A Fork in the Road

Who let the DOGE out?

If it’s Friday, it’s Family Matters. On deck:

• The Main Event: Just say no to DOGEism

• ‘Home Improvement’: New report explores housing trends and family formation

• It’s Me, Hi: Fox News, NOTUS, City Journal, and more

• Parting Shots

The Main Event

When you come to a fork in the road, Yogi Berra said, take it — and Elon Musk’s DOGE work is living that proverb to the fullest.

The problem, for populist-style Republicans, is that Musk’s “move fast and break things” ethos, coupled with the vestigial Tea Party impulse that the best way to improve government is to eliminate it, is an odd way of operationalizing a pro-worker agenda. It also produces a recipe for potential backlash. If the headlines that mark President Donald Trump’s second first year in office consist of administrative chaos and a regressive tax package paid for by slashing health care programs for low-income Americans, it will risk not just the Republican majority in 2026, but the nascent working-class shift we’ve seen over the last few years on the right.

The first problem is the easiest to solve — in theory. Musk’s hyperenergetic antics and indiscriminate cancelation of contracts have led to criticism from Congressional Republicans. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said the team “needs to be more cautious” and should “measure twice, cut once.” Rep. Troy Balderson (OH-12) has started to describe the flurry of activity as “getting out of control.” Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) told Axios DOGE is moving “too fast.”

DOGE is popular on talk radio and online. But its current trajectory poses a real risk for the White House. From bird flu to nuclear reactors, DOGE’s preference is for speed, not strategy, rushing to rack up as many wins on paper without thinking of the long-term costs or trade-offs involved. Musk is who he is, telling Sean Hannity this week that “They wouldn't be so complaining so much if we weren't doing something useful.”¹ But while you may not get to Mars without smashing through a few of Chesterton’s fences, you should at least read up on why some of them were there in the first place before trying to hack the federal bureaucracy.

On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, the mood is less mania than relapse. Republicans in Congress have big plans, but as Oren Cass at American Compass points out, they can’t both complain about our ever-increasing federal debt and rush through a deficit-financed tax cut — and too many are back to their old tricks.

The Tax Trainwreck Everyone Sees Coming

Similarly, as my EPPC colleague Henry Olsen writes for Commonplace, “the fiscal center can no longer hold. Trump and Republicans need to make the hard choices they have hitherto avoided concerning entitlement and other spending. And they need to abandon their fixation on keeping federal revenues fixed at their current levels.” The other options rest on increasing immigration levels (a political non-starter) or jump-starting birth rates, which the current administration is paying lip service to but has yet to make a political priority.

The math is inexorable. Just extending the current TCJA tax cuts from 2017 (which were designed to expire at the end of this year) will cost an estimated $4.2 billion, and that's before you get to some of the big campaign promises: No tax on social security ($1.2 trillion), no tax on overtime ($747 billion), no tax on tips ($118 billion), no taxes on auto loans ($61 billion), SALT adjustments, corporate rate deductions, or the other various ideas being thrown about (and that is, sigh, not even including any increases to the Child Tax Credit beyond its current structure.²)

To have even a fig leaf of fiscal discipline, doctrinaire tax cutters will point to the savings they will squeeze out of domestic spending, and with Social Security and Medicare politically off the table, Medicaid is on the chopping block. “Let’s cut health benefits for low-income Americans to cover some of the cost of our expensive tax cuts for people making six figures” may sound like a progressive parody of old-school Republican thinking, but it is the default policy prescription for too many — as of today.

One Senator who gets it? Missouri’s Josh Hawley, who has been vocal about the need to telegraph to voters that Republicans won’t be going after Medicaid coverage to pay for tax cuts. Republican Congressman Rob Bresnahan (PA-08) wrote an open letter to his constituents, pledging that “If a bill is put in front of me that guts the benefits my neighbors rely on, I will not vote for it.”

Of course, no program is perfect, and basic Medicaid reforms could be on the table. States have incentives to ignore excessive upcoding to ensure higher reimbursements from the feds, and curbing state overreliance on provider taxes or encouraging value-based care or telehealth could produces tens of billions in savings in a given year (though it would have the downstream effect of hitting state budgets.) But that’s a far cry from the $880 billion House budget writers would like to see cut from the Energy and Commerce Committee (which is responsible for the Medicaid budget in the House,) which can only be achieved through reducing rolls (or, less likely, cutting the federal rate paid to states.)

