This no doubt of the sheer brilliance of Elon Musk. His level of intelligence has been the catalyst for some incredible inventions that have already improved, and will continue to vastly improve, the quality of life for nearly all mankind.
That brilliance, however, doesn’t quite understand how politics works
Many fiscal conservatives readily agree with Musk’s stance on cutting federal government spending. During his tenure under President Trump as the head of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk was tasked with reducing federal government spending, which had skyrocketed from $4.5 trillion in 2019 to over $7 trillion by 2025.
Even as total annual tax revenue increased year after year, reckless spending led to massive government deficits, resulting in the public debt soaring to a whopping $36 trillion. Both Trump and Musk recognized that this escalating debt posed a possible existential threat that demanded immediate action.
Assembling a team of equally sharp minds to man DOGE, Musk quickly identified hundreds of billions of dollars in government waste. Their tech-savvy approach revealed that outdated, labor-intensive systems could be modernized to improve the quality of the government services and reduce the bloated workforce by an estimated 50%.
Additionally, Musk and his team uncovered that about 15% of the 70 million Medicaid recipients were either ineligible to receive benefits or should be ineligible because they are able to earn a sufficient income to help cover their own healthcare costs.
Musk calculated the potential savings and reasoned that, given the universal support among politicians for cutting government spending, it should be straightforward to garner bipartisan agreement on eliminating this waste, fraud, and abuse.
The problem was that, although every elected politician says they are in favor of cutting government spending, they won’t vote for any cuts that impact them or their constituents. Since every cut affects some politicians’ constituents, some members of Congress strongly oppose many spending cuts
Suddenly, trillions of dollars of spending cuts became impossible. To get to a point where the majority would agree, the spending cuts had to be reduced significantly. Musk finds this to be very peculiar. To his logical mind, this doesn’t make sense.
It is so obvious to him that eventually cutting trillions of dollars in spending and modernizing the government, will benefit everyone. Why are so many opposed? That’s not logical, he reasoned.
What is not logical is the politics.
Since our two-party Democracy relies on the majority, a majority must always be assembled. Suggestions for cutting government spending are made in both the House and the Senate. Then the members debate exactly what should be cut and by how much. There is great disagreement even on issues that Musk would find obvious.
What initially appeared to Musk to be a clear path to trillions of dollars in spending cuts became convoluted and nearly impossible. The proposed cuts were drastically reduced to get majority approval.
Take Medicaid reform, for instance. More than 10 million individuals currently enrolled do not meet eligibility requirements. Many are physically and mentally capable of working and could contribute to their own healthcare costs.
Yet, calls for reform face staunch resistance from those who argue that any cuts disproportionately impact low-income Americans. They see the current tax policies as favoring billionaires and are unwilling to support any cuts to Medicaid as a result.
To Musk this is not only illogical but infuriating. He wonders why politicians can’t see that the debt is an existential threat that can be easily avoidable, simply by removing the waste, fraud and abuse from government spending.
If politicians in both parties can’t present this problem properly to the American public, maybe a new political party in needed. Musk has proposed starting the “America Party.” This is a bold move with an historically very low probability of success. And it won’t change politicians view on not harming their constituents.
Musk’s real problem is simply he does not understand how the American political process works. To get majority approval, the proposed cuts ended up being just a small portion of what Musk had hoped to see.
That’s why he is so angry. Frankly, I don’t blame him. I am a bit angry, too. But as Ronald Reagan often said at a time like this, “Half a loaf of bread is better than none.”
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Michael Busler is a public policy analyst and a professor of finance at Stockton University in Galloway, New Jersey, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in finance and economics. He has written op-ed columns in major newspapers for more than 35 years.
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