The Sunday Subject: March 16, 2025
Week eight: Musk Administration Increases Spending, Threatens More Government Programs.
Schumer caves to Trump, prompting calls for resignation
After Democrats in the House of Representatives rallied to block a Republican budget resolution and Senate Democrats prepared to do the same, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer gave in to Republican demands, abandoning his party and voting with the Republicans, along with nine other Democratic senators. The budget resolution will, among other things, allow the Trump administration to continue to slash funding to social programs, and give unelected billionaire Elon Musk a “slush fund” of taxpayer money to work with.
There were no easy answers for Democrats, as blocking the bill would have resulted in a government shutdown, with legitimate fears that Musk and Trump would simply never re-open critical federal agencies. Other Democrats argued that passing the bill would essentially have the same results as a shutdown, as the bill omits language Democrats had sought to prevent the administration from continuing its efforts to withhold spending. Nancy Pelosi called the choice between a shutdown and the proposed bill a “false choice” and urged instead for fighting for a short-term extension and a negotiated bipartisan agreement. After the vote, widespread calls ensued for Schumer to step down from his leadership post or resign outright. Even fellow Democratic senators broke ranks to criticize their leader; John Hickenlooper (D-CO) said, “Lots of us are worried that once you give in the first time, it’s hard to fight back the second time.”
Spending increases under Musk and DOGE
Despite Trump campaign donor Elon Musk unconstitutionally stripping funding from federal agencies in the name of “efficiency,” federal spending has actually gone up since convicted felon Donald Trump returned to office. The Congressional Budget Office reports that while federal revenue is projected to increase slightly, from $1.856T in 2024 to 1.893T in 2025, outlays are expected to rise sharply, from $2.684T to $3.04T.
After promising in his 2016 campaign to cut the federal debt in half in four years, Trump increased both spending and the deficit every year he was in office, and is currently on pace to do so again. Musk’s unofficial government agency DOGE has cut programs like USAID, Meals on Wheels, and children’s cancer research, which save lives across the US and the world, but Wired reports that some of DOGE’s staffers are drawing six-figure salaries at taxpayer expense, and Musk’s company SpaceX continues to receive $22 billion annually in government contracts, which DOGE has made no plans to cut.
Musk invites private equity to threaten Social Security
Bloomberg reports that unelected billionaire Elon Musk has invited three individuals from private equity firms into the Social Security Administration, as part of a broader attack on America’s collective retirement plan. Over the past few weeks, Musk has been falsely claiming Social Security — the most efficiently-run retirement program in the world — wastes “hundreds of billions of dollars” in fraudulent payouts, and said on Fox Business that, “that’s a big one to eliminate.” He has also referred to Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” — a favorite talking point of online right-wingers who don’t know what a Ponzi scheme is or how Social Security works.
How Social Security works shouldn’t need to be explained — every American puts their own money into the system, and gets a return on that money in the form of lifelong retirement benefits. The Social Security trust fund — just under $3T dollars — is our money, and unsavory politicians trying to take it from us is nothing new.
Introducing private equity into the equation is. Private equity firms buy and then restructure companies, which is innocuous enough in theory. In practice, private equity firms are notorious for destroying companies — saddling a healthy company with unsustainable debt and driving it into bankruptcy. This has already happened to a long list of companies, including Toys-R-Us, Hostess, Red Lobster, A&P, Friendly’s, K-Mart, Sears, Vice Media, True Value Hardware, and Joann Fabric. If private equity firms were allowed to raid the Social Security trust fund, the effect on current and future retirees and the families who would otherwise have to support them — which is to say, everyone — would be catastrophic.