Let's assume for the sake of argument that Elon Musk really does care about the size of the government and that Elon Musk, the world's richest man, is genuinely upset that the grotesque and cruel Big Beautiful Bill doesn't cut enough federal spending. Let's assume this is true. Well, If Elon Musk had spent more time reading TPM and less time pretending to be good at video games, wantonly fathering children, and playing with chainsaws, he would have been aware that, despite insisting otherwise, the GOP has no interest in actually reducing the deficit. He might have chosen his political alliances more wisely, and saved himself the disappointment. In 2020, a week after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump, our Tierney Sneed and Josh Kovensky wrote about how the incoming Biden administration would do well to avoid what Barack Obama had come to deride as the "mindless austerity" pushed by GOP budget hawks such as Paul Ryan that stifled policy during his term. As Sneed and Kovensky noted, Trump certainly did not even pretend to care about the deficit then:
Within days of Trump being sworn in as President, Republicans were already backing down from their budget belt-tightening crusade. When Congress' GOP leaders were asked by a reporter at the Jan. 2017 GOP retreat to commit to not adding to the end-of-the year government deficit, no such commitment was made, beyond general platitudes about their commitment to being "fiscal conservatives." The biggest legislative achievement of Trump's first term, the 2017 tax cuts, cost the government $1.5 trillion in revenue while benefiting primarily the rich. Vows that the tax package wouldn't add to the deficit were set aside for vaguer predictions that over the course of several years the tax cuts would prove to be revenue neutral. Promises that it would pay for itself eventually disappeared as well. |