Commentary: Trump billionaires to the rescue!
10/30/2024 23:28
Elon Musk hacked Twitter down to size. Surely he can do the same with Uncle Sam.
The billionaires are fed up.
Ordinary politicians can’t seem to control the $34 trillion national debt, so Donald Trump’s billionaire buddies say they’ll roll up their sleeves and get it done once Trump wins the presidential election and the American people finally get the government shredding they deserve.
Elon Musk will lead the charge, selflessly tearing himself away from the six companies he runs to hack the federal government down to size. Also on the case: hedge fund boss John Paulson, standing patiently at the front of the line to be Trump’s Treasury Secretary.
If Musk and Paulson need help, they can call on venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, investor Peter Thiel, Wall Street titan Howard Lutnick, and other stalwarts of the American aristocracy to help them do the people’s bidding.
Musk already has a model for how to prune the unruly government: Twitter, which he bought in 2022 while promising to cut 80% of the staff. Musk has been so successful at shrink-fixing Twitter that its value has fallen from $44 billion when he bought it to around $9.5 billion today. Musk renamed Twitter X, as in Xed out, to signal all the regress he’s made since buying it.
Voters can only dream of an 80% cut in the federal government and the services it offers. Anybody answering a phone at a government agency can be replaced by a bot. Instead of fighter pilots, a volunteer force of basement gamers wearing virtual-reality goggles can do the job for a fraction of the cost. The obvious place to start is the IRS, where all auditors trying to catch wealthy tax cheats should be deported.
There could be a few hiccups. A poster on X said that Musk slashing government services and firing federal workers might cause an “initial severe overreaction in the economy,” while “markets will tumble.”
“Sounds about right,” Musk replied, telling voters exactly what they want to hear: Pain is coming. But it’ll all work out in the end, when all the laid-off people get retrained for life on Mars and depleted 401(k)s are converted into Trump™ bonds. Plus, Musk is the world’s richest man, so don’t worry about him, he’ll be fine.
Paulson, as Treasury Oligarch, will help Musk speed the denuding of government. Paulson says he’ll “eliminate” the green energy subsidies Congress passed into law in 2022, which won’t be a problem because Paulson is 68 and rich and he can easily hide from the effects of global warming for the rest of his life. Musk might want to slip Paulson a note reminding him to keep the tax breaks for people who buy an electric car from his own company, Tesla.
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Paulson told the Wall Street Journal that the most important priority in the next Trump presidency will be extending the Trump tax cuts of 2017, so that billionaire tax bills stay low. Billionaires create all the jobs in America, except the federal ones that we don’t need anyway, so keeping the billionaires unruffled is the logical top priority of government.
There are a few technicalities the Trump billionaires will have to work out.
For the last 237 years, Congress has been in charge of spending, and any appropriation or cancellation of a prior appropriation has to pass Congress in the form of legislation. Like, a law. Same goes for the creation or dissolution of any government agencies. Cabinet Secretaries and presidential buddies can’t just kill the Education Department or cancel $500 billion in green energy spending.
This is actually the nub of the problem. The national debt is $34 trillion, and only headed higher, because Congress always passes spending bills that require more money than the government takes in via tax revenue. To put it another way, Congress always assesses taxes that amount to less than the government spends.
Virtually all politicians complain about the gargantuan national debt, but they’re the ones who created it. And the reason they created it is that voters, the people who keep them in office, like the combination of low taxes and government services that exceed the revenue available to pay for them. The nation can live beyond its means indefinitely as long as it can take out debt to cover the gap.
There are several ways to fix this inconvenient problem.
Musk will probably have the government cut down to size by the time of the 2026 midterm elections, allowing voters to indicate their enthusiasm by giving Trump-backed Republicans the most sweeping control of Congress by one party, ever. But in case that doesn't happen, Musk Co. could put an end to elections if they could undo the US Constitution with the help of the Supreme Court, already seeded with a pro-Trump majority.
Or, they could convince voters that it’s finally time to swallow the bitter medicine and endure cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits, highway funding, food aid, national security, national park maintenance, farm subsidies, veterans benefits, environmental protection, workplace safety, and myriad other programs without punishing their elected representatives for all the misery it will cause.
Many have tried and failed. But Musk and Paulson and the other billionaires are on it, so Americans should feel confident that they’re in good hands.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on X at @rickjnewman.
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