DOGE, the Big Beautiful Bill and the 'Rich Men North of Richmond

 I was under the illusion that with Donald Trump back in charge and the wind at his back Washington Republicans might actually take off the gloves and say eff-it and take on the swamp.  With the failures inherent in the Big Beautiful Bill, it appears I was wrong.  I don’t blame Trump. This abysmal betrayal of the American people was written in the halls of Congress… 

The Republicans in Congress talk a good game, but when it comes to actually doing what they say they’re going to do, it turns out they’re really snake oil salesmen. Not that this is new.  Remember when they ran on killing Obamacare throughout Obama’s presidency then bungled it when Trump became president?

We’re now watching that same treachery play itself out in real time, and it involves the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that just passed the House. This monstrosity ostensibly does a number of good things.  It extends Trump’s 2017 taxes that were set to expire, it increases spending on border security and apparently it cuts federal support for Planned Parenthood.  All of these are good things… but they’re the equivalent of trying to save the Titanic by emptying water over the side one bucket at a time while a thousand gallons of water pour into the hull every second. 

What this bill doesn’t do is cut spending nor cut the deficit.  Indeed, it puts the deficit on overdrive, just as interest rates on government debt seem to be heading upward. The president’s advisor Steven Miller (who is one of the smartest guys in Washington) pushes back, by pointing out that Reagan’s tax cuts weren’t balanced by spending cuts.  True, but then Reagan didn't have, if I remember correctly, a national debt 125% the size of the GDP that needed to be serviced.

A small part of this problem has to do with the calendar.  The writing of this budget began back in December after it became clear the GOP would have both houses but before they were technically in complete control.  As such, this Frankenstein started being put together long before DOGE started showcasing exactly how dysfunctional the federal government is.  But that’s no excuse.  It’s been over 4 months since the Elon Musk managed vehicle started highlighting problems.

This One Big Beautiful Bill Act demonstrates exactly why the federal government is as screwed up as it is. They say that you can’t turn around a ship on a dime, and that’s true.  But there’s a difference between turning on a dime and setting a course, full speed ahead, for the closest iceberg. 

This bill literally adds $2.5 trillion to the government’s debt and runs a deficit larger than Biden’s last one!  At the same time it basically allows the government to go on, business as usual.  There are no major cuts to spending.  There are no elimination of departments.  There is no substantial paring of regulation.  There’s basically the same budget compiled by the Democrats, RINOs and the administrative state every year with infinitesimal changes except for the taxes.

This bill doesn’t reflect the will of the people, it reflects the will of the establishment and the swamp. 

If Congress really wanted to fix the budget they’d take to heart many of the recommendations and revelations from DOGE, as well as codify much of what Trump has done or tried to do via Executive Orders. Hell, it doesn’t even eliminate the Department of Education, something Trump explicitly ran on. 

This bill cuts $4 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, Joe Biden’s attempt to get everything, including the kitchen sink into the budget, including green energy, social spending and taxes on the rich.  Four billion sounds like a lot until you understand that the IRA is a $1.4 trillion boondoggle. 

The reality is, 2/3 of the federal budget, fully $4 trillion out of $6 trillion is wealth redistribution.  Even if you argue that Social Security isn’t that, which is mostly true, and remove it, you’re still looking at almost half the federal budget being wealth distribution of one sort or another.  How much of that is waste, fraud and abuse? 

Elon Musk had initially suggested that he thought $2 Trillion could be cut from the budget. He lowered that target to $1 Trillion and in the first 4 months of the year DOGE has done a yeoman’s job and cut $170 billion of waste. And that’s with just 100 people on staff and facing a bureaucracy of literally millions who scheme and obfuscate at every turn in order to maintain the cash pipeline.  Imagine how much a DOGE team of 1,000 could do!

