Musk: In like a lion, out like a lamb…
The federal courts are the Deep State’s reserves…
Dear Reader,
Gen. Musk last week announced he was surrendering command.
Command, that is, of the Department of Government Efficiency, so-called.
Thus the lion departs a lamb. Today we anatomize a failed generalship.
There Elon was following the November election, sword drawn, vowing to hack $2 from the federal budget.
“Fraud, waste and abuse” were the enemy forces that opposed him.
They were entrenched deeply in their positions, hunkered in mighty fortifications erected across decades.
Over the Top!
In January the bugle sounded… and Gen. Musk led the charge into Washington’s defenses.
He initially appeared to put the ill-prepared enemy to rout.
He chased thousands of enemy combatants — federal employees — from the field of battle.
He even overran the Deep State fortress of USAID… like German paratroopers capturing the formidable Belgian fortress of Fort Eben-Emael in 1940.
Yet like countless generals before him, Gen. Musk underestimated his enemy.
That enemy is a resourceful enemy. It proceeded to regroup its forces. And it devised strategies to halt the general’s advance.
They landmined his axis of advance. They dynamited the bridges. They derailed his supply trains.
Most critically, they mobilized their reserves. Here I refer to the federal courts.
The Federal Courts Defend the Deep State
Like Soviet reserves pouring in from Siberia in late 1941 to shove back the Wehrmacht… these Deep State reserves swung into action… and pushed back Gen. Musk’s forces.
They have forced them upon the back foot.
Federal judges have — for example — mandated the reinstatement of thousands of federal employees Gen. Musk and his men had vanquished.
Thus this past Friday Newsweek informed us that:
President Donald Trump’s administration suffered a legal blow on Friday when an appeals court refused to halt an injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Susan Illston of California that blocked sweeping federal employment cuts overseen by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)…
A series of planned policies… have been blocked or frozen by the courts.
And now Gen. Musk has resigned his post.
From an Axing to a Scalpelling to Nothing
Yet what of the $2 trillion that Gen. Musk planned to axe from the federal budget?
The planned axing was reduced to a knifing… then to a scalpelling.
Thus $2 trillion became $1 trillion, became $150 billion… became $63 billion.
And even that $63 billion in budget cuts is phantom.
Any spending reduction will be set to naught by spending increases.
I can only conclude that fiscal disciplinarians have been taken on a sleigh ride.
Spending Only Goes Up
:Bloomberg:
Since Donald Trump moved back into the White House in January, one thing hasn’t changed: Federal spending has just kept going up.
Spending since Jan. 21 is up 8.7% over the equivalent period in 2024, 7.2% over 2023… Spending in the 2025 fiscal year, which began in October, was up 7% through April over the same period a year earlier. The increase appears to be real… driven by familiar forces like the seemingly inexorable growth of Social Security, Medicare and other social insurance programs, as well a significant new contributor since interest rates went up in 2022 — interest payments on the federal debt.
Adds Cato:
By any clear-eyed account, Elon and DOGE are failing to meet their objective to deliver major spending cuts. Look no further than federal outlays, which today are about $135 billion higher than they were last year, ironically close to the amount DOGE claims to have saved.
Musk’s Surrender
Thus the conqueror of industry, Musk, succumbs.
He is broken upon the far more heavily constructed battlements and earthworks of the Deep State.
The White House maintains that the subsequent Department of Government Efficiency will undergo rule by committee.
That is, the Department of Government Efficiency will become rule by bureaucrat.
Yet the business was far too predictable.
The Impossibility of Efficient Government
With the satisfaction of being proven correct… and the disappointment of having been proven correct… this I wrote last November 15:
President-elect Trump has tapped Elon Musk… upon the shoulder.
[He] will direct the freshly constructed “Department of Government Efficiency.”
Department of Government Efficiency? I fall from my chair, laughing at the very notion of it.
As well erect a Department of Square Circles, a Department of Honest Lies, a Department of Sane Asylums.
Not even a titanic dynamo like Mr. Musk can will the thing to success…
Thus the Department of Government Efficiency is destined for the hellbox.
That is because the entire project is at war with itself.
More:
As efficiency is natural to private enterprise, inefficiency is simply natural to government…
A gold standard can theoretically restrain government to one extent or other. Thus efficiency is forced upon it — it can only collar so much gold.
Nor can government print gold.
But if it wields the power to print as much money as it wants… like the United States government through its central bank?
Efficient government stands the snowball’s chance.
Efficient government? You will have it the instant Hell is an ice sheet.
Hell has not converted to an ice sheet… so far as I can discern at least.
Hell will likely remain an infinity of fire forever and ever.
Or – at least – until the United States government returns to honest money.
Thus Hell will remain an infinity of fire forever and ever.
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News