Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, issued the following statement in response to Elon Musk’s plan to overhaul government.
“Americans should brace for political chaos and a dramatic weakening of environmental and public health protections under a plan announced by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in an opinion piece published Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal. Musk and Ramaswamy lead a private commission called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, that President-elect Trump has tasked with recommending drastic changes to federal government spending and operations.
“In the opinion piece, Musk and Ramaswamy outline plans to:
- Present a list of regulations to President Trump, who they claim can rescind these regulations by executive order if the President perceives them as unlawful or overly expansive.
- Undertake ‘mass head-count reductions’ across the federal bureaucracy through firings, reductions in force, revoking telework accommodations, and moving federal offices out of Washington, DC, something the two authors claim the President can generally achieve through executive orders.
- Issue executive orders to end spending and suspend grants and contracts that the President believes are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended.
“For a billionaire like Musk, whose businesses depend on government contracts, his new gig as head of DOGE will be another financial windfall. For those who want government to work well, the outlook is quite grim. The Musk-Ramaswamy plan will bring massive disruptions to the federal civil service, cutbacks in services, and break the systems of checks and balances in government.
“These efforts will be met with strong legal pushback. Any attempts to rescind regulations and change spending through executive orders will result in lawsuits. DOGE’s work under the Trump administration will violate the Federal Advisory Committee Act, whose purpose is to ensure that advice provided by advisory committees to the government is objective and accessible to the public.
“DOGE will also lead to self-dealing and insider trading as unelected small government warriors decide and make recommendations on which government programs and contracts to suspend and invalidate.
“If DOGE really wants to attack government waste, PEER recommends that the Trump administration target private contractors who are price gouging American taxpayers by delivering poor services at a high cost while their profits and executive pay skyrocket.
“PEER stands ready to work to protect public employees during the Trump administration by representing whistleblowers, defending government workers’ First Amendment rights, and upholding laws that govern the civil service and protect the environment, our natural resources, and public health.”
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