DOGE Should Cut Elon's Pork

V.2, N.69

Here was the top headline in Tuesday’s New York Times: “Musk Is Positioned to Profit Off Billions in New Government Contracts.“ While the world’s richest man is leading his DOGE Boyz to slash vitally needed programs on weather forecasting, climate change, pollution cleanup, HIV prevention, and thousands of other critically important public services, Musk’s plans bilk the government for his own pet industries. If DOGE was really about deficit reduction, as its defenders claim, the Trump Administration would defer extending tax cuts for America’s wealthiest families and businesses. But what it’s really about, in my humble opinion, is smashing any programs Americans trust to normalize the untrustworthy behaviors of the President and Mr. Musk. It’s repulsive.

It’s also not new. The pattern of wealthy companies extracting billions from communities has been practiced for decades under the innocent name of “economic development.” The federal government doles out hundreds of billions of dollars per year to big oil, big agriculture, and big tech. And so do state and local governments, to “attract and retain” nonlocal businesses, making local businesses less competitive. The overwhelming verdict of fair-minded analysts of these programs is that they are wasteful and counterproductive. Why won’t DOGE touch them?

Paying subscribers will find four stories focusing on the important arguments for ending corporate attraction and actually saving public money (the ostensible goal of DOGE): from the Nonprofit Quarterly, on how to stop wasteful tax-increment financing subsidies (TIFS) and other wasteful megaprojects; from Good Jobs First, on how corporate subsidies harm public schools; from Next City, on Elon’s grotesque efforts to eliminate Community Development Financial Institutions, the funds of which nurture small businesses in low-income communities; and from The Philadelphia Citizen, on how affordable housing initiatives can and should now proceed without federal support.

You will also find an article on a new documentary from the United Kingdom that makes the case for passage of the Fair Banking Act, which would obligate big British banks to allocate more capital to struggling communities and small businesses.

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