Musk turns the GOP's devotion to billionaire tax cuts into a trap
It seems like only a couple of days ago that I was writing about President Trump and his former BFF Elon Musk's apparent falling out. Actually, it was a couple of days ago, but even though I was pretty sure that the famous bromance was on the rocks, due to all the vicious, anonymous back-stabbing by administration figures, I had no idea it was going to blow up as spectacularly as it did on Thursday.
I won't go into the details because I'm sure you've heard all about it. The upshot is that Musk is apparently upset by Trump's unwillingness to do everything he wanted, which convinced Trump to finally listen to the people around him and ease his "special government employee" out of the federal government. Unfortunately for Trump, Musk didn't want to go quietly. He worked himself up into a frenzy about the "One Big Beautiful Bill," undoing his measly work at DOGE and began a crusade on X to kill it. It attracted a torrent of whining from Trump at a White House event with the German chancellor on Thursday, followed by an afternoon of Musk tweeting furiously in response. It continued until Trump finally threatened to cancel Musk's government contracts. Musk shot back with a threat to leave the astronauts stranded on the International Space Station and then blew up the MAGA universe by claiming that Trump won't release the Epstein files because he's in them.
I have no idea if they will patch things up but I do know that Donald Trump lives for revenge, so if I were Elon Musk, I'd watch my back in any case. But setting aside the soap opera aspects of the break-up, the catalyst for MAGA's big catfight was the budget bill that's currently sitting in the GOP-controlled Senate — and Musk isn't the only one who's got a very big problem with it. In fact, virtually no Republican in Congress likes the president's signature legislation, but they were forced into doing something they know is a loser because Trump insisted that they put the whole kitchen sink into one bill instead of passing a popular immigration and defense bill early and then spending the rest of the year negotiating what was always going to be a heavy lift to pass their precious tax cuts for the weallthy and cuts to popular programs.
Musk's involvement in all this may seem odd but he demonstrated his willingness to jump into the fray back in December when, you'll recall, he managed to kill a delicately negotiated bipartisan continuing resolution demanding that the government shut down until Donald Trump was inaugurated. Trump had signed off on the bill (Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., would never have dared agree without his blessing) and was out of the loop when Musk fired his first salvos on X, but quickly jumped in behind him, pretending it was his idea.
This was Musk's first foray into real political leadership, and he won. He saw the power of his X feed and the clout he could muster to influence the deficit hawks with whom he shares a deep commitment to razing the federal government (except the parts from which he benefits, of course.) They landed on an agreement to keep the government open for a couple of months, but it required Johnson to make a side agreement that would couple a future $1.5 trillion increase in the nation's borrowing authority with a $2.5 trillion cut in net mandatory spending. The stage was set for this monstrosity that Trump fatuously insisted be officially named the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act."
Johnson also promised to get a bill passed by Memorial Day and he managed to do it by having the committees hastily put together a sloppy wish list in the middle of the night and getting it to the floor before anyone could see what was in it. With Donald Trump leaning heavily on anyone who looked wobbly, the Republicans passed the bill with just two House members voting against it and two more voting present. One suspects that more than a few of those who took that vote, particularly in the frontline purple districts, did so holding their breath in hopes that the Senate would water down some of the worst aspects.
It hit the Senate with a thud. The deficit hawks are apoplectic at the cost of the bill, which every non-partisan analyst, including their own Congressional Budget Office, estimates will add $2.4 trillion to the deficit, while the "populist" Republicans, such as they are, are nervous about the 16 million people losing their health insurance. In fact, they're all so discombobulated by this thing that some of them are making monumental political gaffes trying to deal with it. A case in point is Iowa Senator Joni Ernst with her notoriously clumsy "we're all going to die" comment and even worse follow-up.
Even some of the staunch Trump allies in the House are expressing regret at having voted for it.
Apparently, the Republicans have convinced themselves that if they can just appease the hardcore budget cutters, they can snow the American people about these massive cuts by lying to their faces and saying that no one will be affected.On Thursday, NBC reported that they are now talking about cutting Medicare and saying that Trump has signed on:
Senate Republicans said that they discussed the issue during a closed-door meeting and that it also came up with Trump when Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee met with him Wednesday.
'What the president made clear is [he] does not want to see any cuts to beneficiaries. But to go after, he repeated over again — the waste, fraud and abuse, the waste, fraud and abuse,' Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., said.
Keep in mind they are calling the cuts to Medicaid "waste, fraud and abuse" as well, but it's going to result in tens of millions of people losing their health care. Now they're going to try that dirty trick on Medicare recipients, while refusing to even consider not slashing taxes on billionaires like Elon Musk.
Republicans are known to favor the rich and everyone knows they are champing at the bit to cut the safety net programs. It seems Trump's found a way to abandon his pledge not to do that by realizing that his docile GOP potted plants will eagerly back his lie that they aren't doing it when they obviously are.
But Social Security and Medicare are different. They are not called the third rail for nothing. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican, isn't right about much but he's right about this:
'In 2004 President Bush got re-elected and promptly tried to privatize Social Security, and Republicans didn't win the popular vote for 20 years,' Hawley said. 'So if you don't ever want to win an election again, just go fiddle around with people's Medicare that they've worked hard for, paid into.'
All for the love of billionaire tax cuts. If they do this, they are going to wish Musk had succeeded in killing the bill.
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