Trump and Reichert want us to run our government like it’s a corporation. Except governments aren’t corporations.

U.S. corporations are slaves to “the bottom line.” A board of directors and highly paid senior executives make major company decisions to boost that bottom line, launching products, acquiring property, or laying-off thousands of employees.

Government exists to protect the populace. In our democracy, power is balanced between three branches, legislative (makes law), executive (enforces law), and judicial (interprets the Constitution and limits legislative and executive power). The president isn’t a CEO answerable only to a board of directors. Legislators aren’t a board of directors answerable to themselves. The president and legislators work for the American people.

Jared Kushner stated: “The government should be run like a great American company,” and should “achieve successes and efficiencies for our customers, who are the citizens.”

Not only shouldn’t government be run like a company because business and government goals are different, but citizens aren’t customers of our government, we own the government.

Our government should represent the people, something neither Reichert nor Trump understand. Instead they’re selling an un-American, run-government-like-a-corporation scheme that will destroy both America and the very people they were elected to protect.

Eve Gordon

Issaquah