Trump's Boy Elon Achieves Historic Legislative Loss Before Taking Office

Failure at basic math and politics bodes poorly for DOGE boys.

Will President Trump be forgiving of Elon’s failure? Image created by Grok.

Elon Musk achieved a historic first today: he engineered a significant legislative loss for a newly elected president who hasn’t even taken office yet. Since George Washignton was elected, this type of failure is completely without precedent in the history of the Republic.

At issue was the grotesque budget extension that the Republican Speaker of the House, Polly Pockets Choir Boy Mike Johnson, had teed up to cover the failure of the outgoing Congress and Biden administration to pass a full-year budget for the fiscal year that began October 1.

Musk and Trump were right to point out that the stop-gap measure advanced by the House Speaker was obscene. It exceeded one thousand pages and contained a pay raise for congressmen who have failed the nation badly—along with other pork and self-serving swamp fertilizer.

But it also faced two important factors: math and politics. On math, Republicans have a razor-thin majority in the House. On politics, the newly elected Congress and Trump administration have yet to take office. That means this budget will be handled by the old Congress, including its Democrat-run Senate and a White House still in Democrat hands.

The budget was bound to be obscenely unpalatable. Why take ownership or get involved? Inexplicably, Musk and Trump did both. By late afternoon, Musk boasted in a tweet that the bill had been greatly reduced in size. It also included a provision that removed the debt ceiling for an extended period in exchange for…nothing.

A great improvement to the bill. Except it predictably failed in a Washington that has yet to reflect the gains Republicans made in elections.

Under the rules of the House to expedite a vote before government funding runs out, the measure needed two-thirds support to win. With the Musk changes, it didn’t even get a majority. Does the master of applied physics—and the man who by way of ballyhooed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is advising President Trump on cutting government—not understand basic legislative math and strategy? The measure went down in flames without anything close to a basic majority, much less the super-majority required.

Oopsie. Musk led Trump to legislative defeat despite Trump not even being president yet. Historic!

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) summed up the differences in the two bills—both terrible—quite well. In a tweet, he noted the old bill had $110 billion in new deficit spending and the new bill had the same new deficit spending plus an increase in the debt ceiling of $4 trillion in exchange for… nothing. Members were allotted all of 1.5 hours to read and consider the new bill.

Roy omitted the fact that both bills enshrined the Biden level of deficit spending that has America on a path to bankruptcy. The current budget runs around $7 trillion annually despite the lack of a national emergency. Nearly $2 trillion of that is deficit spending, adding more debt and interest each year to a cumulative debt held by the public of $29 trillion. (The federal budget was a “mere” $4 trillion when Trump took office in 2017 and people weren’t exactly starving in the streets.)

But that’s the kicker. The current budget was always going to be a horrific exercise in Beltway sausage making. As a president-in-waiting, Trump had the prerogative of expressing disgust and vowing improvement once he actually held office. This would have been tactically wise and had the added virtue of being true.

Now Trump owns whatever product comes from the current budget crisis, including a possible government shutdown. President Biden can have a relaxing Christmas, freed of any need or responsibility to engage in any end-of-term legislative logrolling.

Adding is hard; visual cues can help. Image created by Grok.

The problem this episode exposes is far more serious than just putting to bed the revolting budget for Fiscal Year 2025. The problem is the novice mistakes this exposes for the people who are supposed to be a the center of trimming government to a sustainable size.

The task is enormous. Trump, DOGE, the Office of Management and Budget, Trump’s cabinet secretaries and his White House economic team centered around National Economic Council boss Kevin Hassett have to cut and transform government massively and sell it to Congress. They also have to sustain the lower Trump tax levels enacted in 2017 to prevent and automatic economy-killing tax hike when the Trump levels expire and revert to Obama tax levels. The Trump administration must do this amid a floundering economy—as Andy Puzder alarmingly outlined in a Fox News Opinion article—and looming fiscal crisis that now has Uncle Sam paying more in interest on the national debt than he does for the military.

