Recently a Facebook acquaintance posted her support for Musk, an unelected and unappointed billionaire, by applauding the efforts of his special project, DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency, also internet slang for dog), to unilaterally root out government waste.
The post, and a handful of her fellow Facebook followers (aka friends) confirmed both their enthusiasm for the process, and their perception that Elon Musk is a brilliant mind we are all lucky to have working on our behalf. Per the comments, it was also clear she and her “friends” are under the impression DOGE is about decreasing the deficit for future generations. She is legitimately surprised there is not bipartisan buy-in on the current approach for the sake of our children.
With a little deductive reasoning this struck me as interesting… here’s why:
First, it is not my understanding that Trump is or intends to act in a bipartisan way now or in the coming years. To be fair he is transparent about this, using the well documented and published playbook of an alt-right Christian Nationalist think tank.
Trump and his MAGA base have not made it a secret that they despise and disrespect all Democrats, or for that matter any republican that does not toe the MAGA line. In fact, Trump is tearing up every inch of government built over the past 250 years unilaterally. Using executive orders written by the bible-toting alt-right Project 2025 authors, aka The Heritage Foundation, and handing the keys to our government to an eccentric plutocrat, who admits to being an illegal immigrant during his early career. Prioritizing vengeance and retaliation disguised as streamlining and cutting excess. Firing FBI agents that lawfully investigated the January 6, 2021 insurrectionists, and anybody that pushed back on Trump or Musk’s business dealings. Not to mention pardoning murders to reward them for their support and commitment.
Nobody is welcome to have a seat at this administration’s table unless they prove their loyalty. This includes the media – check out Pete Hegseth’s orders to rotate out legitimate mainstream media with extreme right leaning organizations like Breitbart (yes Steve Bannon’s Breitbart) into desks at the pentagon. By definition none of this is a bipartisan approach.
Second, the executive order Trump used to empower Musk does not mention any explicit goals related to balancing the budget (see the CRS report attached). However, it is common knowledge that Trump, the GOP party and his oligarchs are desperate to extend the tax cuts put in place during Trump’s first term under the TCJA (Tax Cuts and Jobs Act) before they expire in 2025. Tax cuts that have already added trillions of dollars to the debt. Even the most right leaning news outlets have confirmed this objective. So, this cannot be new news to my Facebook friend.
It has also been well documented, if you take any time to “read” the news, that the brightest of economists have shown these tax cut extensions will likely add up to another $4 trillion to our debt load, by eliminating $5 to $11 trillion in revenue. Per the chart published by the Center for American Progress, the US is already one of the lowest tax revenue countries, even though we have the highest number of corporate headquarters in the world. That’s right, the lowest revenue and the highest number of corporations in the world. Cutting the revenue further by enabling our corporations to avoid paying their fair share does not seem like a winning path to a balanced budget, no matter how efficient our government is. Nor is it a policy for the people, by the people, unless you’re rich.
Third, Trump and the GOP hope to pass their latest tax plan through a process known as reconciliation so they can do it down party lines with a simple majority in the Senate rather than requiring 60% support. Among other things, reconciliation requires that a bill not increase the deficit beyond the 10-year budget window. At this time, the JCT (Joint Committee on Taxation) and CBO (Congressional Budget Office) concluded that if the previous tax cuts act expires in 2025 as agreed, the current law would reduce deficits starting in 2027. However, if Trump’s taxes and expiring provisions are eventually made permanent, deficits will be persistently higher. Therefore, Trump must prove he can cover the cost of his tax cut extensions (through DOGE efforts and tariff revenue) to convince the more fiscally conservative Republicans to line up. Considering they just confirmed Tulsi Gabbard to be top intelligence official, and put an anti-vaxxer in charge of our health, getting them to line up is admittedly a low bar.
Not only does Trump want to extend his very expensive tax cuts, but Trump has made it clear he would like to eliminate the debt limit altogether. If the goal is to decrease our deficit, why do we need to eliminate the debt limit or even raise it? My conclusion: this is clearly about getting a bill passed to cut taxes, not debt reduction.
