Ron DeSantis Declares Elon Musk’s DOGE a Failure, Torches GOP Congress: ‘The Swamp Has Won’
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) argued that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) “fought the Swamp, and so far the Swamp has won” in remarks on Tuesday.
Following up on a post from earlier in the day in which he praised Musk for taking “massive incoming” for his efforts at DOGE, and expressed his frustration with Republicans in Congress for not using their legislative power to cut waste identified by the Musk-led commission, DeSantis went at the GOP for not fulfilling its promises.
“Inflation is a tax. When your money becomes less valuable, that’s no different in outcome than if Congress were to simply just directly tax you. It’s less transparent, it’s more indirect, but it’s having the same exact impact. And so when they do deficit spending of $2 trillion and they say, ‘Well, you know, we don’t want to raise taxes,’ and I’m not arguing for that either, I’m arguing for lowering spending. But just understand that two trillion dollar deficit is a tax on you,” began DeSantis.
He continued:
It works its way through the economy, there’s no free lunch, and that’s what ends up happening, and I-, it’s a little frustrating. You know, Elon Musk went into this DOGE effort, he was getting lampooned. I mean, like they’re firebombing his Tesla dealerships, media smearing him relentlessly, his business has suffered. All this stuff because he basically said, “Look, we can’t keep doing this, and we need to moderate and reduce the amount of money that the federal government is spending.”
And yet, we have a Republican Congress, and to this day, we’re in the end of May, past Memorial Day, and not one cent in DOGE cuts have been implemented by the Congress. That’s one of the reasons why we need a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It’s another reason why we need term limits for members of Congress. But I think what you’ve seen with how, and I kind of said this early on, that DOGE and Elon were on a collision course with the Swamp. And the question is, what would happen? And I don’t think there’s any question that DOGE fought the Swamp, and so far the Swamp has won. And that’s just unfortunate, but I don’t think you can look at this any other way.
Some conservative critics of President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” have expressed frustration that it does not include meaningful spending cuts to offset its included tax cuts and lower the federal government’s considerable deficit.
In a post of his own, Musk responded to the same tweet DeSantis had originally responded to, which stated that “DOGE is literally one of the most popular government initiatives in history. 73% of Americans say they support cutting government waste. Trump brought in the smartest man on earth to do it… …the Left destroyed Elon for it …the GOP won’t vote on it.”
“Did my best,” replied the billionaire.
