Robert Robb
SUBMITTED PHOTO
By Robert Robb
After Elon Musk described the federal budget reconciliation bill as “a disgusting abomination,” Arizona U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs tweeted: “He’s not wrong. This sentiment would have been much more impactful before the vote, when my @freedomcaucus colleagues and I were catching flack for fighting tooth and nail for more spending reductions. As it was, we voted to advance President Trump’s agenda.”
Biggs voted for the legislation he now says it isn’t wrong to describe as “a disgusting abomination.”
His tweeted response to Musk so characterizing it is worth pondering and parsing a bit, for what it reveals about both Biggs and the state of our politics.
Biggs is an elected member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He has a vote, a direct influence on any bill before the body. His colleagues in the Freedom Caucus also have a vote, a direct influence on any bill before the body. Yet, according to Biggs’s tweet, a terse tweet from Musk could have changed the outcome in the House toward more spending cuts.
Musk, of course, isn’t a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and did not have a vote or direct influence on the substance of the budget reconciliation bill. Yet, according to Biggs, his indirect influence through social media could exceed that of those elected to make these decisions.
Musk is a remarkably successful entrepreneur, having revolutionized and advanced three separate industries: electric cars, commercial space travel and satellite internet. He may play a similar role in artificial intelligence and robotics.
However, in the realm of politics and public policy, Musk is an ill-informed blowhard. He made himself politically relevant through his social media following and dropping big bucks in campaigns, conspicuously that of Donald Trump for president. Yet, according to Biggs, a tweet from Musk could have moved the needle in the House GOP caucus more than the collective efforts of he and his Freedom Caucus cohorts.
Musk’s critique of the budget reconciliation bill, in this particular tweet, was off the mark. He described it as “(t)his massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill.” There is some pork in the bill. The increase in the deduction for state and local taxes could fairly be characterized as such. However, the principal problem with the bill is that it increases federal deficits at a time in which the size of the deficits is beginning to be a problem and an issue, both economically and politically. And that is primarily because of the bill’s tax provisions, not its spending provisions.
I don’t think the vote on the House version of the budget reconciliation bill was an easy one for fiscally responsible Republicans. Failure to extend the first term Trump tax cuts would have amounted to a significant tax increase at a moment of economic fragility. And a tax hike that, contrary to Democratic talking points, would have hit middle and upper-middle income families pretty hard. Extending current income tax provisions was job one.
Unfortunately, the bill also included additional tax cuts to fulfill ill-considered Trump campaign pledges on tips, overtime, Social Security benefits and auto loans. There weren’t enough spending cuts in the bill to move, net, toward lower deficits and away from today’s sky-high and troubling levels of red ink. In fact, the movement is toward even higher annual deficits.
Note, however, that Biggs doesn’t justify his vote in favor of the bill as a balancing of conflicting priorities. After agreeing that the bill was “a disgusting abomination,” he says: “As it was, we voted to advance President Trump’s agenda.” “We” meaning he and the Freedom Caucus members who also voted for the House version.
Biggs previously prided himself on being a constitutionalist, someone supporting the original framework and intent of the founders. However, this deference to the agenda of the president, even if it amounts to “a disgusting abomination,” is contrary to the intended constitutional role of the legislative branch.
In determining policy and law, the founders gave predominance to the legislative branch, not the executive branch. The president can make recommendations and veto legislation. But Congress was intended to exercise independent judgment about the right course of action for the country. The president was then supposed to administratively execute that course of action, irrespective of whether he agreed or disagreed with it.
I don’t know how one maintains a claim to be a constitutionalist while supporting Trump, who sedulously attempts to usurp the legislative role through executive orders and proclamations, rides roughshod over the constitutional separation of powers and due process, is seeking to undermine the independent judiciary, and turns the power of the government against private-sector entities and political opponents. In my opinion, Biggs forfeited any claim to constitutional fidelity when he argued that federal judges could be removed other than through impeachment, which requires as contorted a reading of the Constitution and its intent as found in any liberal jurist’s opinion.
In this case, Biggs isn’t saying that he fulfilled his constitutional role and made an independent determination that voting for the House budget reconciliation bill was the right policy decision. Instead, Biggs said that he voted to defer to Trump’s agenda, while lamenting that Musk hadn’t spoken up earlier about what “a disgusting abomination” that agenda ended up being.
Biggs is running for governor. In my view, his vote to reject Arizona’s Electoral College votes for the 2020 election should disqualify him — morally and politically, not legally — from that, or any other, elected position. But clearly his constituents in CD 5 don’t see it that way. There is a significant possibility, even probability, that Republican primary voters in 2026 won’t see it that way. It is more likely that general election voters will see it that way.
When in the state legislature, Biggs was arguably the most effective and influential lawmaker since Burton Barr, who dominated legislative affairs in a span stretching from the 1960s to the 1980s. Biggs cooperated and collaborated with other politicians, as one must do to get anything done. But he was fiercely independent in his judgments about public policy. Not sure you can say that about the Biggs serving in the U.S. Congress. Or the one running for governor. He seems to have been subsumed by a movement in which others make the big decisions.
Editor's note: Retired Arizona journalist Robert Robb opines about politics and public policy on Substack. Reach him at robtrobb@gmail.com. Please send your comments to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.
