For the Trump Administration, getting the so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” passed before the Fourth of July holiday was among their top priorities.
As far as polling data is concerned, almost no one thinks highly of the legislation, aside from the most ardent Trump defenders.
Just to state the obvious, most of the negative publicity and the bad feelings towards it from the public are simply due to Trump’s name being attached to it.
As you might imagine, a lot of the heartburn from the general public comes from mainstream media fear mongering as well as the mandatory work requirements to Medicare and the slashing of SNAP benefits.
When it comes to legislation such as this, there’s two ways to view it, the practical and the ideological.
Proponents of the practical view were adamant that the bill was necessary to maintain and make permanent Trump’s previous tax cutting initiatives from his first term.
As Speaker Mike Johnson and other prominent Republicans have pointed out, the passage of the bill avoided the tax increases that were on the way once when Trump's 2017 individual and business tax cuts were due to expire at the end of the year.
On a purely political level, the passage of the bill is actually a monumental achievement for the Trump administration. It’s especially praise worthy when you consider how raucous Trump’s Republican coalition is due to the sheer political diversity and attitudes that compose it.
Which is actually a great segue into the ongoing ideological battle between former Trump Ally Elon Musk and the administration. That’s right, the former besties are duking it out again from their respective social media platforms about the contents of the spending package.
As most of you know from reading these columns, I’m on Musk’s side when it comes to fiscal responsibility.
Funny enough, if you listen to enough of Trump’s public clap backs, almost none of them address Musk’s primary gripe about spending because he knows Musk is ideologically correct.
Trump believes his split from Musk is all about the electric vehicle mandates and the cuts to green energy initiatives, something that’s irritating to Musk and his business model.
There’s also no question that Musk’s Twitter posts and his announcement of yet another third party political party is motivated in part by vengeance.
Still, Musk isn’t wrong to oppose the bill, nor is he wrong when he publicly trashes the administration for running on getting the country back on track while simultaneously throttling its future through spending the assets of the unborn.
Here’s something to keep in mind, Donald Trump is almost 80 years old. The bulk of Congress are all effectively senior citizens who aren’t far behind him. Which means that in the next decade or so, most of them won’t be alive to see the consequences of their actions.
At over 50 years old, Musk is no spring chicken himself. Though the likelihood that he and his companies, as well as his children will feel the effects of what our government does is almost assured.
Fortunately for him, he has quite literally all the money in the world and resources that none of us can really fathom. In short, he’s going to be OK. But what about the rest of us?
It’s the sort of grim future that inspired him to start talking about creating his own third-party venture. The so-called “America party” apparently will focus on reducing government spending, upgrading the military with AI and robotics and taking centrist positions on most domestic issues.
While this is both an “F@$& You” to Trump and a reactionary move to Republican excesses, the truth of the matter is that it’s largely a waste of time and money.
I would love for there to be a world where the next presidential cycle sees both Republicans and Democrats taken down a peg by a party that is not only serious about saving the nation, but can also be trusted to do so once empowered.
But I’m not an optimist.
Rather, I have another suggestion for Musk that might be a better use of his time and resources.
This is going to sound wacky but honestly, if I were Elon Musk, I’d just hoard my resources and create an isolated paradise to survive the coming economic hardship.
Obviously, I don’t have much in common with Elon Musk. But I follow him on Twitter, so I know that Fallout New Vegas is a game we’ve both played and enjoyed and taken very seriously.
I won’t bog you guys with the all the nerdy details but Musk ought to take a page from our favorite game and leave the political posturing alone.
In New Vegas, which is set in the dystopian year of 2282, Billionaire Mr. House is a super genius who has transformed Las Vegas into his own miniature empire. As such, it’s one of the few places in America to have survived a nuclear apocalypse. A place where the old world has been perfectly preserved and has its own bustling economy complete with all the vices one expects from Sin City.
The immortal Mr. House even has his own army of autonomous robot servants and advanced AI technology that serve his every whim while he sits comfortably in his pristine Lucky 38 resort tower.
Anyone that has played New Vegas knows that the apocalypse of the Fallout universe was the direct result of not only extreme corruption but an America that couldn’t be bothered to change course.
One of the major themes of the series is the complacency and devil-may-care attitude of Americans in the face of government overreach, over reliance on a nanny state and the misguided belief that economic collapse couldn’t happen to the greatest nation on Earth.
Fallout offers the same social warnings as classics such as “Brave New World” and “1984” before it. A cautionary tale of what happens when the state becomes the ultimate arbiter of the citizen’s path and when those same citizens are too ignorant to see that such an arrangement is just living on borrowed time.
Mr. House tells the player that trying to save such a world was an exercise in futility.
So he took the obvious path forward, which meant hunkering down for the inevitable collapse and being prepared enough to start over once the dust settled.
Starting yet another political party that Americans aren’t interested in supporting is the ultimate waste of resources and the worst thing you could do with your money.
For a guy that has an IQ north of 150, Musk isn’t learning the correct lessons from his brush with the Republican Party. The most significant finding by DOGE is that most Americans don’t care about the deficit and aren’t disturbed by the waste that Government engages in.
The only time in my recent memory that Americans got out and actually stumped en masse against government waste was during the Tea Party days. And we saw what came out of that movement: Jack and S$&@.
Half of them saw the writing on the wall and gave up hope and the other half decided that it was just easier to fall in lockstep with the lesser of two political evils and hope for the best.
In any event, potentially spending billions on a new political party to combat an existential problem that not even half the country takes seriously is ill advised to say the least.
Honestly, I’m not sure Musk is actually series about the whole thing and hopefully he changes his mind and focuses on the things he can control.
With any luck, there’ll be a place for a certain washed up Roanoke Beacon columnist in his cyborg army helping to impose his will over the Las Vegas Strip.