What the US needs to combat wasteful spending is effective leadership, not cowboy CEOs with no sense of how the government works, says Kathryn Anne Edwards for Bloomberg Opinion.
Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk speaks as Republican presidential nominee and former US president Donald Trump reacts during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, US, Oct 5, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photoa new Department of Government Efficiency
Musk might find this amusing, but for the rest of us it can be downright Orwellian, the notion that the path to efficiency is through additional administrative bureaucracy, especially when that bureaucracy that will have tenuous, if any, authority. Your primary constraint, the one that supersedes all others with no exceptions, is the US Constitution, which gives the power of the purse to Congress. Congress creates every federal agency, mandates their tasks and approves their funding. If you want efficiency, it must start with Congress.
Although keeping a careful eye on spending is the purview of Congress, it’s a lot to put on members or its committees, as both are constantly churning through elections and majority status. Better to create a congressional agency instead. Unlike executive agencies, which report to the president, these agencies report to Congress, just like the Congressional Budget Office.
Say hello - again - to the Government Accountability Office , the hawkish auditor of the federal government that clawed back US$70 billion from agencies in fiscal 2023 as part of hundreds of actions to properly steward federal funds.
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