Trump Tells Musk to Get 'More Aggressive'

Reuters
By Michael Rainey

Happy Monday! Another busy week kicks off in Washington as the House returns to town and prepares to advance a blueprint for "one, big beautiful bill" that would deliver much of President Trump's agenda, including trillions of dollars in tax and spending cuts. Federal workers, meanwhile, are on pins and needles as they weigh their responses to a weekend email from DOGE chief Elon Musk asking them to list their accomplishments last week - at the risk of being fired if they fail to do so.

Musk Email Sparks Chaos as Trump Calls for 'More Aggressive' Approach

Elon Musk sent an email to millions of federal employees this weekend asking them to list five accomplishments from the past week while threatening them with termination if they failed to respond by midnight on Monday.

The message is reportedly causing enormous confusion and uncertainty in the workforce, especially among employees in fields like national security, law enforcement, the judiciary and healthcare, where privacy and data security are part of the job. It also raises new questions about the legality of Musk's efforts and the potential political repercussions of President Trump's ongoing effort to radically reduce the federal workforce. The Musk email arrived soon after the president on social media encouraged Musk to be "more aggressive."

With Trump's approval, some federal agencies - including the FBI and the Departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security - have told their employees to ignore Musk's request and to direct any questions to their supervisors within the chain of command. The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 federal workers, has asked the administration to rescind the request entirely.

Defending his work, Musk said it was a simple effort to make sure federal employees were really working.

"This was basically a check to see if the employee had a pulse and was capable of replying to an email," Musk said. "This mess will get sorted out this week. Lot of people in for a rude awakening and strong dose of reality. They don't get it yet, but they will."

Musk also said the "reason this matters is that a significant number of people who are supposed to be working for the government are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks. In other words, there is outright fraud."

Trump backed Musk when asked about the situation Monday, saying the email was "pretty ingenious." He also said somewhat confusingly that anyone who failed to respond to the email is "semi-fired, or fired."

Trump also made it clear that he shares Musk's clear disdain for federal employees. The president posted a picture on his social media platform showing a tired-looking SpongeBob Squarepants looking at a list titled "Got Done Last Week." The list contains five items, including "Cried about Trump," "Cried about Elon," and "Made it into the office for once."

Johnson Says Full Speed Ahead on Budget Plan

Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday that he plans to bring his budget resolution to the House floor this week, despite growing concerns within the Republican caucus that the bill's topline spending cuts could force politically damaging reductions in Medicaid once all the details are hammered out.

Speaking at an event held by the conservative libertarian group Americans for Prosperity, Jonson said he recognizes that there are questions about the bill - which include the fact that it would add trillions to the national debt while slashing spending on healthcare for the poor - but he is confident that Republicans will get on board. "I don't think anyone wants to be in front of this train, I think they want to be on it," he said.

The budget blueprint calls for at least $880 billion in cuts to be achieved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and the budget math suggests that the bulk of those cuts would have to come from Medicaid due to the program's sheer size. But Johnson said he has no plans to address the issue at this point, even though it could delay or even derail the effort once lawmakers start specifying precisely where they intend to find their budgetary savings.

"Look, everybody needs to understand that the resolution is merely the starting point for the process," Johnson said. "So there's nothing specific about Medicaid in the resolution. The legislation comes later, so this is the important first start."

Still, some Republicans are getting nervous as public discontent over the potential healthcare cuts begins to bubble up, along with concerns about Elon Musk's aggressive campaign to reduce the government.

"You have to do this with a scalpel and not a hatchet," said Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey Republican, per CNN. "And we have to make sure that people who work hard but rely on Medicaid for health insurance, or seniors in a nursing home, or folks who are disabled, are protected."

On the broader issue of government spending, Van Drew advised caution. "This is a tricky business. This is something you can't do easily and you can't just bludgeon your way through it," he said. "But there's a lot that needs to be done."

Johnson's schedule calls for passing the fully defined budget in the House by the first week of April, with the final, Senate-approved bill arriving at the White House in May - an extremely ambitious timeline in such a narrowly divided Congress, with many difficult issues remaining to be resolved.

"Buckle in, because the ride is just getting started," says Politico's Garrett Ross.

Op-Ed of the Day: Former IRS Chiefs Send a Warning

A bipartisan group of former IRS commissioners is warning that the mass firings the Trump administration started rolling out last week will only make the tax agency less efficient while rewarding those who cheat, with the likely result that the nation's tax gap - the amount of taxes owed that goes uncollected each year - will grow larger.

Writing at The New York Times Monday, the seven former commissioners - Lawrence Gibbs, Fred T. Goldberg Jr., Charles Rossotti, Mark Everson, John Koskinen, Charles Rettig and Daniel Werfel, who were appointed variously under every president since Ronald Reagan - argued that the idea of reducing resources makes little sense to an organization seeking to be more efficient and increase revenues:

If you were to ask the top chief executives in the world to name the best strategy to attack waste in their organizations and balance the books, there is one answer you would be very, very unlikely to hear: Take an ax to accounts receivable, the part of an organization responsible for collecting revenue.

Yet the private sector leaders advising President Trump on ways to increase government efficiency are deploying this exact approach by targeting the Internal Revenue Service, which collects virtually all the receipts of the U.S. government - our nation's accounts receivable division. Last week, the Trump administration started laying off about 6,700 I.R.S. employees, many if not most of whom are directly involved in collecting unpaid taxes.

Every year, the government receives much less in taxes than it is owed. Closing that gap, which stands at roughly $700 billion annually, would almost certainly require maintaining the I.R.S.'s collection capacity. Depleting it is tantamount to a chief executive saying something like: "We sold a lot of goods and services this year, but let's limit our ability to collect what we're owed."

The authors say they understand that virtually any bureaucratic organization could benefit from reform and that "elections have consequences," but at the same time, the country needs a functioning tax system, no matter who is running the government.

"Nearly 200 million Americans are in the process of completing their tax returns. We urge caution in initiating major changes to I.R.S. operations during the filing season," they write. "But even after filing season ends, we believe - and we believe that successful chief executives across the country would concur - that making drastic cuts to accounts receivable as a way to improve cost efficiency just doesn't add up."

Read the op-ed at The New York Times.

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