Bureaucracy Beats Entrepreneurship — Musk Leaves Washington » The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

After 130 days, Elon Musk’s tenure at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) ended yesterday as scheduled. What remains are key revelations of systemic corruption — and the sobering realization that modern government is a reform-proof, power-entrenched apparatus. “The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized. I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in D.C., to say the least,” according to Musk.

On his final day in public service — an intense 130-day interlude — Tesla CEO Elon Musk could barely hide his frustration. The serial entrepreneur who pushed Tesla, SpaceX, and Starlink to industry dominance ran aground in Washington’s bureaucratic quagmire. From a business perspective, his mission had been straightforward and rational: to rein in federal overreach and slash runaway government spending.

Musk had aimed to cut $2 trillion annually from the ballooning federal debt, which now sits around $36 trillion. In the end, only $175 billion in potential savings were identified — some still under audit, some mired in legal challenges. Musk offered a sober but hopeful farewell:

As my planned time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I want to thank President Trump for the opportunity to help reduce wasteful spending. The DOGE mission will grow stronger over time.

Musk’s exit is a tacit admission that even the most successful business minds can be defeated by the inertia of the federal machine. Still, the final word on the DOGE initiative has not yet been written. Pressure on fiscal policy is mounting in the bond markets. Interest rates are rising, and the cost of financing the federal debt will eventually force Washington to make deep spending cuts — whether it wants to or not.

But for now, the Musk era of cost-cutting in D.C. is over.

The Inevitable Ridicule

Musk is already facing ridicule from the political left. That the world’s richest man couldn’t enact meaningful spending cuts — even in freedom-minded America — is a deeply unsettling signal. It reveals a fundamental truth: those who confront the bureaucratic wall of the postmodern hyperstate encounter a fortress, not a dialogue.

This edifice defends itself in myriad ways — from the media’s selective blindness to government corruption (as the USAID scandal laid bare) to the entrenched “deep state” architecture: a network of military-industrial power centers largely immune to democratic oversight.

It is increasingly clear that the postwar democracies of the West, flush with decades of prosperity, have fallen into a coma of complacency. Bereft of the will to reform and incapable of diagnosing their own malaise, they rely on debt to preserve the illusion of a welfare state that serves a swelling army of transfer recipients.

A glance at U.S. and European public budgets reveals two dominant costs: the oversized welfare state and — especially in America — the military. And even that defense budget is slated to grow by another $113 billion.

A Grim Fiscal Reality

The U.S. is once again hurtling toward a massive federal deficit. This fiscal year’s projected shortfall is $1.9 trillion — nearly matching last year’s $2 trillion under President Biden. Total national debt has now surpassed $36.2 trillion, an all-time high. What’s particularly alarming is the explosive growth in interest payments, which now consume over 20 percent of the federal budget — more than is allocated for defense or education.

Debt service is fast becoming Washington’s top expenditure. It is crowding out nearly all other priorities and shrinking what little fiscal room remains. America is living on borrowed money — and the bill keeps growing.

This diagnosis doesn’t stop at America’s borders. In Europe, particularly across the southern states, debt-to-GDP ratios also range from 120 to 140 percent. Even Germany, once a paragon of fiscal restraint, is preparing to take a perilous leap: the federal government’s proposed €1 trillion stimulus would send its debt ratio soaring from 63 to around 95 percent — a historic jump to the edge of the fiscal abyss.

And that assumes the German economy doesn’t deteriorate further — which, right now, looks increasingly optimistic.

Inflation or Debt Collapse?

So what are the options? Historically, outright debt cancellations or sovereign defaults have been avoided, as they would trigger catastrophic fallout across the banking sector, insurance systems, and pension funds.

Instead, governments may repeat the playbook of the 1940s and 1970s: gradual budget tweaks paired with aggressive monetary expansion. Rather than defaulting, the state inflates its way out of its obligations. In such a scenario, the biggest debtor — the government — gets off easy.

The ones left holding the bag? Savers, taxpayers, and those who trusted the state’s promises of financial stability.

It’s too simple, and frankly misleading, to mock the DOGE experiment as a failed curiosity. One way or another, we will all be made to pay for the wreckage wrought by a political class addicted to limitless spending.

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