Elon Turns Against the Big, Beautiful Budget
Elon Musk says the Big Beautiful Budget is, in fact, a "disgusting pork-filled abomination that will drive America into debt slavery.”
He's not alone: Senator Ron Johnson calls the cuts "wimply and anemic." Congressman Tom Massie calls it a “ticking time bomb.”
So can we fix it?
The so-called Big Beautiful Budget is part of the annual budget for next year.
It's not the whole budget -- they'll do an additional one to handle so-called discretionary spending, which is everything outside welfare and government benefits like medicaid.
The problem, of course, is Big Beautiful cuts almost nothing -- the cuts are overwhelmingly postponed to a future Congress while the spending hikes are immediate.
This means it raises the deficit by at least 4 trillion over the next decade.
That would bring annual deficits to $2.5 trillion in the near term, stretching to $3 trillion in a few years.
Meanwhile it raises the debt ceiling by $4 trillion -- the biggest ever.
This from a GOP Congress who's spent roughly a century promising spending cuts if only we elect them.
Will the Senate Fix it?
Now, in theory the Senate could still fix it. Unfortunately, the Senate will almost certainly make the bill worse.
Because if you thought RINO's in the House are bad, say hello to the Senate.
Senate RINO's are already talking about hiking spending on medicaid, on green energy, and even federal worker benefits.
With republicans like this, who needs Democrats.
What Would be a Good Bill?
So what would a good bill look like?
Ideally it would include discretionary cuts since that's where the waste and fraud lives. So USAID, EPA, the constellation of crony slush funds that keep the deep state in million-dollar waterfront mansions in Potomac.
GOP leadership claims discretionary cannot be in the bill because of a procedural rule, but in fact the existing bill has discretionary -- it's just all hikes in discretionary spending.
Including our grotesquely bloated military. Which has not passed an audit in 35 years.
Discretionary matters because that's how to make $175 billion of DOGE cuts permanent. But even without discretionary, there's a lot of room for cuts.
Senators Rand Paul, Ron Johnson and Mike Lee want to reduce medicaid and food stamp for the able-bodied.
They want to reduce or eliminate federal subsidies for student loans.
They want to repeal all of Biden's green energy handouts — not just the ones outside Republican districts.
And they want to actually cut military spending that wastes hundreds of billions on other people's civil wars or patrolling the Red Sea so Europe and China can trade — something maybe they should pay for.
But perhaps the worst part is that bundling of the debt ceiling with this bill.
Because given Dems are afraid to shut down government — Chuck Schumer took heat for this a few months ago — it throws away any leverage for those future Big, Beautiful discretionary spending cuts.
What’s Next
Unfortunately, disgusting pork-filled abomination is about as good as it gets from this crop of Republicans in Congress.
Given Trump's still backing the bill, perhaps for tactical reasons to keep Congress Republican, there is zero chance it gets better -- it will get worse in the Senate.
Republican primaries are coming up in 9 months. If Republican voters care enough they'll start replacing RINO's with actual conservatives.
If not, we're facing an ocean of red ink for decades. Or until bond markets finally break.
At which point, as always, nobody saw it coming.
.
Every week I write an article on Economics here on Prof St Onge Weekly.
Subscribe to get each article in your inbox — choose Free if money is tight, or choose $5 a month to help keep the lights on.
And Thank You!
I also make short daily videos on economics and freedom:
Roundup Podcast of the week’s videos on Spotify, Apple, and Google.
Because he is right. The BBB is an embarrassing testament to GOP corruption and arrogance towards voters.
Elon is right.
But what he fails to acknowledge is he benefited tremendously by accessing the same type of "disgusting" Green "pork" during the Obama years to the tune of "$4.9 billion in government subsidies, grants and tax credits".
"How grants and tax subsidies helped Elon Musk grow Tesla. Why is this a good thing?"
https://pvbuzz.com/tax-subsidies-tesla/
So, that puts him inside a very large glass house throwing rocks at new pork.
And he knows damn good and well that Americans have been the subjects of "debt slavery" for decades.