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.

Is Donald Trump 2024 Worth The Fight?

Donald Trump was a great, if imperfect president.  By the third year of his presidency the country was flourishing.  The economy was roaring, jobs were up, incomes were up, gas prices were down and America & Americans were doing fairly well. 

But then a funny thing happened on the way to the election.  The swamp struck back via Covid and the George Floyd protests.  Neither of those was of Trump’s making, but both were utilized by Democrats to steal the election. The Democrats didn’t create Covid or put Floyd in the morgue, but they used the lockdowns and the riots to sufficiently upend American life that they could steal the election under the cover of chaos. 

Those were tests and Donald Trump failed.  With Covid he allowed the country to be misled by a snake oil salesman and with the Floyd protests he didn’t send in the troops.  It’s easy to understand why he failed, however.  Anthony Fauci had been playing a role in America’s various health crises for decades and was an internationally respected doctor.  As the media was hyping the idea that the virus could wipe out mankind, Fauci was a voice of calm, reassuring the country that with distance, masks and lockdowns we would persevere.  At the same time, when Trump raised questions about anything that diverged from the Big Pharma / media narrative or suggested we should remember the economic costs of lockdowns, he was attacked, lampooned, and vilified unmercifully.  Given the fusillade facing him, it’s not a surprise Trump couldn’t recognize the lies the American people were being served.

On the George Floyd inspired Antifa / BLM riots, Trump failed, and that’s on him, although again, one can see why he acted the way he did. Section 252 of the Insurrection Act “permits deployment (of military troops) in order to “enforce the laws” of the United States or to “suppress rebellion” whenever “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion” make it “impracticable” to enforce federal law in that state by the “ordinary course of judicial proceedings.””  Essentially he could have utilized the military to stop the violence that cities were unwilling or unable to stop.  Trump knew this, saying in early June 2020:  "If a city or a state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them."  He was pilloried by Democrats for even bringing up the idea with Pelosi stating: "But there is no reason for the U.S. military to be called out for this." 

Trump chose not to likely because he knew Democrats would brand him a tyrant or dictator if he did, despite the fact that FDR, Kennedy, LBJ & Bush 41 used troops for far smaller riots. Democrats did so regardless. 

That Donald Trump failed at leading the country through those two disasters is sadly, understandable.  Given the savagery and breadth of the relentless attacks on him, it would have taken someone just short of Zeus to have succeeded. The result of that failure was the theft of the election and the end of his presidency. 

Fast forward two years.  In November Trump announced he was running and he said many of the right things, starting with "In order to make America great and glorious again. I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.”  Possibly the best line of the night was "But just as I promised in 2016, I am your voice. I am your voice. The Washington establishment wants to silence us, but we will not let them do that.” 

That all sounds great, but the question is:  Has Trump learned the hard lesson… that the swamp is the Terminator, it will not stop, it cannot be negotiated with, the swamp knows no parties or limits and it must be crushed, otherwise it will kill him, kill his supporters and kill the Republic of the United States?

Recent events seem to suggest that he has not.

First, he endorsed Dr. Oz over a rock solid MAGA candidate in Pennsylvania.  Oz was anything but MAGA and went on to lose to a literally brain damaged Democrat. Trump made other MAGA endorsements, but Pennsylvania’s one of the most important swing states in the nation and he blew it.

Next, in December he endorsed the decidedly not MAGA Kevin McCarthy for Speaker despite the fact that there were a variety of MAGA candidates in the running.  McCarthy in 2021 stated "I don’t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election." That’s true, except for virtually every single MAGA voter in America, and 70% of the larger GOP as well.

Then later he threw his most ardent supporters, the pro life movement, under the bus, stating "It was the "abortion issue," poorly handled by many Republicans…that lost large numbers of Voters." He continued "Also, the people that pushed so hard, for decades, against abortion, got their wish from the U.S. Supreme Court, & just plain disappeared, not to be seen again." That was completely unnecessary, and wrong to boot. Next he quizzically invited the biggest dolt in Congress, Senator Lindsey Graham, who actually proposed a nationwide abortion ban less than two months before the election, to be with him on his first campaign event!  Most Republicans despise the war monger and big spending Graham, behind only McConnell and perhaps Collins, Murray & Romney. 

Then, finally, despite six years of failure, he supported the grifter Ronna McDaniel to lead the Republican Party over the incomparable super lawyer and MAGA candidate Harmeet Dhillon.  If there was ever anyone in the Republican Party who should’ve been ousted, who should’ve been replaced by a dyed in the wool grass roots MAGA candidate, it was McDaniel. She spent over $2 million of party money on luxury travel and private jets, $300,000 on flowers, $75,000 on “beauty and spa treatments” and $1,280 on LBGTQ+ filings! All while undermining MAGA.  She is the antithesis of the grass roots, MAGA voter.  She is the polar opposite of the farmers and plumbers and police and truckers and steel workers who put Trump into office in the first place and the ones who recognized the coup.  They’re the 50,000 people who filled stadiums and were in the trenches with him.  But McDaniel and the establishment loathe them.    

If Trump circa 2024 hasn’t figured out that success lays with the grass roots MAGA voters who put him in the White House rather than the establishment grifters who lead the party today – with his help – then I’m not sure what the motivation is to support him is. And just in case anyone is under the illusion that this is written by some Never Trumper, let me dissuade you of that notion.  In November, before most of the above occurred, I wrote this:  "Trump may tell off-color jokes and may not always be the best judge of character, but he can take the heat, and his North Star has always been prosperity and security for the American people. Given the literal evil the Democrats are seeking to impose on America, I’ll happily follow him into the fire."

2024 is too important a moment in American history to let serial failures like the establishment McFailures McConnell, McCarthy and McDaniel lead the way.  This election may well be the last opportunity for Americans to rescue the nation from a Democrat party that has turned our cities into dystopian wastelands, turned 40% of American children into gender confused lab rats and seeks to balkanize the nation based on race and sex and anything else they can think of.  The goal of the swamp is power and it knows no party.  McDaniel & Co. are its GOP arm and if Trump doesn’t recognize that then the baggage that comes with supporting him isn’t worth the fight because with those charlatans leading the way, come Jan 20, 2025 there will be another Democrat being sworn in.