But more than actual cuts, DOGE recommended things like personnel cuts, cutting green energy subsidies and of course cutting regulation.  But relatively little is actually being codified in law. That’s despite the fact that 67% of Americans support DOGE cuts of at least $1 trillion, 77% support looking at the entirety of the budget to find savings and 78% support cutting spending to balance the budget.  Indeed, so little is being cut that Elon Musk has announced that he will be stepping back to refocus his efforts on his companies and playing a much smaller role in political spending.    

Inspired by promises to cut spending, taxes and regulation, MAGA voters powered Republicans to win the White House, take the Senate and retain the House. They had the richest and possibly the smartest man in the world not only on their side, but knee deep in funding them, getting them elected and working around the clock to ferret out corruption and fraud in government. Plus, every day seemed to shine more light on the corruption of Democrat / swamp machine.  As a result of all of this Republicans found themselves the beneficiaries of the most passionate electorate America may have ever seen. They were on top of the world.  And what did they do with all of this momentum? Worse than nothing, they gave us Democrat lite.

No major regulatory cuts.  No major cuts to wealth redistribution programs. No departments and few programs actually eliminated. No reining in of the imperial judiciary seeking to derail Trump at every turn.  No, rather than listen to voters and take a sledgehammer to the twin albatross of regulation and spending they use a dull putty knife to create the illusion of actual progress.

Of course we all know why nothing ever changes in Washington. Politicians go to DC and most get sucked into the Georgetown cocktail party scene grift, into being invited to pontificate on Sunday morning shows and give speeches to groups of deep pocketed donors from industries over whom them hold a sword of Damocles.

The fact that Donald Trump didn’t care about any of that, wasn’t swayed by any of that is one of the things that made him so appealing. That’s the reason MAGA put him back in the White House…

Unfortunately for the country however, the GOP in Congress is led by swamp weasels Mike Johnson and John Thune, and Trump is Gulliver to their Lilliputians. They have no real interest in upsetting the grift applecart despite what America wants.  They put America First lipstick on a Business as Usual pig and call it progress.  If the GOP loses Congress next year, look no farther than its leadership.  Like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnel before them, they are more interested in the trappings of leadership than actually solving America’s problems. Rich Men North of Richmond indeed.

A Senate of Benedict Arnolds...

Benedict Arnold was a well-respected and courageous officer in the American Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. He fought in half a dozen battles and was central to winning the critical Battle of Saratoga in 1777, where he suffered a leg injury that sidelined him for the next two years.

They say that idle hands are the devil’s workshop, and that appears to apply to legs as well. Over the next two years, Arnold’s inherent victim complex blossomed. Others were, he suggested, getting credit for his actions or getting promoted when he deserved such.

In 1779, Arnold would take a step that would change his life: He married Peggy Shippen, a member of a powerful loyalist family in Philadelphia. Eventually, his jealousy would get the best of him, and he contracted to betray the Americans. By at least as early as July of that year, he was giving the British information on American troop strengths, movements, and munition locations.

George Washington knew none of this and trusted Arnold and put him in charge of West Point in August 1780. One of the most important posts in the country, it was the spot from which the Americans commanded the Hudson River. Less than two weeks after receiving his command, Arnold agreed to a plan, in exchange for $20,000 ($3,500,000 today), to surrender the post to the British in September.

The surrender never occurred, however, because Arnold’s British contact, Major John André, was captured along with the plans for the betrayal. André was hanged, and Arnold escaped to join the British. The British immediately commissioned him as a brigadier general in their army, but most soldiers considered him dishonorable, and many refused to follow him.

Following the war, Arnold would spend most of the rest of his life in London, where the king liked him, but many British citizens and military men despised him. In America, his name has become synonymous with treachery.

Although Arnold’s ultimate plan never came to fruition, had it done so, it could have changed the outcome of the war. Washington said of the plan that “Such an event must have given the American cause a dangerous, if not a fatal wound.”

