“Elon Musk says he is ‘disappointed’ by the price tag of the domestic policy bill passed by Republicans in the House last week and heavily backed by President Trump,” explains CBS News.
The “price tag” is indeed a whopper, if by price we mean what Donald Trump’s ballyhooed “Big, Beautiful Bill” (the One Big Beautiful Bill Act orBBB) added to the debt: an expected $3.3 trillion over ten years.
“I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful,” Mr. Musk claims, laughing, in an upcoming CBS News Sunday Morning interview — a portion leaked as a teaser by CBS on Tuesday. “But I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.”
An opinion shared by many — just not those “in government.”
Which is apt, since Musk is out. He expressed his “personal opinion” as he was exiting the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The exit isn’t the big story. We knew from the beginning that Musk’s time at DOGE was not going to last forever.
Which highlights the up-in-the-air aspect of DOGE’s mission and future.
Note that Musk is capable of artful politics. His official statement appeared on X: “As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President [Donald Trump] for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending.”
This rosy view of his exit may mask much muck. “Musk made himself a total pariah,” first-ousted Trump strategist Steve Bannon told The Free Press. “He had access, admiration, unlimited resources — and by his own actions toward people, blew it all.”
How did he blow it? By actually doing something?
Musk concluded his official exit statement by hazarding that DOGE’s “mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.” That’s precisely what’s in doubt.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Krea and Fireflly
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5 replies on “Elon’s Out”
Trump and Musk are liars. Musk promised 2 trillion in savings, then one trillion, then 175 billion and then 72 billion. But even this can’t be verified. Many of the firings have been restored by the courts.
What they are doing will be catastrophic to the poor. 800+ billion from Medicaid will push many rural hospitals into ceasing operations. It is estimated that 700 rural hospitals are already having trouble staying afloat. Those rural hospitals are usually the biggest employer in the town! Everyone in that area will have to travel for medical care. Doctors and nurses will leave and other employees will not have jobs. Most births in the in the U.S. are supported by Medicaid. The federal government expects the states to cover those losing Medicaid. States are required to have a balanced budget and there will not be funds available for Medicaid patients. There will be unbelievable suffering by the poor!
You get what you deserve; you deserve what you get!
What a country!
Are you gutless? “By every conceivable metric, Musk’s stint in government has been an abject failure. On the substance alone, it has been wildly destructive. A lot of lifelong experts in key positions have lost their jobs. Important medical research has been set back, possibly indefinitely. Government agencies are functioning worse than they were before.”
Are that afraid to write about anything important? It certainly appears so!
Quit talking about “free speech” when you censor people who don’t agree with you. What a hypocrite!
Musk is a druggie!. 20 pills a day, ketamine, Adderoll, Ecstasy and mushrooms. Vs That is the junkie running DOGE!
You get what you deserve; you deserve what you get.
“Musk assumed that the government is full of lazy bureaucrats who could be fired without any meaningful consequences. But even one of his own DOGE insiders had to concede that’s not actually true. In an interview, tech entrepreneur Sahil Lavingia, who Musk placed at the Department of Veterans Affairs, told Fast Company earlier this month: “I would say the culture shock is mostly a lot of meetings, not a lot of decisions … But honestly, it’s kind of fine — because the government works. It’s not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest. I was hoping for more easy wins.”
Lavingia said he found “himself surrounded by people who ‘love their jobs,’ who came to the government with a sense of mission driving their work,” according to Fast Company. After that interview was published, Lavingia said his “access was revoked without warning” and his “DOGE days were over.”