The GOP Screamed About Debt—Now They’re Burning $2B a Day

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Hey everybody, Tim over in the bulwark here.

You guys know I like it when I get to flex my physical conservative muscles.

You know, I'm always living out with you guys, and so I like it when I get to, you

kind of bring out the old green eye shade Tim, is that one that's called blue eye

shade?

Whatever, the eye shade Tim.

The one that cares about balancing the budget, and I saw this top line number this week

that's been going around about how much the Iran war is costing us.

The first estimates that came out had it at $1 billion a day.

This was a congressional official talking to the Atlantic, and then the Politico said

they had sources that said that's what was looking more like $2 billion a day.

When I saw that number, this insane spending that we're doing on this war that has no clear

purpose or no clear explanation, no clear rationale, it made me think back to our friend

Elon Musk.

When the administration started, we were spending a lot of time right here on this channel talking

about Elon Musk and Doge and his insane ketamine fuel tweet storms and the real life impact

he was having on like the poorest people in the world who are dying because of Elon's

policies, but also people working in the federal government or losing their jobs or having

to sue over their jobs or not knowing, being told they'd just send a memo in that to

the new little grouper white nationalist boss that they had telling them what they did

every day.

It was insane.

It was insane.

And since our lives are insane, we kind of forget that.

And so I thought it would be important to kind of take back the lens and take this news

story about how much money we are spending, how much of your money, of our money.

We're spending on this pointless, basically pointless war, at least war without a rationale.

And compare it to like what their rhetoric was and like what their plans were when they

came in, because like the big message of Doge was that they were going to solve this

government spending problem that we had, that the Democrats Joe Biden was spending too

much money, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, stimulus.

And it was out of control.

And the Trump administration was going to bring it back.

And when I had Elon's buddy Jason Calicanas on the podcast, he's talking about how critical

this was, government spending, get it in control, they're finally doing it.

Politicians of both parties have been talking about it forever.

Nobody does anything.

Trump and Elon get shit done.

Here we are now.

Spending a billion bucks a day in Iran for some reason.

So let's go back.

Let's wind back the tape a little bit and look at what they were, look at what they were

saying.

To run up to the election, Elon was talking about the extent of the cuts that they had

planned.

So the total national debt right now is 38 trillion.

I'm like, I gotta tell you, I haven't checked on that in a minute.

I just googled it a second ago and I was thinking the number was going to be like 20.

It's 38 trillion, double what I thought.

So 38 trillion, big problem, real problem.

I care about this problem.

Elon claimed he cared about the problem and he said he thinks that they can do two.

How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted $6.5 trillion, Horace Biden budget?

Well, I think we can do it at least two trillion.

Yeah.

Yes.

I'm just kind of a small, small little nibble in the whole thing, but okay, he says they

can cut at least two trillion.

On an all-grain day, he said, we're going to take Doge to Mars, we're going to occupy

Mars, Doge.

And then he gets in there and he wasn't limited by Trump or the law or any legal constraints

and Trump just let him buck while.

And it's really two things.

Competence and caring.

And if you add competence and caring, you'll cut the budget deficit in half.

And they were touting all the shit they were doing to cut spending.

You probably remember when Musk pranced up on the stage at CPAC with Javier Malay and

he was waving the chainsaw.

This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy.

This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy, chainsaw for spending.

They're just going to cut, cut, cut.

On Mars, he told Fox News, he could cut one trillion and just weeks, so two trillion

and total, but just one trillion, we got that in weeks, okay?

Let's watch a little bit of that conversation who's talking to Brett there.

I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion

dollars within that timeframe.

So in that timeframe, 130 days.

So there you go, big talk there, big talk, 130 days.

He could do it.

He's Elon, he does things the private sector way, not to slow down bureaucracy.

And then in June, right after he left his post, he was talking about just how critical

this mission was.

He said that this immense level of overspending will drive America into debt slavery.

Debt slavery.

This was such an existential threat that our country would be enslaved, I assume by the

Chinese, if we didn't deal with it.

So that was their stated claim that Donald Trump's most high profile, surrogate and

special government employee was going to focus on this massive problem, cutting government

spendings, our debts too high, they're going to cut maybe one trillion in weeks, maybe

two trillion in numbers for all over the place.

And it was critical that they were going to do it, because if we didn't do it, we're

going into debt slavery.

Well, I hope you guys are learning Mandarin, because fast forward a little bit and we didn't

do it.

There was a fun Wall Street Journal article last month, and a guy, I knew a little

bit, named Alan Cole, and one of these DC nerd times.

And Alan Cole saw Thoroughly Lon's bullshit, he was watching it, and he's like, this guy

is a, this guy I don't know what he's doing, okay, just a little fun aside for you.

I had somebody inside the administration who was talking to me, I was at one of these

mega events, there on the opposite side of Musk, didn't like Musk, so take that for what

you will.

And he said that Musk was so dumb that he about how everything works, he didn't realize

that the Senate and the House were two different brands, he thought we had one branch, he thought

just Congress was just Congress, he didn't realize we had two legislative branches, so

didn't know what he's doing.

