The Patriot Post® · Musk Balks at Bilk Back Better
The man most responsible for making electric vehicles popular and a commercial success, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, recently came out against the Democrats’ “Build Back Better” $2 trillion-plus socialist spending bill. Musk recommended that lawmakers “delete it.”
In an interview at the Wall Street Journal’s recent CEO Council event, Musk gave his blunt assessment of Biden’s massive spending bill. “Honestly,” he stated, “I would just can this whole bill. Don’t pass it. That’s my recommendation.”
Musk then offered his view of the primary role of the federal government, which is to “get out of the way and not impede progress.” He then suggested that the government’s job should be to “referee,” not to be a “player on the field.” He added: “Rules and regulations are immortal. They don’t die. The vast majority of rules and regulations live forever. … There’s not really an effective garbage collection system for removing rules and regulations, so this hardens the arteries of civilization where you are able to do less and less over time.”
When asked if there are some good things included in the Democrats’ massive socialist spending bill — like subsidies for buying electric vehicles and for building EV charging stations across the country, both of which would benefit Musk’s own bottom line — Musk responded simply: “Unnecessary. Do we need support for gas stations? We don’t. I’m literally saying get rid of all subsidies.”
However, Musk’s biggest concern was clearly over trillions of dollars more in federal government spending. “If this was a company, it would be a $3 trillion loss. This can’t keep going,” he pointed out. “The government is simply the biggest corporation, with a monopoly on violence and where you have no recourse. It’s the only one that’s allowed to legally do violence.” He then added, “We should minimize what the government does.”
While Musk’s opinion may hold some weight, he doesn’t have the power to stop the Democrats from moving forward on Build Back Better. The man who does is Democrat Senator Joe Manchin, who recently made it clear he’s far from sold on it. “The unknown we’re facing today is much greater than the need that people believe in this aspirational bill that we’re looking at,” Manchin asserted on Tuesday. “We’ve gotta make sure we get this right. We just can’t continue to flood the market, as we have done. We’ve done so many good things in the last 10 months, and no one is taking a breath.”
As we have repeatedly stated, and as Musk alluded to, all this bill does is give the federal government more power over Americans’ lives. That it saddles the nation with trillions more in debt is a feature, not a bug, to Democrats because it affords them more authority over more of our daily affairs.