Sen. Lisa Murkowski complained about the email that federal workers received over the weekend from the Trump Administration, asking them to explain what they had accomplished during the week prior on behalf of taxpayers.
Murkowski thinks that Elon Musk just isn’t up to the task of cutting government.
“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,” Murkowski wrote on X/Twitter.
It was the same angry tone Alaska’s senator took last week during her phone town hall meeting with Alaskans. She is very much at war with the Trump Administration over budget cuts, federal layoffs, and the manner in which Trump is attempting to end the war in Ukraine.
“If we feel that we have a bloat in our system, or redundancy in our system or inefficiency, we can address that. But you do it with respect and dignity towards people, and we are just not seeing that,” Murkowski said of budget cuts. “You do not treat people in this manner.”
Over the weekend, the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Musk, sent letters to federal employees, asking them to explain what work they had done the prior week. The goal is to determine if federal workers are even checking their emails, in an effort to determine how many “ghost” employees may be on the payroll. Failure to respond to the memo may be justification for presuming the employee is resigning, Musk said.
Murkowski thought that approach was “absurd” and didn’t see why federal workers have to “justify their existence.”
