Elon Musk’s elusive proposal to pay the wages of TSA workers affected by the ongoing partial government shutdown has been rejected by the Trump administration, CBS News reported Wednesday.
I say “pseudo-offer” because, as I already mentioned, he said he “would like to make an offer” to pay the salary, a tortured phrase that, perhaps, could have been, PerhapsInterpreted as an indication that the “offer” may not be genuine.
Anyway, here are some headlines about Elon Musk’s statement:
- Fox Business: “Elon Musk offers to pay TSA employees’ salaries amid DHS budget impasse”
- Reuters: “Elon Musk offers to pay TSA salaries amid budget fight, airport lineups”
- Business Insider: “Elon Musk has offered to pay TSA agents’ salaries as Trump threatens to replace them with ICE”
The President of the United States also responded publicly to the concept proposed by Musk, saying, “I would love to. I think it’s great.”
And apparently there was some internal discussion within the Trump White House about Musk donating money to the general fund, as CBS reports.
According to a 2016 lecturer at the Niskanen Center, you can give money to the government through a bizarre side door created by Treasury Secretary John Spencer in 1843. It exists for “individuals wishing to express their patriotism toward the United States of America” and somehow managed to take in $47 million between 1996 and 2016.
However, CBS writes that “According to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, any outsider is legally barred from making direct payments to government employees.”
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told CBS a slightly different story, saying that people in the Trump administration “are very appreciative of Elon’s generous offer,” but added that unfortunately it “creates legal challenges because of his involvement in federal government contracts.”
To refresh your memory, Elon Musk’s “participation in federal government contracts” could mean several things. According to the Washington Post, his companies were expected to raise $38 billion in government funds from 2020-2025. But it should also be noted that a government department run by Musk canceled billions of dollars worth of contracts last year – a different kind of “partnership.”
At any rate, when I wrote about this three days ago, I pointed out that when Elon Musk hints at some dramatic act of generosity, there tends to be very little, if anything, that actually happens.
He has access to lawyers and knows the President personally. It would have been a trivial matter for the world’s richest man to personally ask people in the know to explore the plan, evaluate it for practicality and then promote it on social media only when it got the green light, and preferably when the wheels were already in motion.
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