Musk’s Most Dangerous Move: Blocking Fed Contracts

This space has written extensively about the danger an unleashed, unelected, and unaccountable Elon Musk represents to the stability of this nation. (And this piece should be read alongside Ursalla’s piece on a different angle of the danger addressed below). Still, Musk’s latest move is so unprecedented, so random, and so “daring,” as to shock the system. Purportedly, in the name of government efficiency, Musk and his “DOGE Team” are now unilaterally blocking some federal contracts – which, to be sure, is a way to save money, but… Do you trust that Musk will then “allow” certain payments through due to their efficiency? Or do you suppose he’ll allow payments of which he approves? See below for the answer.

First the rundown from The Anchorage Daily News, which lays it out with clarity:

Elon Musk said his “DOGE team” of government efficiency enforcers is shutting down payments to federal contractors, suggesting that the world’s richest man may have access to sensitive systems used at the U.S. Treasury Department. “The corruption and waste is being rooted out in real-time,” Musk posted on X on Sunday, saying officials reporting to his so-called Department of Government Efficiency are “rapidly shutting down” payments.

For the purposes of argument, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and admit that if one is going to find government waste, a lot of it will be in government contracts (Ask Sen. Rick Scott, who – inexplicably, is still carrying around hundreds of millions of dollars gained by overbilling Medicare, and kept profits despite huge fines to the company). So, yes  – one must look at federal contracts if one is going to make government more efficient. Of course, it is how Musk is going about it that is the problem. As Musk explains:

“The @DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups. They literally never denied a payment in their entire career. Not even once,” Musk wrote on X, the social platform he owns.

Bravo. Nice job rooting out real issues (Giving him the benefit of the doubt). The problem, of course, is that the way one deals with this is to write a report to Congress and President Trump – laying out the findings and leaving it to actual government employees, elected folks, to make the decisions on what is to be done. Musk’s manner has already made waves within the mechanism for evaluating and paying on contracts:

Musk’s weekend statements follow last week’s departure of David Lebryk, the Treasury Department’s most senior career official, who had been in charge of payment systems at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.

Sure, it is possible that the White House has given Musk carte blanch to make such moves but – again, any actual “action” should be done with total transparency, reports, evidence, interviews, and justifications, because otherwise, the system is no less susceptible to corruption than the previous. So far, we have a tweet.

There is an old adage that the “Power of the Presidency” is not so much in ordering people to do what you want. No, it is the power to allow “some” people to go about doing what they were going to do anyway while hammering others. This system would seem to be the sin qua non of such power. Allowing Musk to shut down some federal contracts and then, presumably, blessing others as “legitimate” (In Musk’s eyes) involves almost inherent corruption or incompetence, or both.

We have these things called “audits” and they are comprehensive. As you know, they involve evidence, reports, etc. And generally speaking, they are reviewed up the chain and by Congress. There would be nothing wrong with Musk selectively going through various contracts as audits and then laying out why that contract should be canceled. Instead, we get something dubious, like this:

Musk said DOGE was shutting down payments by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to Lutheran Family Services, a faith-based charity that has been providing social services to refugees.

It is possible that there is waste within that system. But one just cannot ignore the fact that Musk shut down a program that helped refugees and not, say… Pfizer. Our readers are all too aware of how “agendas” could play a much larger role than actual waste when it comes to what gets canceled.

This is so damned dangerous. Where is the report to Congress and where are the numbers? If the problem is that there were programs that were supposed to get automatic approval, then report on it to Congress which can then defund all of them – they control the checkbook. Where are the comparisons to other programs that help refugees that have been blessed (We don’t see any, at least not yet). Congress controls the money. If one wants to shut the money spigot off – make the report to Congress, or at least something proving that this wasn’t indiscriminate action against an organization helping refugees. Need we even discuss the chilling effect this might have on Catholic Charities and other renowned philanthropic organizations that help new immigrants?

There isn’t a damned thing wrong with wanting to root out government waste. There is nothing wrong with worrying about “auto-approvals” which probably shouldn’t ever be automatic. But giving one man full authority to plow through sensitive information and pick and choose which contracts to shut down, this one helping refugees, both screams possible corruption, but even more worrisome screams that they don’t care if they look corrupt.

Just so dangerous.

God Bless: I can be reached at [email protected] and on “X” @JasonMiciak and on Blue Sky

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