Finally, I’ll just drop an image here from a recent New York Times article to illustrate Musk’s potential conflicts of interest.
My take away: this current race to find and eliminate waste is more likely tied to eliminating bureaucracy (e.g. guardrails, pesky regulations, and consumer protections), reinstalling loyalists, and as mentioned, funding Trump’s tax cuts for the richest of Americans. Not decreasing our deficit. It is also well documented that Musk (aka DOGE founder, ‘the dog’), is only on the hook for finding at most $2 trillion in cuts (which they already indicated is a stretch goal likely to be missed). This is not even half the cost of extending the tax cuts on the docket. By my math that does not equate to a balanced budget for our future generations. I guess that’s where the tariffs and Vought making unilateral calls on who gets their money comes into play.
Truth is the only party that has decreased our debt in any substantial way in the past two decades is the Democratic party. Clinton, in 2001, was the last President to actually balance the budget. An easily provable fact. Per an analysis and article published by The Center for American Progress (sourced below) it is also clear that without the Reagan, Bush and Trump tax cuts, debt as a percentage of the economy would be declining permanently. Trump’s tax cuts alone have added $10 trillion to the debt since their enactment and are responsible for 57 percent of the increase in the debt ratio since 2001. If it is debt that the Trump voters are worried about then tax cuts are not your friend, and Trump’s priorities may not be in line with your expectations.
I’d argue, that with a little critical thinking it is quite clear DOGE and this Trump administration are not focused on eliminating or even making a dent in our growing deficit. As a side note, Musk is in line to increase his personal government funding for SpaceX from nearly $20 billion today, to over $250 billion if the Trump administration delivers on their promise to increase funding for NASA’s efforts to return to the moon and travel to Mars.
Even if we give Trump and DOGE the benefit of the doubt with respect to our deficit, I’d still have to argue the process is both flawed and dangerous.
This young administration’s most extraordinary applications of unilateral presidential power blatantly ignore the constitution and have no interest in bipartisan solutions. Trump and his bible-toting GOP and broligarchy are bulldozing through the guardrails put in place over the past 248 years to ensure the United States is no longer a government ruled “by the people, for the people”. This group is empowered by the minority and driven by the Project 2025 authoritarian playbook modeled after Hungary’s government.
Since January 20th there has been a lot of signing and hacking, and not much legislating.
Here’s the good thing about executive orders, of which Trump has signed 75 in his first 21 days. Executive orders do not use our three branches of power to lock them in as law. They are not sticky. They can be easily reversed. We can still fix this. Having said that, the immediate danger of destruction is real. The damage to our economy, global diplomacy and partners, as well as the knowledge and talent in our institutions that support everyday citizens and the programs they rely on have been eroded. That is the real risk long term.
A question for Trump supporters… If The United States is no longer a government where all people are treated equal, run by the rule of law, within the framework of the constitution, what are we? Fascists, Monarchists, Authoritarians, or something else like perhaps a business with a CEO run by the Oligarchy?
Democracy is messy. The three branches of government were put in place and designed to force compromise and buy-in that ideally meet the needs of a majority of the citizens, albeit never perfectly. The government is not meant to be, nor should it be a corporation designed to bring riches to the stockholders. It is there to address issues no single individual can solve on their own. It is there to make our life better. Every American’s life regardless of your checking account, religion, race, sexual identity, or political party, should matter if we are a democracy ‘for the people, by the people’.
Back to my original point. I can only assume that the people claiming that the richest, autistic-man in the world, who publicly sympathizes with Nazi’s (championing Germany’s AfD party) is a gift to the American people, might not be getting the entire story from their favored media sources.
With a little bit of research, a few hours of reading and connecting the dots (call it critical thinking) I have come to a very different conclusion.
Stay present, stay educated, think critically. Every truth matters.
Sources:
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN12493
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/07/media/pentagon-press-rotation-defense-department/index.html
https://taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-did-tcja-affect-federal-budget-outlook
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/01/politics/elon-musk-federal-government-what-matters/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/20/business/elon-musk-wealth-government-help/index.html
