OPINION:
The world’s richest man is annoyed at President Trump. Elon Musk says the recently enacted One Big Beautiful Bill’s excessive spending levels have compelled him to become a political spoiler. He’s forming the America Party as a “moderate” voice for fiscal sanity.
It’s correct to say elected Democrats and many Republicans aren’t serious about putting government on a diet. Talk of reductions always ends in a puff of smoke and mirrors, sending the national debt skyward.
“The Republican Party has a clean sweep of the executive, legislative and judicial branches and still had the nerve to massively increase the size of government, expanding the national debt by a record five trillion dollars,” Mr. Musk wrote on his social media platform, X.
It sounds like he’s right, but, by the Treasury’s spreadsheets, he’s not. When Mr. Trump took the oath of office five months ago, the national debt was $36.2 trillion. Today, it’s still $36.2 trillion. Over the same period last year, President Joseph R. Biden had already saddled future generations with an extra $775 billion they’ll have to pay.
Mr. Musk circulated an image from a debt clock showing America is $37.1 trillion in arrears. That figure is off by a trillion. Citing bad data isn’t a good start for a political party.
It’s also true that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had to stop the clock. Uncle Sam’s accountants have been leaning on gimmicks like temporarily pilfering cash from federal retiree pensions to avoid busting the statutory limit. That said, a President Kamala Harris would have raised or ignored the debt limit long before now.
Congress and the White House have limited power to alter the grim situation. Nearly three-fourths of the budget is on autopilot with mandatory payments like Medicare, Medicaid and interest on the national debt putting us on an unsustainable trajectory.
Yet Mr. Musk objected to the Big Beautiful Bill even though it will slash mandatory expenditures by kicking illegal aliens off the dole. The law’s tax reductions will also spark enough economic activity to offset the rising cost of government. Mr. Trump is also hinting he may replace Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell with someone more amenable to reducing interest rates.
While Democrat-aligned federal judges thwarted the austerity measures Mr. Musk identified through the Department of Government Efficiency, that roadblock is finally clearing. If Mr. Musk thinks he could do a better job of navigating these constraints, he ought to explain how.
The Tesla CEO has only said he intends to apply “Extremely concentrated force at a precise location on the battlefield,” to affect 2 or 3 Senate races and 8 to 10 House races. “Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people.”
Dividing the conservative vote with third-party candidates only guarantees success for Democratic wastrels. Ross Perot’s quixotic 1992 campaign gave us Bill Clinton. Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose bid put Woodrow Wilson in the Oval Office.
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich provides a much better example to follow. He put in the work to build a true conservative majority by running on a national platform that secured 54 additional House seats. The nation’s budget was balanced until the political tides shifted leftward.
If a man of Mr. Musk’s talents stays within the two-party system, he could shift the fiscal tide to the right. Anything else is mere puffery.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.