Where is the Tea Party when we need it? President Donald Trump is lining up with the far Left, declaring that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is right to want to scrap the debt ceiling. “Let’s get together, Republican and Democrat, and DO THIS!” Trump declared last week.
The Tea Party was founded in 2007 as a reaction against excessive spending. Its members raged against former President Barack Obama when he lifted the debt ceiling. Compared to what is happening now, though, Obama was a model of fiscal rectitude. The federal deficit in 2007 was $160 billion; in 2024, it was $1,860 billion.
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Where have they gone, those protesters with their tricorn hats and their Gadsden flags? What happened to the columnists who would tell us, in panicked tones, that Obama had borrowed more than all his 43 predecessors put together? The deficit is now more than 11 times larger, but with a few honorable exceptions, Tea Partiers have fallen in behind Trump.
“Was it all bulls***?” Trump is reported to have asked his advisers when Elon Musk failed to deliver the massive efficiency savings promised through DOGE. One might put the same question to the Tea Partiers. Were they, as their detractors alleged, angrier about Obama being in the White House than about the debt level? Were they a MAGA-in-the-making, using fiscal conservatism as a flag of convenience? Was it all bulls***?
As a rule of thumb, populist movements end up spending more money. This is because they don’t like to face up to the truth that a lot of government expenditure is popular. Yes, people want lower taxes, but they are also attached to Medicare and Social Security.
The essence of populism is a denial of tradeoffs. Populists claim that there are easy cuts to be found if only the crooked politicians could be replaced by patriotic ones, “the elites” by the champions of “the people” or of “real people.”
Left-wing populists pretend that huge sums can be magicked up by cracking down on tax evasion, making multinational corporations pay their fair share, or targeting the 1%. Right-wing populists pretend that equally huge sums can be squeezed from the foreign aid budget, eco-schemes, or scrapping diversity, equity, and inclusion. Both sides claim that billions of dollars are being lost in wasteful spending that previous governments have inexplicably not bothered to tackle.
Government waste is real enough, and it is always possible to find outrageous cases. Musk was good at doing this and did indeed manage to shave a few billion off public expenditure. But he was never going to get anywhere near his $2 trillion target without cutting healthcare spending and benefits. And that was not something the Trump administration was prepared to countenance.
Hence the rise in the debt ceiling and the flaws in the “big, beautiful bill,” which, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will push up America’s deficit by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years. Unwilling to make, as opposed to talking about, tough decisions, Republicans are cutting taxes without making equivalent reductions in spending.
A handful of fiscal conservatives, most prominently Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), are rallying in defense of the old cause. They have the vocal support of Musk, who declared on June 4 that no legislator should vote for what he called a “massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill.”
Then again, we know how these things play out. Conservatism, these days, generally means “whatever Donald Trump wants.” If he is for a higher deficit, then anyone who opposes him must be a woke liberal hell bent on destroying America. Hence, the mutterings from the Trump camp that this is really about Musk wanting some kind of perk or tax break.
If he did, it would be understandable. Trumpism is nothing if not generous to its supporters. But I don’t believe that this is about the world’s richest man wanting to become fractionally richer. My guess is that Musk means what he says about the deficit, and that he won’t be the only wealthy entrepreneur alienated by MAGA.
THE MASS PSYCHOSIS OF BLACK LIVES MATTER
There was a moment, at the start of the administration, when it looked as if spending cuts and deregulation were going to be its defining theme. But it did not last. We are back to tariffs, economic chaos, and a yawning deficit. According to the CBO, U.S. government debt will rise over the next decade from $29 trillion to $49 trillion.
That is not so much a fiscal problem as a security problem. A country carrying such a large debt will be displaced by hungrier rivals. Musk can see it. You can see it. Why can’t the Tea Party?