Congressman Lloyd Smucker’s Feb. 16 LNP | LancasterOnline column (“Fiscal reform starts now: Rep. Smucker makes the case for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency”) was, in my view, highly misleading.
Smucker asserts that the Department of Government Efficiency “operates with full transparency.” That’s false. President Donald Trump designated DOGE as being exempt from public records law for about a decade. Elon Musk’s financial disclosures regarding the work are not public. The DOGE website contains little information.
Posts on the social media platform X about contracts that DOGE has terminated are “light on substance,” according to The New York Times.
U.S. House Republicans have blocked subpoenas for Musk’s testimony about DOGE’s activities and findings.
Smucker asserts that independent oversight of government agencies is needed. There already was independent oversight.
According to Oversight.gov, the role of federal inspectors general “is to prevent and detect waste, fraud, and abuse relating to their agency’s programs and operations, and to promote economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in the agency’s operations and programs.” Inspectors general are expected to perform their duties in a nonpartisan manner.
As I see it, Trump would not have illegally fired 17 inspectors general while empowering DOGE to investigate those agencies if he wanted independent oversight. Musk is neither independent nor nonpartisan.
Anne Applebaum gets to the heart of DOGE’s agenda in an article in The Atlantic: “The Department of Government Efficiency is not, so far, primarily interested in efficiency. DOGE and its boss, Elon Musk, have instead focused their activity on the eradication of the federal civil service, along with its culture and values, and its replacement with something different. In other words: regime change.”
Smucker is misleading the public and undermining the rule of law.
Gregory Hand
Manheim Township