Maybe that's apocryphal, but it's funny either way.

Too good to check.

Alan Cole saw this and was just like, this guy can't do it, there's too much, there's

too much inertia in the system, and if you're going to actually cut government spending,

you really got to go after these big ticket items, entitlements, military, they don't

want to do that.

And so this isn't going to happen.

And he made a bet, I don't, I do, you guys know I love sports gambling, I don't, this

prediction markets, I don't like, well, that's a talk for another day, but he made a bet

on these prediction markets, basically saying, he spent his entire life savings, big bet,

saying that the government spending less he increased the first year of Trump won't

decrease.

It was against conventional wisdom, it was against what all the mega-brows were saying.

And not only was he right, federal government spending grew every quarter last year.

Like, there wasn't even, in that first, remember that what he said to Brett Bear, 130 days

will get rid of a trillion, not even that first quarter that it go down.

Not spending kept going up because Elon didn't know what he was doing.

And so in the end, what he did was cause an imaginable harm for the poorest people on

the planet and eliminate a lot of expertise from our government under the auspices of saving

taxpayers money and cutting spending, and he totally failed to do it.

So all he did was harm people with nothing to show for it.

So that was the Elon Musk private sector mindset at work in the government.

Now fast forward to today, it's like, okay, well, does shouldn't work.

But you would assume that administration, that spawned doge would still believe that this

national debt is a problem, it's gone up significantly during their second term.

And they should do something about that.

And because, remember, if we don't do it, we will be doomed to suffer a life of debt

slavery.

It's like the stakes are pretty high here, debt slavery for the country, if we don't

deal with this.

And what the administration is doing right now is just putting the metal to the metal on

even more spending, just making that money machine go burp, doing to make the interest rates

lower.

Okay, we're going to continue spending more.

Weak in the dollar and simultaneously start a Middle East war with no clear end game

that is costing us somewhere between a billion and two billion per day.

I remember when they talked about that big fight that the Democrats had in the shutdown

about extending the Obamacare subsidies, the cost of that was equivalent to like two

weeks of this war.

That nobody's voting on by the way, I mean, I guess, we're kind of tried to, they tried

to push that through, but like they hadn't, they haven't approved that spending.

They tried to do a war power resolution, but so the executive has just decided we're

going to do Obamacare subsidy extension level spending in two weeks on this war.

Who knows how long it's going to go, like who knows how much more spending will be required

afterwards, and on the military dork podcasts I've been listening to at night, they, you

know, one of the things that they're concerned about is just the amount of material that we're

going through, just a lot of like really expensive missiles and other weaponry, air defense

weaponry.

And so we're going to have to get more of that.

So that's going to, so even when it ends, it's not as if that's going to be the end of

the cost of this war, like the costs are going to continue.

And I could have known else, like how long that will be sucked into summer ass.

We don't even get to pick.

And one of the things I've been saying about this is I Trump might end up just deciding

he's bored of this war and stop it, but the Iranians have a say in this too, like the

threats from terror, threats from other asymmetric foes are going to now be increased.

And so that's going to mean more, we're going to have to spend more on military.

We're going to put more assets in the region.

I mean, it's just the cost of this is mind blowing.

And so it's like, when you think about this in the national security perspective, you

take them with their word, like they said, like part of the rationale from Doge was that

like it was against our national security interest to be this crippled with debt.

And so here we are, like piling more and more debt on top of what we already had.

We're doing so for an unclear mission.

We are weakening the dollar to throw in some tariffs on top of that, which is going to

make things more expensive for everybody.

And it is just an absolutely insane grab bag of fiscal policies.

And you haven't noticed Elon saying much about that.

So I do wonder.

And you think that if Elon was concerned about debt slavery, that he would want to weigh

in on this.

Do you think that Elon would be concerned about his legacy or that Elon would be critical

of the administration that has totally just shat all over the entire project that he undertook

when he was in the lighthouse?

But now I guess he wants to make sure he's got good contracts for his weapons and can

go to Mars and do all the other if I can shit he wants to do.

So that's what we got.

So that's legacy of Doge.

Lot of harm to people across the globe and at home.

Federal spending growing up last year, every quarter.

Federal spending growing up even more this year thanks to this dumb war.

And I guess the future for us might be Chinese enslavement.

Fingers crossed, hopefully not.

Subscribe to the feed.

Appreciate y'all.

Let me know what you think about that in the show notes.

I got one particular fan, reader, emailer that reaches out to me and cares about this

issue.

It doesn't believe that I care about it enough.

And I tell him I do, but he wants me to talk about it more because this is not sarcasm.

I do, I mean, I don't know that I think that debt slavery is imminent, but I do think

this is a real crisis.

And I think that it is important that the lack of seriousness, which with they undertook

this crisis, it's something that people know about because eventually Bill is going

to come do on this sort of stuff.

So shout out to my buddy BW, everybody else, comment, like, thumbs up, all the other

shit.

We'll see you all soon.

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