“Special government employee” Elon Musk has floated a pay raise for members of Congress and senior government employees as a means of rooting out corruption at the federal level.
“It might make sense to increase compensation for Congress and senior government employees to reduce the forcing function for corruption, as the latter might be as much as 1000 [sic] times more expensive to the public,” Musk, 53, wrote on X Thursday morning.
Back in December, the billionaire helped torpedo a government funding measure that would have given lawmakers in Congress a 3.8% pay hike — worth approximately $6,600 per year in extra cash to rank-and-file members.
Most federal legislators receive an annual paycheck of $174,000, which hasn’t been increased since 2009.
The proposed pay hike had been nestled into a continuing resolution, a stopgap measure that Congress needed at the time to avert a partial government shutdown.
But Musk whipped up public opposition against both the resolution and the pay hike, grousing at the time while overstating the increase amount: “How can this be called a ‘continuing resolution’ if it includes a … pay increase for Congress?”
The concept of high pay for government workers to discourage corruption has been used in other countries. Late Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, for example, was famous for championing exorbitant pay with ministers raking in millions a year.
Lee argued that paying government workers well would help reduce perverse incentives for them to pad their pockets through illicit means.
Some good-government advocates in the US have also suggested pay raises for lawmakers to attract a higher caliber of candidates or job applicants.
Musk has been on a crusade to trim federal spending via the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has advised the Trump administration on mass layoffs and spending reductions while setting a target of $1 trillion in savings.
Last week, Musk directed an email be sent out to government workers instructing them to list their top five accomplishments from the prior week. That email whipped up a frenzy and the Office of Personnel Management clarified Monday that a response was voluntary.
Musk also clarified that the emails were intended to be a “pulse check” rather than a performance review.
Amid backlash from liberals over the cost-cutting crusade, Musk insisted Thursday that DOGE has also been elevating outstanding government employees — not just reducing headcount.
“Hundreds of federal workers are being promoted daily every time we encounter excellence,” he wrote on X. “The @DOGE team will be more clear about this. The goal is to make the federal government a meritocracy as much as possible.”
