Sen. Murkowski Unleashes Social Media Rant About Musk Accountability Email, Completely Misses the Point

As we wrote on Saturday evening, the clean-up crew at DOGE and OMB continues to keep its nose to the grindstone, seeking to streamline a federal government that's become bloated and redundant over many years of negligence and (potentially) graft. Part of that process happened out of the blue this weekend, as federal workers received an email directing them to reply with a list of bullet points, explaining what work they did in the past week.

Anyone who does not reply to the email, Elon Musk wrote in a tweet, "will be taken as a resignation."

One of the more juvenile reactions to Musk's attempt to restore accountability to the federal bureaucracy was by Democrat Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota, who wasn't able to restrain herself from using profanity in her personal attack on him. In his reply to her, Elon Musk was respectful, if somewhat cheeky, asking her what work she accomplished last week.

But there was something important in one of his other replies, as my colleague Ward Clark wrote, about this "pulse check" on who exactly is cashing checks written by American taxpayers: (emphasis mine)

Musk's full post reads:
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.
If that's the case, the "pulse check" tactic is a brilliant one, and will save lots of time in determining where to look for this fraud.

But I want to share the latest reaction from a member of Congress, which just happened in the past hour. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) posted this rant about the email on her X account--and is completely missing the point:

The post reads:

If Elon Musk truly wants to understand what federal workers accomplished over the past week, he should get to know each department and agency, and learn about the jobs he's trying to cut.
Our public servants work hard to ensure that our national security is protected; that planes land safely; that forest fires do not spread to our homes; that Social Security checks arrive on time; that research for the breakthroughs needed to cure diseases like cancer and ALS continues; and much more.
Our public workforce deserves to be treated with dignity and respect for the unheralded jobs they perform. The absurd weekend email to justify their existence wasn’t it.

My first question to the senator is: Where's the respect for the work that Musk and Office of Management and Budget boss Russ Vought, and others, are doing? As a U.S. senator, I'd be surprised if you don't have the direct line or contact email for both men at your fingertips. Before shooting from the hip on social media, did you bother to get in contact with them? My guess is that one or both of them would have mentioned the facts about potential fraud against the American people. That's something that every member of Congress should want to root out for their constituents.

Readers might well have other questions for Murkowski, but the main problem I see with her statement is that it completely misunderstands the power dynamic involved. Federal workers, including the Alaska senator, enjoy employment by the generosity of the American people; their paychecks are paid with our tax dollars. They are (or should be) accountable to us about how they spend their work hours.

And if they are doing their jobs, just like anyone working in the private sector, they should have no problem coming up with five bullet points.