Elon Musk is tapping out, and a court has stepped in on tariffs. But the wheels coming off doesn’t mean the bus is stopping
Nothing is going according to plan for the Trump administration. The big, beautiful bill, originally vaunted to save the US taxpayer at least $2tn, so far, according to projections, delivers savings in the region of $9.4bn. Elon Musk has exited government, saying he wasn’t in favour of the bill, which could be big, or beautiful, but in this case, not both. Musk’s government contract ran for only 120 days, so it would have been up at the end of this week anyway.
Just to try to lasso those words back to an observable reality where they might mean something, the bill isn’t all that big; there are some very vindictive moves around Medicaid entitlement, intended to fund tax cuts elsewhere, that will have seismically bad outcomes for vulnerable individuals without necessarily burning a hole in anyone else’s pocket. Tips and overtime are exempted from tax, but probably the only thing that’s legitimately big, or if you like, huge, is the increase of the debt ceiling by $4tn. So it gives with one hand, takes away with the other, promise-wise – those tax exemptions were mentioned often on the campaign trail, but a government that causes havoc trying to shrink the state while simultaneously increasing the amount it can borrow isn’t going to please anyone in either party but sycophants.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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