MAY 30, 2025 – Anyone who’s been around a three-to-four-year-old is familiar with the “Why?” phase. It’s when any statement or directive by a grown-up to the child triggers a “Why?” in response. At the start of the phase, the uninitiated attempts to answer, which prompts another “Why?” followed by another answer. Soon the parent or grandparent catches on: no matter how many answers are provided and no matter how short and sweet or long and convoluted they become, the child will always get the last word, which, of course, will be, “Why?” (The mean trick that I’d deploy after a protracted “Why?-[Answer]-Why?” series was, “Why not?”
Lately, in response to the first 130 days of wreckage at the hands of Muck (misspelling intentional) and Harrumph, I keep asking “Why?” Why upend scientific research in the U.S., crater public health, pull the financial rug out from institutions of higher learning, slash and burn federal agencies—good, bad, and in between—with no clue what they do and why and no analysis of the costs associated with using a chain saw to reform and remodel government and relying on a roulette wheel and a pinball machine to reset and rewind trade policy according to the laws of physics as they apply to rubber bands? . . . Why?
Initially, Muck-a-Ruck made the wild assertion (talk is incredibly cheap for a multi-billionaire) that he, the self-anointed wizard of chicanery, could shave 2 trillion to 3 trillion bucks off federal expenditures. Use of a chainsaw made good copy, but it turned out to be all noise and nuisance. All the blind thrashing about reduced the household furniture to a pile of unusable sawdust. When the commotion was over, America’s reputation as the go-to place for ambitious, innovative, productive people the world over, was down the sewer pipes. The net gain in myopic money: $150 billion—or so we’re told, though, the accounting screams for an audit by a team of qualified independent certified public accountants. In any event, giving DOGE the benefit of the doubt, the total savings as now advertised amounts to a mere 7.5% of the low end of Muck’s original target. Again, I ask, “Why?”
Yet, we must celebrate the little victories: apparently Mr. Muck-Rake has tired of Washington and is returning to Tesla. Good riddance.
Now all eyes are on the Big Beautiful Bill. Honestly, I’m torn between hysterical laughter and hideous anger; laughter over what a bunch of simpletons are running the White House and filling the ranks of Republican sycophancy . . .anger that my fellow citizens thought these people were anything other than simpletons.
For a guy who touts himself as a “businessman” and a “deal maker,” and who’s convinced tens of millions of gullible Americans that he is in fact such, Harrumph is lousy when it comes to public financial management. All the Republicans in Congress—including Senators Ron Johnson and Paul Rand—are bad at it too.
What, I ask them, is so big and beautiful about the spending/tax bill passed by House Republicans, with its big, beautiful companion working through (and being worked over by Sens. Johnson and Rand) in the Senate? I know, I know: “Big” represents chainsaw action on the spending side, and “Beautiful” stands for the gusher hose on the tax “relief” side. But if reigning in the federal budget deficit is the goal, the “Big Beautiful Bill” will do just the opposite. The House version would add an estimated $3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. The budget deficit over that period would increase by $2.6 trillion—before taking into account interest costs.
More specifically, as it turns out, “Big,” describes the increase in defense spending, “border security” and tax cuts and consequently, the increase in the federal budget deficit. As to “Beautiful”? There’s nothing pretty about this entire Republican charade—laid upon the backs of the neediest among us and benefiting the wealthiest, further expanding one of the biggest (speaking of “Big”) threats we face: increasing disparity between rich and poor.
America as “Land of the free and home of the brave”? Perhaps, but by any objective measure, we’re also the “Land governed by fools—elected by . . . oh yeah—‘US’.”
All of which leaves the question, “Why?” Why has the party of DOGE now become the party of DEFICIT?
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
