[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 29 (Wednesday, February 12, 2025)]
[House]
[Page H648]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            SPECIAL GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE STATUS OF ELON MUSK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bacon). The Chair recognizes the 
gentlewoman from Iowa (Mrs. Miller-Meeks) for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. MILLER-MEEKS. Mr. Speaker, I feel compelled to remark on the 
outrage of my colleagues and others over the special government 
employee status granted to Elon Musk by the executive branch. We are 
hearing a lot of, oh, he is unelected or he is unaccountable.
  Let me remind my colleagues and those voices that the vast majority 
of government employees who review and authorize grants, disburse 
billions of dollars, issue rules and laws, or even handle our Nation's 
pandemic response, like Dr. Anthony Fauci, are unelectable and 
unaccountable to the voters.
  How about the IRS bureaucrat Lois Lerner?
  How can we forget ACORN?
  None of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle were calling for 
accountability or investigations when Dr. Fauci was forcing his mandate 
on 300 million Americans.
  None of them were expressing outrage when unelected bureaucrats were 
forcing 6-year-olds to wear masks or closing down schools or forcing 
Head Start students to continue to wear masks long after the rest of 
America had stopped wearing them and closing down churches and small 
businesses across the country.
  Who can forget the government employee who leaked the pending Dobbs 
court decision?
  No conservative has forgotten Lois Lerner of the IRS denying 501(c) 
status to those volunteer citizens wanting to protest the Obama 
administration.
  These government employees yield tremendous power with no oversight, 
often making decisions behind closed doors that affect millions of 
Americans. Elon Musk was hired by the President of the United States, 
or brought on, to undercover waste, fraud, and abuse in our government. 
That is it. Every move being made by him and DOGE is being made in the 
public eye as an audit and not in the shadows.
  Let's be clear because this really is not about accountability. It is 
about the fear of a system that might be held accountable and expose 
corruption.

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