Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wash.) introduced a Wednesday bill entitled Eliminate Looting of Our Nation by Mitigating Unethical State Kleptocracy (ELON MUSK) Act seeking to ban special government employees from obtaining federal contracts.
“Elon Musk gets more than $20 billion in contracts from the US government and bought his way into a new role in the government where he can direct even more money to himself. Enough,” Pocan wrote in a post on the social platform X, which Musk owns.
”My new bill, the ELON MUSK Act, will end this grift!”
In recent days, Democrats have pushed back on the tech giant’s access to citizens’ sensitive information through his oversight of the Treasury Department under the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is geared toward slashing wasteful spending.
Pocan has particularly taken issue with Musk due to his government contracts through the companies SpaceX and Starlink, which he says has been paid an undisclosed amount.
“@ElonMusk is ripping us off and like millions of Americans across the country, I’m pissed,” Pocan wrote in a separate post on X.
“I’m taking action by introducing the ELON MUSK Act, preventing grifters like him from getting richer while pillaging our tax dollars for himself.”
His fellow party members in the senate have also raised concern with the new administration’s approach to government reform under Musk’s leadership.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Finance, urged the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on Tuesday following his decision to grant access to sensitive government payment systems to Musk and other DOGE employees.
“It is not clear why these individuals were granted unfettered access to such data, what they could do with it once inside these systems, and what protections are in place to ensure the Department has been complying with its legal obligations under the Privacy Act, 26 U.S.C. 6103, as well as other statutes and Treasury regulations that protect such sensitive information about millions of Americans,” Warren and Wyden wrote, citing concerns with Musk’s ties to China.
It’s unclear if the GAO will open a formal investigation into the matter at this time.
