Wall Street Journal: “The federal deficit reached $1.8 trillion, or 6.4% of GDP, last fiscal year, a record outside of war, recession or emergency. Musk and Trump have promised to attack it by cutting federal spending. One simple step would be to stop adding to it. And yet last week neither stood in the way of Congress’s largess. Musk posted in favor of the money for disaster victims and farmers. The vice president-elect, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, co-sponsored the Social Security expansion.”

“The reason is obvious: Spending is popular with voters and both parties. This is why commissions, think tanks and earnest outsiders have been papering Washington for decades with ideas to cut spending and the deficit—and mostly gotten nowhere.”

Playbook: “He has the money, the platform, a Republican trifecta in Washington and a radically altered information ecosystem compared to would-be government shrinkers in generations past. Trump and his allies are serious about targeting the federal government, which many MAGA figures see as full of disloyalty, for radical changes.”

“But inertia is powerful. Margins are narrow. And even in the minority, Democrats won’t make it easy for Republicans to enact cuts to the social safety net.”

Said Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY): “Ultimately, it takes Congress. Congress has to get rid of the spending. DOGE can point out the spending problems and the waste the same way I’ve been pointing it out. But the reason it’s not eliminated is they don’t have the votes to get rid of the spending. So I am very hopeful that DOGE will draw attention to this. … Why is there more waste? Because the idiots in Congress keep giving them more money.”