Dem 47
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GOP 53
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Warren Is Calling out Musk--for Being a Chicken

Co-President Elon Musk said he was going to root out government waste and cut the federal budget by $2 trillion. Once he started to actually get to work, he realized that was impossible and reduced his goal to some much smaller, but unspecified number. Now Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is calling him out on it, and demanding he cut $2 trillion.

However, her targets might be slightly different from his. She said: "I crunched the numbers and found $2 trillion that we could cut over the next 10 years by focusing on the guys who are getting rich off our government." She also said the cuts could be bipartisan. She wrote a 21-page letter, complete with 158 footnotes, revealing her past as an academic, describing in detail where cuts could be made. A large number of cuts could be made to wasteful programs in the Dept. of Defense. Among other examples are a company that overcharged the Air Force 7,493x on soap dispensers. Do they have to work at Mach 2? Another is a pin that the Army pays $71 for that should cost 5¢. She says that by better bargaining, the DoD could save tens of billions of dollars that are going to defense contractors for no valid reason.

Another target is Medicare Advantage plans. The idea was that private companies could help cut costs for seniors by administering Medicare more efficiently than the government. Experience has shown this to be completely false. Still another place big savings could be made is in funding for charter schools. Much of the money given to them has been mismanaged or wasted. She wants to drastically cut money here and also eliminate all eligibility to for-profit colleges.

Warren notes that the prison at Guantánamo Bay is extremely expensive. It costs about $13 million per prisoner per year to keep someone there. Why not close the prison and keep those prisoners inside the U.S.? There is even a nice one in beautiful Florence, CO.

Still another target is tax expenditures. These are not "costs" in the sense of the military paying $800 for an $8 hammer. Rather, there are many provisions in the tax code that allow (wealthy) taxpayers to get a deduction for no good reason other than they got their own personal senator to stick it into a bill once. She notes that getting rid of these provisions and cracking down on tax cheats would reduce the deficit by many billions.

Warren's letter is very detailed with numerous cost-saving items. Will Musk thank her and put them in his plan? We're not counting on it. We expect Musk to determine that big companies ripping off the DoD is not a problem at all, but programs that help poor people are a huge extravagance that needs to be curbed. But the mere fact that she has put out such a detailed plan is important because if and when a bill with his cuts comes up in the Senate, she is going to list many other ways to cut expenses and will surely get a lot of publicity. It could make some senators nervous about voting to keep the military-industrial complex well-funded, so the Army can buy $800 hammers, but to get rid of school lunches for poor kids because they are a waste that needs to go. (V)



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