Originally Posted by hummingbear

True. A little ironic that a guy who ran the debt up as aggressively as Trump45 is suddenly the champion of fiscal responsibility but hey, if he’s gonna do it, great.

Problem is if you look at federal spending, it’s almost entirely SocSec, healthcare, & defense- with interest becoming a growing cost. So if you're at all realistic about making a difference, you’ve got to either go after those three, or increase your income (ie raise taxes) or more likely at this point, both.

The federal workforce- where EM seems to be focused- makes up about 4% of spending so even if you make huge cuts in that area (which he seems intent on doing) it simply won’t be felt. Unlike the 6x bankrupt Trump, Musk is no dummy so it’s literally impossible he doesn’t understand this. Rather than affecting the bottom line, he seems to be more motivated by a general contempt for labor, which is pretty much in keeping with his conduct at Tesla & Twitter/X.

Show me a real budget plan than makes meaningful changes (not nebulous claims of having saved nebulous billions that always seem to be proven false) toward fiscal sustainability & I’m listening. Until then all I see is the most aggressively anti-labor administration of my lifetime marching under the banner of “getting spending under control”.