Today's Edition
NEW YORK (Reuters)
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Thursday he would establish a government efficiency commission headed by billionaire supporter Elon Musk if he wins the November 5 election, during a wide-ranging speech in which he laid out his economic vision for the country.
The former president has been discussing the idea of a government efficiency commission with aides for weeks, people with knowledge of those conversations have told Reuters. His speech to the New York Economic Club on Thursday, however, was the first time he had publicly endorsed the idea.
It was also the first time Trump said that Musk has agreed to head the body. He did not detail precisely how such a commission would operate, besides saying it would develop a plan to eliminate "fraud and improper payments" within six months of being formed.
"I will create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms," Trump said.
Musk said on an August 19 podcast that he had held conversations with the former president about the matter and that he would be interested in serving on the body.
"I look forward to serving America if the opportunity arises," Musk wrote on X on Thursday. "No pay, no title, no recognition is needed."
Trump's proposal for the commission drew an immediate rebuke from Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union which represents about 750,000 federal workers. He accused Trump and Musk of wanting to gut the non-partisan civil service and replace fired workers with allies.
"There's nothing efficient about that," Kelley wrote in a statement to Reuters.
The U.S. government already has the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) a federal watchdog agency tasked with investigating federal spending and performance.
