FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 2025
World's richest nutcase relents: Just for the sake of preserving the record, here's the heart of the news report from CNN:
Elon Musk now has a new, lower target number for DOGE’s budget cuts
Elon Musk has walked back his previous claim that he could cut at least $2 trillion from the federal budget, saying Wednesday that half that amount would be “an epic outcome.”
Musk, who has been tasked by President-elect Donald Trump to co-lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, called the $2 trillion target “the best-case outcome.”
“If we try for $2 trillion, we’ve got a good shot at getting one,” Musk said in an interview streamed Wednesday evening on X, which he owns. “And if we can drop the budget deficit from $2 trillion to $1 trillion and kind of free up the economy to have additional growth—such that the output of goods and services keeps pace with the increase in the money supply—then there will be no inflation. So that, I think, would be an epic outcome.”
[...]
Musk, the world’s richest person, is looking to downsize the federal budget and operations by slashing spending, curbing regulations and cutting the workforce. However, budget experts have scoffed at his pronouncements, saying that eliminating $2 trillion from a roughly $6.8 trillion budget is unrealistic.
Please ignore the incoherence included in this strange person's new remarks. As for CNN, have "budget experts" really been "saying that eliminating $2 trillion from a roughly $6.8 trillion budget is unrealistic?"
Attempting to do that wouldn't be "unrealistic." As every budget expert knows, that would actually be the budget goal of a fully certified, genuine nutcase. It may be time for our major news orgs to stop being quite so polite.
Questions:
Does this nut-ball know what he's talking about? Does this richest of all nut-balls care?
At any rate, a new battle cry has now fully emerged:
Nut-balls of the world, unite! We'll call it the new federal government!
Does he care?
ReplyDeleteNo. He does not. He, like Trump, is only practicing brilliant exaggeration to demonstrate his own undeniable brilliance.
The spiel from the exemplars of MAGA who post here is that if you criticize Trump or his henchmen for walking back the thing they said yesterday, you must be a paid soros-bot, or “woke”. Apparently, MAGA voters not only don’t disapprove of their heroes’ lies and empty promises, they cheer them on, because it upsets the right people. Imagine living your life like these MAGA-ites.
DeleteThe felon's tax cuts added about $1.5 trillion to the deficit over ten years. If you exclude the military, SS, Medicare/caid there ain't much left to cut. Do the maths and raise taxes on yourselves. It ain't that complicated.
ReplyDeleteI don’t see the problem with what Musk said. I think the following points are reasonable:
ReplyDelete1. Aiming for a $2 trillion spending cut may be unrealistic , but having a high goal may be an effective strategy for getting a smaller, but still significant, spending cut.
2. Getting a $1 trillion cut would be valuable to the country
I will add my opinion. VP Al Gore had pretty much the same responsibility as Musk now has. IIRC, despite a sincere effort, Gore got virtually no cut. If Musk got a cut of half a trillion, that would be terrific.
How much do you think Musk will cut from children's mental health funding? That's usually where Republicans find "government waste".
DeleteRepublican voters expect government services to be there when they need them. As soon as a Republican voter doesn’t get what they think they deserve from the government, there’s holy hell to pay. That’s why this eternal performative “we must make massive cuts to government” is so ludicrous. It’s the mantra of the rich and corporations.
DeleteFive months and four days from today is Donald Trump's birthday, but I'm too excited to wait until I give him his gift, so here goes.
ReplyDeleteRepublican voters are a shit pile of bigots, who tried to overthrow the country because black people's votes were counted in the 2020 Presidential election.
Do you think I should tell Trump my Birthday, in case he wants to reciprocate?