Retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who's making a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, says he'd consider creating a "covert division" of government workers who spy on their coworkers to improve government efficiency.
Carson told a crowd of Iowa Republicans he's "thinking very seriously" about adding "a covert division of people who look like the people in this room, who monitor what government people do,"
MSNBC reports.
Breitbart posted a video of the remarks.
Story continues below video.
According to Carson, people might work harder if they thought coworkers were watching them, adding, to loud cheers: "And we make it possible to fire government people."
A Government Accountability Office report released in February found the firing process for federal workers can take between 170 to 370 days, and, according to
Fiscal Times, "explains why so few government workers are actually fired."
The GAO estimates that about 3,500 federal workers out of 2.5 million are terminated each year.
MSNBC reports Carson's campaign communications director, Doug Watts, emailed a further explanation of the candidate's Iowa remarks.
"Covert division? More like Secret Shopper, a quality control strategy used worldwide to improve customer service and customer care," Watts wrote, MSNBC reports.
Carson has been polling well recently:
he won the straw poll of the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Oklahoma City last month, beating last year's winner, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
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