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| There's three branches of government. . .and then this guy |
Elon Musk occupies a strange and unique position in the Trump regime. One of my friends who is a strong Trump supporter recently posted a lengthy apologetic on Facebook defending the actions of the Trump/Musk team. "How can all the Leftists be crying about Elon cutting waste, fraud, and abuse?" he asked. "This is a good thing!" He's saving your money, my friend suggested. And doing it for free!
I have a number of concerns about what's going on with Elon Musk and they fall under three categories:
The Man
To be clear, it's not that I object so much to Musk himself (thought I admit I'm not a fan) but simply that he is just one man. One man (and his team) acting without accountability. Every American should be concerned about an unelected individual having such sweeping power. Sure there are whole departments within the executive branch--whole agencies--full of unelected officials. But none of those civil servants have the kind of singular authority granted to Elon Musk. They can't fire hundreds or even thousands of federal workers with a single command. They can't make executive decisions about federal spending, or of their own accord enter the payment systems of the government and make unilateral decisions. And each of these government departments typically have a head who has to be vetted and approved by the Senate. Granted the current Senate is pretty much ready to rubber stamp just about anyone the president places before them. But even they have standards--which is how Matt Gaetz ended up not making the cut. But the point is that right now, even if they wanted to stop DOGE they cannot.
Right now we are entirely dependent on Elon Musk's good will, the purity of his motives, and depth of his wisdom and knowledge. We just have to trust that he's a good man who knows what he's doing. And many in the Trump camp do have extraordinary faith in this guy. But to me it's not about whether he's a good guy or not--it's that history has shown time and time again that giving too much unbridled authority to one person, no matter how "good" is always a bad idea. You know the saying. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The Method
The cutting of waste, fraud, and abuse is clumsy and poorly thought out and stems from a belief that the mere existence of a government agency or federal worker is itself fraud, waste, and abuse. Musk's use of the chain saw is apt, but not in the way he thinks. He's using a chain saw to excise tumors in the body politic, when he should be using a scalpel. There's no doubt that there is waste, fraud, and abuse, and streamlining the federal government is a serious task that's long overdue. And of course any cuts are going to hurt some ordinary, hard-working civil servants. Hard choices should be made, but that's not what happening right now. Shutting down whole departments of the federal government in one fell swoop is not "making tough decisions." It's quite easy in fact, if you're not terribly informed or interested in becoming informed about what's actually going on in the federal departments you want to wipe out. This is a theme we are going to come back to by the way. Pay attention and you'll notice that Trump consistently takes the easy way. His tendency is to pick easy battles and weaker adversaries where he knows he can win.
The Results
Finally, the Trump/Musk campaign to tighten the budget is mostly performative. While gutting USAID and other departments is devasting to those who work there and the people they serve, the savings are marginal. The only real way to deal with the budget deficit is to tackle the massive and massively popular entitlement programs that suck up most of our budget. We've always known this but politicians have been too afraid to do the difficult work of figuring out how to cut our spending in these areas. Trump's team is no different. And it's understandable. The American public would be outraged if there were significant cuts to social security or Medicare (those two, along with defense make up 50% of the federal budget). If we got rid of all expenditures except for those big three and the 13% of the budget that goes to paying interest on our debt, we could erase the budget deficit and have some surplus. That would mean zero spending on health unrelated to Medicare, income security, veterans benefits and services, education, training, employment, and social services, transportation, natural resources and environment, and everything else (USAID falls under "everything else." That last category altogether amounts to a measly 3% of the federal budget). I'm not at all sure it's realistic to reduce the federal budget to two entitlements, defense and servicing interest. And even then there's still the matter of 36 trillion dollars in debt the U.S. government owes.
Chainsaws are not going to fix theses problems. The practical--and much more difficult--solution is the same as it always has been. Make hard cuts to social security and Medicare and raise taxes. It's the only way. The conservative passion for tax cuts (a passion I share every year around April 15) has always been the flaw in their supposed fiscal "responsibility". Can you imagine sitting at the kitchen table trying to balance the family budget and suggesting that what we really need to do is cut back on our income. A true fiscally conservative position is tax and cut. That's a hard conversation that no one wants to have, so instead we get a showy pretense of being responsible. As is common with Trump, it gives the appearance that "things are getting done" when in fact very little of it has a meaningful impact on the stated goal.
When all is said in done, especially if this latest round of tax cuts (which I hear are really only going to to benefit the wealthy. I'm pretty annoyed about that. If you're going to be stupid at least let regular people like me benefit from the stupidity too!) makes it to Trump's desk, whole sections of the government will be hollowed out by Musk's chainsaw, millions will pay the price in lost services, and we'll still be running a federal deficit. What a mess.
