Hocus POTUS

A good magician masters sleight of hand and misdirection. A wave of the white-tipped wand at the top hat captures your attention, as your pre-selected card is lifted from concealment to appear from – or disappear into – the inverted top hat.

Over the course of the last two months, we as Americans unknowingly have been watching a magic trick. Since before the new administration’s inauguration, the news has bombarded us about all the waste to be excised from the national government by way of the recently created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Headed by President Trump’s appointee Elon Musk, the commission serves to audit the government’s accounts and processes. Empowered with read-only access, DOGE supposedly identifies inefficiencies and recommends their elimination to officials authorized to discontinue them.

It sounds great in theory, given that the U.S. Comptroller seemingly has done nothing to lessen waste in government since his appointment in 2008 (ten monopoly bucks says that you’ve never heard his name). In practice, DOGE has identified billions in savings from overpayments and inefficiencies. Beyond the steady stream of hyperbole from progressivist media about how DOGE’s cuts will lead to public schools closing and airplanes falling out of the sky (NY-12^th Congressional Representative Jerrold Nadler suggested as much during a House Judicial Committee hearing on February 11^th, 2025), DOGE’s “purges” have percolated into everyday exchanges. Neighbors are saying frantic things like “DOGE is cutting medical allowances, so your cat will undergo that surgery without anaesthesia!” Completely irrational but it goes to show that DOGE has seized the public’s attention. So much so that no one sees what the magician’s other hand is doing.

On February 19^th, 2025, the United States Senate very quietly passed Resolution 7. This resolution raises the national government’s debt ceiling by an eye-watering $13 trillion. Resolution 7 passed by a strictly partisan 52 – 48 (Kentucky’s Dr. Rand Paul, being the notable exception), with the Republicans in favor. Yes, the party which claims fiscal conservatism and family values just exponentially increased the debt load for every family in the country. Whilst everyone was preoccupied with DOGE’s cuts – either applauding or denouncing them – the national government committed itself to a ruinous expansion of credit. Inevitably this means printing the needed money into existence, such that inflation is guaranteed. You were so busy looking at the cute bunny rabbit being pulled from out of the felt top hat and never saw the magician’s hand pick your pocket!

DOGE is helping by targeting inefficiency in the national government, but if the government does not also curtail its commitments, generations of Americans will be born into debt servitude. Whereas the current administration projects strength – such as rattling sabres about China’s bulk purchases of American farmland – when the USA enters receivership due to insolvency, treasury bond holders like China ($759 billion as of January 2025) and Saudi Arabia ($140.3 billion as of June 2024) will chuck us on the chop block to get their buck’s worth, and there will be squat we can say about it then.

Libertarians know all this. This is why Dr. Rand Paul – son of our 1988 presidential nominee Dr. Ron Paul – was the sole Republican to vote against Resolution 7. As for the rest of his party… with any luck a good magician can disappear them all into a top hat.