If ‘the people’ had their way more fully, America’s fiscal situation would be much worse than it already is, not better.
Elon Musk’s new “America Party” is short on details about what policies it stands for. The closest thing to a platform comes from a repost by Musk on X, which lists his priorities in brief bullet points: “pro tech” and “free speech,” “less regulation across board but especially in energy,” “pro natalist,” etc. The defining focus of Musk’s party, however, appears to be greater fiscal responsibility in the federal government.
The creation of this venture stems from Republicans’ passage last week of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — President Trump’s signature legislative accomplishment — which is projected to add trillions of dollars to the national debt. Musk had railed against the bill for its deficit impact before passage, threatening to support primary challenges against any Republican lawmaker who voted for it (so, all of them except five). Now that his influence within the GOP has been decimated, Musk thinks that only a new populist party can improve the nation’s dire fiscal straits.
The very name of the party suggests that Musk believes his views reflect those of the nation. Indeed, in proposing the party, he asserted that it would represent “the 80% in the middle.” Musk had declared earlier that if Trump’s megabill passed, “the America Party will be formed the next day. Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE.” Musk reiterated his populist approach days later, saying that capturing a few decisive seats in Congress “would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people.”
There is just one problem: The two pillars of Musk’s party, fiscal responsibility and elevating the “will of the people,” are discordant. What drives the nation’s gargantuan deficits is a structural mismatch between tax revenue and spending, which is primarily the result of popular demand. The American people are overwhelmingly unwilling to pay enough in taxes to cover all the government spending they enjoy. In fact, if “the people” had their way in politics more fully, the national debt would be far larger than it already is, not smaller.
It is true that, all else being equal, Americans would prefer lower deficits. But that is an outcome, not a policy. And the policies that would be necessary to achieve that outcome are opposed by hefty majorities. According to Gallup, 59 percent of Americans believe that the amount they pay in federal income taxes is “too high.” They favor higher taxes on businesses and the highest-earning households, but such policies would hardly put a dent in deficits. The real money to be raised is in the middle class, whose members want to pay less, not more. Americans’ highest tax policy priorities — reducing taxes on the poor and the middle class, encouraging savings, and expanding the child tax credit — would all reduce federal revenues.
The story on spending is not much different. Sure, 60 percent of Americans think the government spends “too much” overall. When they get into specifics, however, their appetite for shrinking the budget disappears. The only spending category that Americans believe is too large is foreign aid, which they mistakenly assume makes up 25 percent of total spending. In fact, it’s barely over 1 percent. Large majorities want the federal government to spend more money on far costlier items: education, health care, Social Security, infrastructure, welfare, and so on. Just as with taxes, Americans’ preferred spending policies would drive the national debt higher if enacted.
Herein lies the dilemma that Musk fails to recognize. Our looming fiscal crisis will not be caused by government’s insufficient responsiveness to the “will of the people.” Rather, the problem is that government is too responsive to the people. Politicians who vote for lower taxes and higher spending are not defying their voters; they are honoring their wishes. And if the 80 percent of citizens whom Musk purports to represent got even more of what they wanted from government, our inevitable fiscal calamity would be much nearer, if not already upon us.
A political movement that is for “the people” and against fiscal profligacy is one that will necessarily be at war with itself. Musk may learn this lesson soon as he searches for his America Party’s mythical mass constituency.