“Elon Musk — who, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, has been tasked by President-Elect Trump with running a new Department of Government Efficiency — posted on his platform X that he wants to “Delete CFPB,” referring to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The agency, Musk said, was part of a problem of “too many duplicative regulatory agencies” in Washington. But there are no other agencies in the federal government returning money to Americans’ bank accounts in the way the CFPB does.
Since its founding, the agency has returned more than $19 billion in cash to people who have been scammed by financial institutions, including predatory payday lenders and even some of the largest banks in the country. It has done so under Republican and Democratic presidents, including major actions against Wells Fargo and Equifax during President Trump’s first term in office, which, combined, returned $425 million to consumers. (Those actions both began under the Obama administration, but Trump’s CFPB directors oversaw the execution of those fines.)”
“even as the former Trump strategist claims that Musk has limited influence, Bannon acknowledged that Musk had backed Trump’s campaign with hundreds of millions of dollars, and he “deserves a place at the table.””
“Since buying the platform in 2022, Musk has helped turn X into an epicenter of election misinformation. With 203 million followers, Musk has the biggest reach on X and is the platform’s most prominent pusher of anti-immigrant conspiracy theories and right-wing propaganda. At Musk’s request last year, X changed the site’s algorithm to put his posts in more people’s feeds — posts that increasingly urged people not to trust the outcome of the election. The nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate estimates that Musk’s misleading posts about the election have been viewed more than 2 billion times this year.”
“Were Trump to implement Musk’s vision while simultaneously honoring his promise to avoid cutting entitlements and the GOP’s commitment to avoiding defense spending cuts, then he would need to slash all other government programs by 80 percent. That would involve gutting all social services for low-income Americans, food inspections, air safety, health insurance subsidies, and infrastructure investments, among countless other things.
This would abruptly and massively reduce demand in the US economy, potentially triggering a recession.
There is little reason to expect such severe and haphazard spending cuts to benefit the economy in the long term. After all, government investments in education and infrastructure often increase the economy’s growth potential — slashing funding for such programs could impair America’s economic performance in the coming decades.”
“is DOGE doomed to fail? Not if its architects take a more realistic approach to cutting government. Fundamental reform of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will require delicate, bipartisan negotiations that are already taking place within parts of Congress. Senate Democrats will not back down from filibustering a partisan GOP Social Security plan just because Musk and Ramaswamy recommended it in a report. Nor will Congress suddenly drop its longstanding opposition to eliminating entire federal departments.
Republicans need to stop overpromising and underdelivering on federal budget policy. Congressional Republicans unrealistically promise to balance the budget within a decade while not even attempting to pass any actual legislation slowing the growth of spending. Musk promises to zero out one-third of federal spending, and Ramaswamy pledges to fire three-quarters of federal employees. It’s all bluster to compensate for ultimately doing nothing.”