No, This Isn’t How Democracy Works
It certainly isn't how the US Constitution functions.
The DOGE Master speaks:
There is a lot to be said about this clip and Musk’s appearance in the Oval Office (not the least of which is that I have never seen anyone hold court with the press like this in the Oval except for the President, but that is another discussion).
Musk is claiming that because Trump campaigned on reform/cutting waste that that means the way that DOGE is behaving has full democratic authority behind it.
No.
Full stop.
Just because a presidential candidate campaigns on something and then wins does not mean that the now-elected president can do whatever they want to pursue a given goal. No, it means that the president can attempt to work, within the system, to accomplish the promised goals.
By the simplistic logic that Musk provides, Trump should just declare prices lower, after all, he campaigned on that, too.
To be more specific, the power to adjust the budget and reorganize the federal government is a congressional power. If Musk and his buddies were just assessing the federal government and providing recommendations that the administration could then provide to Congress, that would be acceptable. Running around from agency to agency and recklessly combing through data and proclaiming you have found massive fraud and waste is not acceptable. Moreover, none of it actually fixes anything (quite the opposite) and it isn’t like it all clear how any of this actually saves real money.
Although, how could I doubt this kind of math?
If you listen to the whole thing, he is promising to cut the deficit in half, get GDP growth up to as high as 5%, lower interest rates (including, somehow, on existing mortgages), and get inflation down.
Imagine there’s no inflation. It’s easy if you try!
This is utter nonsense. And yet, a lot of people are going to eat it up. It is the classic, “fraud and waste” nonsense on steroids ketamine.
There are a lot of folks in the administration making the “this is what people voted for” assertions I keep hearing from the administration (it’s not just Musk). For example, here’s the new OMB Director making similar claims during his confirmation hearings.
Trump has argued that the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional, and so has his nominee for budget director, Russell Vought, who had the same job at the end of the president’s first term. Vought also helped write Project 2025, the conservative-governing blueprint that attracted so many attacks from Democrats that Trump disavowed it during the campaign.
In his Senate confirmation hearings this month, Vought repeatedly refused to commit to abiding by the impoundment act even as he acknowledged that it is “the law of the land.” “For 200 years, presidents had the ability to spend less than an appropriation if they could do it for less,” he told senators at his first hearing. During his second appearance, when Van Hollen asked him whether he would comply with the law, Vought did not answer directly. “Senator, the president ran against the Impoundment Control Act,” he replied.
Here’s the deal: “running against” a piece of legislation means that once in office you can be expected to try and get the legislation changed. You know, like when you have control of both chambers of Congress you make a legislative proposal.
The notion that because you “ran against” something doesn’t mean that you, therefore, can do what you want in regards to that something once you win.
As the old cliche goes, the president proposes and Congress disposes.
I say all of this fully recognizing that Congress is not as functional as I would like it to be, but by the same token, it does still function. The previous president was able to get significant legislation passed, such as the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act when his party controlled Congress.
And yes, the Trump administration is purposefully picking a fight in the hopes that the Supreme Court will overturn the Impoundment Control Act. I am not disputing its ability to pick said fight. I do question the way they are doing it. They are clearly also banking that a lot of this DOGE nonsense will be endorsed by the Supreme Court.
But I am underscoring that their theory of government is that Trump can do whatever he wants because he won the election.
There are any number of words for that and “democratic” ain’t one of them.
One of the ironies (to me, anyway), is that a lot of people who like to shout about how we are a republic, and not a democracy (people like Senator Lee of Utah and the Heritage Foundation itself) are now using the notion that a plurality elected Trump, so that means he can pretty much do what he wants, including ignoring the Congress and the courts. These people who like to deploy that phrase often say it is because they don’t want a simplistic majority-vote system to prevail, yet this is exactly what they are currently arguing for, and actively supporting: one vote, the president wins, and can do whatever he wants.
But, again, that is not democratic governance nor it is the way the US Constitution functions.
Lee comes to mind for various reasons, to include this tweet from 2020:
We are currently witnessing the accumulation of power in the hands of the few. And we are seeing clear challenges, if not direct violations, of the constitutional order.
(BTW: all of what I am seeing from people like Lee is a confirmation that what they mean when they say the US is a republic, not a democracy is that what they really mean is not some deep theoretical notion about governance, but rather that they don’t want a truly representative democracy, but that they really want some form of oligarchy where the right kind of people get to make decisions).
Wakey wakey, media and Geriatric Democrats Obsessed With Deferring To A Strong Republican Party.
This is a coup, full stop.
Yup, and as Mencken said, they’re going to get it good and hard.
More than one of those present said it was clear Trump was getting increasingly annoyed at Musk getting almost all the questions, forcing Trump to occasionally slip in a remark just to remind everyone he wasn’t there to babysit Musk’s kid. One skeet called him Musk’s “manny”.
