Elon Musk has made some waves lately saying the “Big Beautiful Bill” doesn’t do enough to address the deficit. He is right, it doesn’t. Donald Trump points to the $1.7 Trillion permanent cuts in spending and says it is a good start. He is right, it is. Others point to the tax cuts and say those will cost the federal government money. They are wrong, tax cuts never “cost” the government money. Money that stays in the private sector will actually increase revenue to the government, because of the multiplier effect of private spending. In any event, the “Big, Beautiful Bill” is a great start to reducing the size and impact of the federal government on all our lives.
I played high school football. That experience taught me two great life lessons. First, as a team sport, everybody on the team had to do their part to advance the success of the team. Second, you don’t score a touchdown on every play. The goal of each play is to advance the ball down the field until you score the points. Getting first downs is a critical part of that process. Moving the ball an average of 3.4 yards per play wins the game. The team doesn’t always advance the ball, it doesn’t always get a first down, it almost never scores a touchdown in one play. But the team keeps going, every down, fighting for every yard it can. That is how the team wins.
In my experience, legislative politics is the process most like a football game. To win, you have to advance the ball, in this case, your vision of public policy, with each move, or stop the other side from advancing the ball. Most of the “players” in politics are in the Congress or the Legislatures, and they are lineman most of the time. They block and tackle, gets their fingers stomped on, nose broken, sometimes permanent injury helping the quarterback, the receivers and the running backs advance the ball. The only difference between politics and football is that sometimes the lineman in politics get to be the star player. Most of the time, they just block and tackle.
How does this apply to the Trump/Musk drama happening right now? Musk is absolutely right, government spending is out of control. We are on a collision course with history, and the wreck is not far away. We will be judged by our children and grandchildren by our lack of fiscal discipline. Radical and drastic reductions in spending are necessary, as quickly as possible.
Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” is not a Hail Mary touchdown pass, for sure. But it is a first down, it advances the ball in the right direction, and it sets up the next few plays to enable the country to score a touchdown. It is not perfect policy, but it is good, and we cannot allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good.
There are a lot of people in Washington and in this country who have become invested in the status quo, and they don’t care about the damage that status quo in going to do to our country in the long run. The spending addicts in Washington and our state capitols around the country are in a opium den, and they hang with their fellow spending addicts like heroin addicts, spending and destroying the structure of our country.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” is the first step in the weaning of this country’s spending addicts off their addiction. By reducing the amount of money they steal from you and me every day, we are introducing them to self control, and, like little children, they are screaming about the “harm” these reductions are causing.
Republicans have a small majority in the House and in the Senate, and, over the years, some of them have become enablers of the spending addicts. Those enablers are on our team, so we need them to advance the ball. Trump’s impact on these enablers has made him the best quarterback for the reduction in spending policy initiative. Our enablers definitely fear his impact on their political careers, so they move with him, but they will only go so far. Until we have bigger majorities with fewer enablers, we can only advance the ball so far. But advance we must, we have to get the next first down if we are ever going to score the touchdown that Musk quite rightly wants.
I realize I’m mixing metaphors here, but they both fit. The Washington swamp is filled with addicts and enablers. Stopping them is the key to our nation’s long term health. But we can only stop them if we keep the team united, pushing in the right direction with every possible step. Musk did amazing things with DOGE, we need to keep up that initiative. Trump did amazing things with the “Big Beautiful Bill” given the small majorities in the House and Senate.
Both of them need to work together to keep it up. Our country will not be able to survive if they don’t.