SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk participates in a town hall-style meeting to promote early and absentee voting at Ridley High School on October 17, 2024 in Folsom, Pennsylvania.
Some economists and global policymakers were once big fans of "shock therapy" – a massive cutting of federal budgets among deeply indebted nations aimed at bringing their economies back to health.
Surprisingly, these so-called austerity programs have had just the opposite effect.
They have thrown economies into a tailspin, causing deep recessions and social upheaval.
Elon Musk and hedge fund manager John Paulson are calling for cuts to the U.S. budget if former President Donald Trump is re-elected and they join his cabinet.
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Trump said he would create a government efficiency commission and that Musk would lead it, while Paulson is a possible contender for Treasury Secretary in a second Trump administration.
Both have both endorsed slashing budgets, with Musk this week calling for a $2 trillion reduction.
How that gets done is one question. Consider that in 2023, mandatory outlays by the federal government reached a total of $3.8 trillion, and more than half of that went toward Social Security and Medicare, according to the Congressional Budget Office. A large slice of federal spending also goes toward defense in a world that's currently beset by hot conflicts.
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The other question involves the impact of sharp budget cuts on the U.S. economy.
Past attempts at such draconian measures, whether in the flailing economies of former Soviet states or in developing nations, rarely yielded encouraging results. They included recessions and shortages of material goods.
Musk has suggested the economy – and, by extension, Americans — would need to endure short-term pain for long-term gains.
If only it were that easy.
The ill effects of austerity measures
Some countries in recent economic history which underwent shock therapy suffered for years. They faced stagnating growth and alternating bouts of inflation and deflation, resulting in violence in the streets and leaders heading for the hills.
Recall Russia in the early 1990s – with hyperinflation, empty store shelves and Boris Yeltsin standing atop a tank after beating back a coup.
It was not the lone instance in which rapid and radical measures upended entire societies already beset by political and economic turmoil.
There were other measures employed in shock therapy, like overnight privatization of state-owned enterprises, that had unintended consequences. Those actions led to the rise of a new Russian oligarchy.
Rapid large-scale changes that affect the day-to-day survival of a nation's citizens won't come easily.
There is no doubt the U.S. needs to address large annual budget deficits and more than $35 trillion in outstanding debt. The nation needs to identify waste, fraud and abuse, as well as contend with unfunded liabilities.
There are other options to right-size government spending and reduce the obligations of future generations.
A thoughtful plan to rein in budgets
The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform – also known as the Simpson-Bowles Committee after co-chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles – laid out in detail how to rein in budget deficits, reform the tax code and address the unfunded liabilities related to Social Security and Medicare.
This blueprint was thoughtful and meticulous, and it deserved to be implemented. However, the framework was released in 2010, just as the U.S. was emerging from the Great Financial Crisis. It was a time when deficit reduction was much less of an issue than it is today. It also would have been unwise to enact the plan when the economy had yet to fully recover.
I recommend Musk and Paulson read the plan.
It needs to be updated given the massive increases in deficits, debt and spending. However, the Simpson-Bowles plan takes a measured approach to right-sizing the U.S. budget and addressing the need for more formal audits of federal spending. It also proposes long-term solutions to the burdens of funding entitlement programs into which all Americans pay.
Everyone should read it.
There are no painless quick fixes to any problem, including indebtedness the U.S. bears going forward. But there are less painful and more thoughtful ways to stop a crisis before it occurs.
Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles drew up the plan. Elon Musk and John Paulson should follow their lead.
— CNBC contributor Ron Insana is CEO of iFi.AI, an artificial intelligence fintech firm.