Makes you wonder what their private conversation was like when the press conference ended. This might just be the moment when Musk oversteps because the Oval, like Trump’s office in NYC, might be considered by Trump to be a sign of his status. And we know how forgiving Trump is of his status being scratched in any way.
Still, isn’t this idea what conservatism always reduces to ultimately? Serious question, not snark.
I won’t go into the details of the massive hypocrisy, willful ignorance, sheer malice, rank cowardice, etc. on the part of the republiqan party. I’ll just suggest the next Democratic president run on a platform to castrate nazi in chief Xlon, and to feed him his tiny testes.
@Not the IT Dept.:
Maybe. Trump himself is a bit kiss up, kick down, he may be too intimidated by the power of Musk’s wealth and what it can buy to respond.
@just nutha:
What they want may differ from what they are likely to get, namely “strong man” government.
I have been watching Babylon Berlin as my current TV binge watch. The setting is late stage Weimar Republic, where the Generals, plutocrats and conservative pols think the SA and NSDAP are useful.
@charontwo: Unintended consequences are pretty much always a bitch.
90% of Fed Spending is Defense, Healthcare, Social Security and Interest on existing Debt. Any discussion of cuts,balancing etc…is unserious if not addressing those items. USaid entire budget is like 8 days of interest on the national debt. Why not discuss eliminating tax expenditures? Mortgage interest? Stuff like that. Fed Gov can make some minor spending reductions here and there, but without big cuts to major items noted above, its just theater. Gov also has a revenue problem that no one talks about. Lost rev through the tax code amounts to like 2 Trillion…never hear a peep on eliminating any of that
Another thing is that, for the most part, they didn’t run on doing many of these things. In fact, on several occasions, Trump explicitly distanced himself from the things he’s currently doing, and was supposedly putting the people he’s now nominating for positions onto “do not hire lists.”
Now, most people who were paying attention knew he was lying, but to say that he ran on cuts to foreign aid, or any of the other illegal things he’s been doing, is just wrong.
This is truly becoming a Confederacy of Dunces.
So “Big Balls” is making mistakes? Shocking.
On a very basic level, someone doesn’t understand audits.
A universal truth; people who have to tell you that they’re geniuses, aren’t.
Musk doesn’t understand squat about this country, its history, its traditions, its norms, the massive sacrifices its working class people have made over generations to acquire personal freedoms to vote, to work where they choose, to negotiate their standard of living.
He behaves like an emotionally immature adolescent trapped in an adult body with the world’s largest bankroll at his disposal for every ill-conceived, selfish impulse that might sift up through his daily quest for empire.
The emotional constitution of an adolescent —- every bit the awkward, clunky dork symbolized by his clunky dorkish Cybertruck. I have viewed that mega-toy from every angle, as it moves down roadways. It moves awkwardly without grace. It brings to mind Musk jumping around on a stage with Trump last summer, arms waggling overhead. Less the nerd, more the dork.
@charontwo:
Well, as they say in real estate circles, it’s all about location, location, location. I don’t believe the Trump-Musk relationship is that simplistic but I do think that like most people there are some areas that are off limits. And in Trump’s what-passes-for-mind, the Oval Office could be one of them. And during that presser it was Musk who was the Alpha and Trump was the Beta as far as the press was concerned. I would have loved to see the explosion if a reporter “accidently” called Musk Mr. President.
So, two clowns.
One a doddering orange-faced fool, that is nothing more than the death rattle of uneducated early baby boomers…
The other is a born-on-third-base ketamine-addled botox and plastic surgery addicted Richie Rich that thinks he shits gold bars and that everyone should defer to and worship him alone.
Those two are gonna explode SO huge… this is no partnership of equals, by any means…
President Musk will end up shutting up that trump guy.
It should be noted that you can’t simultaneously heat up the economy and lower interest rates. The idea that any nimrod out there would buy this idiotic hype man’s nonsense is extremely saddening. It’s all just so unbelievably stupid.
If Musk’s goal really was ending fraud and waste he wouldn’t be firing all the IGs. Might put some of his Whiz Kidz in to observe them but he wouldn’t be chucking out people with knowledge and experience willy-nilly.
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It recalls a bit the Tory insistence after the EU referendum that said result entitled the PM and Cabinet to do whatever it willed in order to “get Brexit done” as it was the “will of the People”,
Including mucking about with Parliamentary procedure and prerogative.
The difference being that in the UK the “absolute sovereignty of Crown-in-Parliament” does enable a sufficiently organized and determined majority party to do whatever it wills, so long as the parliamentary majority it’s based on holds together.
The Conservatives problem was that May didn’t have the numbers, Johnson didn’t have the application, Truss didn’t have the brains, and Sunak didn’t have the time.
So they ended up having to accept EU terms, having to sell those as a win to the Brexit voters, and with no coherent plan for mitigating the economic damage.