Congressman Don Beyer (D-8th) criticized Elon Musk and President Donald Trump’s efficiency efforts as “cruel” and “inefficient” during a roundtable on potential Medicaid cuts on Friday.
When asked in his Old Town office by ALXnow, Beyer shared the following:
“Yeah, my message is, especially as a business person for many decades, is it’s okay to fight waste, fraud and abuse, but you have to do it with a thoughtful plan,” Beyer said.
Regarding his message for Elon Musk and what Musk has done to the federal government:
You don’t go blow everything up and fire everybody and then try to figure out, what do you put back together. It’s very cruel. It’s very inefficient. It’s going to cost more, way more money in the long run, as opposed to coming in thoughtfully and looking at agencies where they could be shrunk and looking how modernization could do that. But he’s doing it in the Silicon Valley way, which is to break everything and then put it back together. And that’s not how you govern effectively.
On skipping President Trump’s joint session to Congress earlier this week, Beyer said:
You know, I generally, I love tradition and wanted to be there, but he has treated Congress with such contempt. He’s refused to spend money that’s been allocated. He bypassed us every possible way. He’s allegedly destroyed departments created by acts of Congress without [corresponding] legislation. So I thought it would be inappropriate to elevate his speech by [honoring] it…
Donald Trump, Elon Musk can only do what the public will support overall. And the way we do that is through the individual stories of how it’s affecting people’s lives.
