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02-11-2024
NEW YORK: If Elon Musk joins the United States government following a Donald Trump victory in the presidential election, he will be the latest in a succession of billionaire businesspeople to hold public office.
From the late Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and former President Trump himself, the super-rich have long held positions of power in Washington, DC and across US state capitals.
With polls showing Tuesday’s election on a knife edge, Musk is in serious contention to join Trump’s cabinet after the Republican candidate floated the idea of the tech billionaire serving as so-called “Secretary of Cost Cutting”.
Since entering politics after decades in the real estate business, Trump has displayed a penchant for drafting high-net-worth individuals from the private sector.
During his first term in office, Trump nominated five people as Cabinet secretaries who had spent all or nearly all of their careers in the business world, including Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, billionaire philanthropist Betsy DeVos, and former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon.
According to an analysis by the Pew Research Centre, Trump’s first slate of Cabinet nominees had more businesspeople with no public sector experience than any other before it. Musk, the world’s richest man, has called for drastic reductions in government spending, although he has provided few specifics about where he would direct cuts. During Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX CEO said the federal budget could be slashed by “at least” $2 trillion.
“Your money is being wasted, and the Department of Government Efficiency is going to fix that,” Musk told Howard Lutnick, the chief executive of Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald and a member of Trump’s transition planning team, when asked how much he could “rip out” of the latest federal budget.
“We’re going to get the government off your back and out of your pocketbook.”
Such a reduction in spending equal to nearly one-third of last year’s federal budget of $6.75 trillion would almost certainly be impossible to achieve without steep cuts in areas that politicians across the aisle have been loath to touch, including social security, healthcare, veterans’ benefits, and defence.
Musk himself has acknowledged that such a sharp cut in spending would inflict serious economic pain. On Tuesday, he responded “sounds about right” to a post on X that predicted there would be “an initial severe overreaction in the economy” and “markets will tumble.”
SpaceX and Tesla did not respond to requests seeking comment from Musk.
While politicians pledging to end wasteful spending is hardly new, there is no “precise parallel” to a businessman like Musk overseeing a department tasked with improving government efficiency, said Bruce Schulman, a professor of history at Boston University.
Political candidates that touted their experience in business, from former President George W. Bush to presidential nominee Mitt Romney, typically had a track record in public service before seeking to enter the highest levels of the federal government.
Government commissions aimed at eliminating waste and inefficiency such as the Hoover Commission and the National Partnership for Reinventing Government led, respectively.
Schulman said while initiatives to eliminate waste have been endorsed at various times by both Democrats and Republicans, they have been largely for “political show”. (Int’l News Desk)