Democrats have no perceived incentive or desire to help. Furthermore, history indicates it is highly likely Republicans will lose the House to Democrats in 2026. Therefore most of the cuts will have to come this year, beginning with the president’s budget proposal that goes to Congress in spring. That and its related “budget reconciliation” process is the only way to get most changes through the Senate with a bare majority instead of a 60-vote supermajority (Republicans will hold 53 seats in the new Senate). The finish line is enacting the Fiscal Year 2026 budget this fall with Trump’s tax cuts and spending reductions.

The DOGE boys will also have to outline and enact a Reduction in Force (known as a “RIF”) that allows for headcount reductions at federal agencies that don’t run afoul of the Pendleton Civil Service Act which has protected bureaucrats from being fired since 1883.

Furthermore, they must find instances where President Trump can refuse to spend funds appropriated by Congress. This was a power that presidents had from 1789 until a weakened President Richard Nixon signed the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Restoring this power will require a disciplined fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

The strongest case for a president to reassert this authority not to spend money would be in the realm of national defense. Unfortunately, Trump has chosen a notional Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, with no relevant experience or gravitas. He will be up against Senator Mitch McConnell, no longer Senate Republican leader, but a quintessential swamp critter who was just emplaced himself as the chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that handles the Defense Department. His priority will be more handouts to Ukraine and spending on obsolete weapons platforms like $13 billion Ford-class aircraft carriers, $4 billion submarines that shoot increasingly vulnerable and outclassed ballistic missiles, B-21 bombers that inexplicably have human crews, fly slower than the speed of sound, and cost nearly $1 billion each, and an Army that still garrisons Italy, Germany, and South Korea. All of these sacred cows and more like them must go to afford the new military that incorporates hard lessons of the Ukraine War (e.g., drones matter and legacy platforms get killed) and to prevent losing a war with China.

To sustain the Trump tax levels, enact any new cuts, and reduce the size of government to avoid a fiscal crisis in which the United States might have to go hat-in-hand to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for a debt-refinancing bailout, the new administration will need incredible discipline and skill.

Preserving and expanding the Trump tax cuts, cutting government spending, and reducing government agencies will take incredible discipline and political skill, including on Capitol Hill. Elon has kicked off the game by damaging Trump.

Trump must run an internal process to agree upon cuts and get support from serious people in his administration like Hassett and incoming Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The bigger and sooner the cuts in Trump’s sole term the better to avoid a drag on GDP, which includes government spending, that makes his term look like economic malaise. He must sell the public on his cuts and then sell Congress—which means patiently explaining the matter and the reasons for some painful cuts to the public. While it is possible to pass such a budget without Democrat votes, it will be difficult given narrow Republican majorities. It may be necessary to offer cuts to the military—and an associated trimming of military obligations—to win over the small number of moderate Democrats like Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman.

Trump must also understand the limits of his mandate. Yes, he won the electoral college 312-226, which is what really counts. Impressively, he is also the first Republican since George W. Bush in 2004 to win a plurality of the popular vote (and almost a majority at 49.9%). Trump beat Kamala Harris by 1.5% nationally.

But contrast this with actual landslides. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt won the electoral college 472-59, and his party gained 97 House seats for a majority of 313-117, and gained 12 Senate seats for a margin of 59-36. His popular vote margin was 57%-40%.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan won 51% of the popular vote to Jimmy Carter’s 41%. He ushered in a Republican Senate for the first time since 1954 and achieved a working majority in a House run by Democrats thanks to moderates who still existed in the party at that time. Even then, Reagan’s radical tax cuts (much larger than Trump’s) and modifications to government were undertaken in the context of what was considered politically acceptable and practical at the time.

Trump lacks a mandate of these magnitudes. His campaign featured very little discussion about what government spending cuts he would seek, which means his mandate does not currently extend to the fiscal plans he may have in mind. He will have to win over the public and create the political force necessary to bring Congress along. Thanks to basic failures of legislative strategy and vote-counting by his advisors, he starts this process with a legislative failure before even taking office.