Long before President-elect Donald Trump tapped Elon Musk to lead a controversial effort to slash government regulations, then-Vice President Dick Cheney sparked an uproar over his energy task force’s interactions with industry groups.
With the details of Musk’s new “Department of Government Efficiency” still taking shape, energy and environmental insiders point to the Cheney-era task force as one example of what a presidential advisory committee could look like — and also as a cautionary tale.
“It was a reign of error from a prior Republican president,” said Dan Becker, a longtime environmentalist who was director of the Sierra Club’s global warming program at the time.
There could be some key differences in the Cheney Energy Task Force and the effort Trump announced this week, depending on how the Trump effort is structured. Trump suggested that Musk and the effort’s co-leader, Vivek Ramaswamy, will “provide advice and guidance” from outside the government, but also that they will partner with the White House and Office of Management and Budget, suggesting a more formalized government effort that might trigger transparency and ethics requirements.
