federal worker unions have filed suit to dam DOGE entry to the system.
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