And that is the crux of why betrayal is so dangerous. It’s one thing to understand that your enemy seeks your destruction. It’s another thing altogether when one of your own, one upon whom you’re counting on to man the ramparts, turns and lets the enemy in. It might not be fatal to your endeavor, but it could be and most certainly will endanger the mission.

Sylvester Stallone recently called Donald Trump the new George Washington. That’s not quite true, but like Washington, Trump is trying to carve out of an enemy-infested wilderness a great nation seeking freedom and prosperity. Also, like Washington, Trump is faced with numerous people who are theoretically on his side while, in reality, aligning with the enemy.

And who is this enemy? The Swamp. The Borg. Basically, the government that controls virtually every element of American life, from baby formula to school curriculum to college funding to healthcare to retirement, not to mention banking and justice and speech…if you object.

Ostensibly, Trump should have a mandate given that he won the popular vote and the Electoral College, gave the GOP a Senate majority, and kept the majority in the House. The first test of that mandate came recently and it didn’t go particularly well.

In the Senate, with Mitch McConnell leaving his leadership role, there were three competitors to replace him: Rick Scott of Florida, John Thune of South Dakota, and John Cornyn of Texas. Hardcore MAGA firebrand Mike Lee or bomb-thrower Rand Paul weren’t even considered. Of the three considered, two are virtual Democrats, with the Conservative Review giving Cornyn a Liberty Score of 54% and Thune an abysmal 51%, while Scott scored a respectable 86%.

Both Cornyn and Thune are, at their core anti-Trump, while Scott has been a staunch supporter of the president. Thune, who said after January 6, “What former President Trump did to undermine faith in our election system and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power is inexcusable,” is seen as K Street’s favorite and endorsed Tim Scott in the GOP primary. In 2016, the immigration dove and gun control fan Cornyn ridiculed Trump’s border wall, was booed at the Texas GOP convention in 2022, and, in 2023 said Trump couldn’t win as his time had passed.

In a shameful last act, McConnell set a secret vote, and Thune came out on top. The fact that the Senate GOP dispatched an aggressively MAGA leader and instead elected someone who’s basically a Democrat tells you that Senate GOPers don’t care about what the American people are looking for.

What’s more, at the same time, in a closely split Senate, Trump’s pick for Attorney General, Matt Gaetz withdrew after it became clear there would not be 50 Republicans to confirmed. 

The Swamp, of course, is not just the Senate. With Trump’s picks of Pete Hegseth for Defense, RFK Jr. for HHS, Tuli Gabbard for DNI, and Tom Homan as Border Czar, larger Washington is reacting with horror and fear. Employees at HHS are threatening to quit, Justice Department lawyers are lawyering up and “freaking out“ while DoD employees are “alarmed“ and governors are promising not to assist in deportations.

But those fears, which are exactly what are necessary to begin trimming the bloat from government, only exist because of Trump’s picks, and those picks (and Trump) will only succeed if the Senate approves his nominees. And that’s a problem.

During his first term, Trump’s picks were approved at a rate far slower than Obama’s or Bush’s. With a McConnell clone running the Senate, there’s concern of a repeat. While the Senate is by design supposed to be a check on the tyranny of the masses, it’s rare that a president must battle his own party to do his job.

Obama had a similar mandate in 2008, and Democrats gave him everything he wanted and more. But Democrats are a core part of the Swamp while Trump is seeking to battle it.

And there’s the rub…

Democrats are the Swamp, and so too is the bureaucracy. But sadly, much of the GOP is, as well.

Trump has his work cut out for him in this uphill battle he’s taken on. But if there’s anything to be gleaned from his picks so far, it’s that, unlike in 2016, this time he knows what he’s up against and is planning to take the fight to the Swamp with bare fists and brass knuckles if necessary, and it will be.

If Trump continues to assemble a team more interested in solving America’s problems than in being feted by the elites, he just might triumph over the Benedict Arnolds who populate the establishment GOP, those whose primary goal in life seems to be to go along to get along, accumulating ever more power and money along the way.