The world’s richest man is dying to figure out how lawmakers on Capitol Hill got “strangely wealthy” despite their comparatively modest public salaries.
Speaking at a town hall in Wisconsin Sunday night, Elon Musk suggested that his team at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will investigate how certain members of Congress have achieved generational wealth.
One attendee at the town hall had asked Musk if DOGE had uncovered evidence of funds wired from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
Rank-and-file members of Congress make $174,000 annually. Last year, Musk — whose net worth is pegged at $330 billion by Bloomberg — helped kill legislation to raise congressional pay, then later supported an increase as a means of fighting corruption.
Scores of lawmakers who have spent decades in Congress are millionaires.
Two of the wealthiest include former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has a net worth of about $250 million, and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), whose personal fortune hovers around $552 million.
Pelosi’s wealth largely comes from her and her venture capitalist husband Paul’s lucrative investments in companies like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Netflix.
Scott’s personal fortunes largely stem from his work co-founding HCA Healthcare, a company that runs hospitals and other medical facilities around Florida, and Solantic, an urgent-care clinic chain. His work on both of those companies predates his time in the Senate.
“How do they get $20 million if they’re earning $200,000 a year?” Musk further pondered. “We’re going to try to figure it out and certainly stop it from happening.”