How in the world did they get so rich?
To be clear, we’re not talking about billionaire moguls like Elon Musk or Mark Cuban — love them or hate them, it’s actually very explicable how they made their respective fortunes through some semblance of hard work, fortuitous timing, and technological savvy.
No, we’re asking this question about our duly elected members of Congress.
And by “we,” this writer means Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency.
The DOGE head outlined one of the department’s latest initiatives during a town hall in Wisconsin (where Musk was rallying prospective voters to go Republican when voting on the Badger State’s critical state Supreme Court race) when asked a peculiar question by an attendee.
“My question is about [the United States Agency for International Development],” the attendee began. “Has the DOGE team found any evidence that any of the radical-left Democrats like Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff, [or] Chuck Schumer have received money directly from USAID? And if so, will we be hearing about that evidence anytime soon?”
Whereas a less transparent administration might’ve dodged this question, Musk took a different tack.
“Yeah, so,” Musk began while collecting his thoughts. “There is a massive amount of corruption, but it is circuitous. So what happens is there’s money that — obviously it’s your taxpayer money — that is then sent to various government organizations who then send it to NGO’s, which an NGO is a non-governmental organization, but obviously it’s a government-funded non-governmental organization.
“It’s just an organization. It’s just a government, and effectively there’s a giant fraud loophole which is that the government can send money to an NGO that is then no longer governed by the laws of the United States.
Once DOGE starts digging into lawmakers finances, will they find dishonesty, unethical behavior, and outright fraud?
“So they’ll send the money overseas to one NGO, then they’ll go through a bunch of them, and then, I’m highly confident that a bunch of that money then comes back to the United States and lands in the pockets of the people you just mentioned.
“But it is a circuitous route. It doesn’t go directly [to them].
“But let’s just say that there’s a lot of strangely wealthy members of Congress.”
Strangely wealthy, indeed. And perhaps none more “strangely wealthy” than shrill California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, as pointed out by the New York Post.
“Two of the wealthiest [members of Congress] 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,” the outlet reported.
Both of those eye-popping numbers certainly aren’t in line with people whose salaries hover around $174,000 annually.
However, it’s worth noting that Scott’s fortune largely stems from work done with healthcare companies that “predates his time in the Senate,” per the Post.
Pelosi, on the other hand? She’s rich mostly from the stock market that she and her husband, Paul Pelosi, actively traded in.
And, why yes, for some reason, it does occur to this writer that insider trading can be a crime.
If DOGE starts tugging on this thread, would it be enough for Pelosi to pull a Rosie O’Donnell and flee to more Irish pastures? Probably not, because surely the former Speaker of the House would never engage in such unsavory activities …
Right?
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