‘Connect the dots’: Elon Musk wants to find out how members of Congress accumulate hundreds of millions of dollars
It’s true that those who run for political office, like Congress, have moderate resources when they campaign.
Often, they’re lawyers, or from other professions, where they’ve had good salaries, or they come from state or local government, where they’ve collected decent paychecks.
And in government, like Congress, they earn $174,000, with bonuses for a few select officers.
So how do they accumulate vast personal wealth, in the hundreds of millions of dollars?
After all, 20 years of such salary is only about $3.5 million and that’s before living expenses.
DOGE wants to know:
Elon Musk announced at a Wisconsin town hall that his team at DOGE will investigate congressional wealth accumulation, questioning how politicians amass multimillion-dollar fortunes on $200,000 salaries.
Musk specifically named Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, and… pic.twitter.com/fHPxJtpPgT
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Elon Musk, running President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency to track down and remove fraud, waste and corruption in government spending, confirmed at a town hall in Wisconsin that he’s asked DOGE team members to investigate.
A report at the Daily Mail “has long been vocal in his suspicions about ultra-wealth career politicians.”
“A lot of strangely wealthy members of Congress, where I just can’t, I’m trying to connect the dots of how they became rich,” Musk said. “How’d they get $20 million if they’re earning $200,000 a year? Nobody can explain that. We’re gonna try to figure it out, and certainly stop it from happening.”
Musk’s own fortune estimated as some $340 billion is linked to his companies, Tesla, X and SpaceX.
The report noted members of Congress are allowed to buy and sell stocks and cryptocurrency as long as they disclose all transactions. That actually hasn’t always happened.
The report said, “Musk has specifically taken aim at Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren, whose cumulative net worth is said to total an estimated $439 million in a post shared to Musk’s X account.”