Political Quotes

“Critical important issues have been raised in the last 20 minutes or so about the issues of conflicts of interest, of corruption, and of policy mistakes that the current administration has put in motion over the last 15, 16 days. I will draw the attention of the House to this diagram, and this is just a display of some of the contracts that Elon Musk has with the government. In total, it is more than $15 billion, but in each of these there are some very subtle and ominous opportunities for corruption. I will point out just one. In the Inflation Reduction Act and in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, there is money for electric vehicle charging stations. In fact, there is a substantial amount of money. It turns out that Tesla has some 20,000 charging stations around the United States and has become the principal charging station connection to all electric vehicles. If Elon Musk were to shut down the money for other companies to build charging stations, he would then have a monopoly. It is subtle but obvious to those of us who watch. My colleague spoke to the issue of the State Department putting out on its website a very specific $400 million purchase order of just one vehicle, a Tesla cybertruck. Corruption, yes. Waste, probably. Yet, here we are with an unelected individual who has extraordinary power, in fact, the power of the Presidency, and the Presidency is misusing the power to shut down organizations around this country.…”