Tony Fabrizio and Bob Ward, pollsters who have worked closely with President Trump, find the GOP can have the biggest success in swinging persuadable voters by stressing tax credits to buy health care, expanding the Child Tax Credit, and extending the tax cuts from 2017.

Is this what Republicans are talking about? Is this what DOGE is focusing on? Is this the messaging that the casual voter will hear over the next year and change? Or will it be countless stories of a high-profile White House advisor too addicted to swinging a chainsaw at bureaucratic head counts to think through what it would take to improve how government actually functions?

Trump — and, to his credit, Steve Bannon — often seems to intuitively understand this dynamic (though how much of those impulses get translated into policy is an open question.) But Musk seems hooked on a slash-and-burn style of governance; blowing up the deficit and fueling inflation with big tax cuts (much less “DOGE dividends”) is likewise antithetical to long-term thinking.

Republicans face their own fork in the road — double down on DOGEism, or take the pro-worker slant of its new coalition seriously. Their choice may determine the future of this populist moment.

‘Home Improvement’

This week features the release of my new report, “Home Improvement: Exploring recent trends in the housing market through a family-first lens.” In it, you’ll find:

• Why skyrocketing home prices are making it harder to start a family

• Why blaming Wall Street avoids addressing the real culprit (hint: it’s in the mirror)

• What we can do about it

It’s Me, Hi

And, speaking of ‘Home Improvement,’ the op-ed length version of my housing report is now available at City Journal:

In an era of declining population growth, unleashing the housing market to make homes more affordable could help more couples get their feet under them, rather than delaying fertility until they reach their peak earning years. Creative incentives could ensure family-friendly housing of all kinds. Developers seeking to build multifamily units could be given fast-pass permitting or allowed to build higher buildings in exchange for family-friendly unit design or ground-floor retail space dedicated to child care. Getting rid of minimum lot-size requirements could lead to a greater variety in housing styles, opening the door to duplexes or townhomes that give younger families stability and options.

Steven Ertelt quoted me and others who pointed out the flaws in the studies that purport to show post-Dobbs increases in infant mortality (previous covered in more detail on a prior edition of Family Matters) (LifeNews)

I spoke to Jamie Joseph of Fox News about the White House’s recent executive order on in vitro fertilization:

“The U.S. allows people to select sex or to screen for different genetic traits in a way that most other countries don’t…We’re kind of the ‘Wild West’ when it comes to some of this stuff. And it opens the can of worms for eugenics and some of these other things that I don’t think President Trump actually intends. But, you know, it could actually go that way if we’re not careful about it.”

I also spoke to Oriana González of NOTUS about the President’s announcement.

Leah Libresco Sargeant

and I engaged in the third part of our virtual book club on Hawon Jung’s Flowers of Fire: The Inside Story of South Korea's Feminist Movement and What It Means for Women' s Rights Worldwide. An excerpt:

Leah: How does something so wicked become so prevalent? How has the US escaped it (so far) despite having cameras in every pocket and the ability to buy spycams from all over the world? It left me wondering if it’s a replicating behavior, like school shootings, and we’ve never had splashy enough incidents for ordinary people to think “this is something I could do…”

Patrick: …In a way, it’s the unholy consummation of two trends we’ve talked about already: a society drenched in tech, as we discussed last week, blended with the hyperspeed modernization of gender roles we talked about in Week One. Would women have to shout “my life is not your porn” if the best technology available to would-be lechers were Polaroids?

"Flowers of Fire," Week Three: “My Life is Not Your Porn”

And, as a final reminder, our video (or optional, slightly-higher quality audio) from last week’s D.C. event on pro-family tax policy is available for your viewing pleasure.

Parting Shots

• Margot Crandall-Hollick thinks through some of the implementation challenges that a pregnancy tax credit would face, arguing (convincingly) that a newborn baby bonus is a preferable approach to targeting aid to pregnant moms (Tax Policy Center)

• Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) has introduced a bill that would allow non-profit child care providers, including faith-based groups, to participate in loans from the Small Business Administration

• This is a rock-solid compilation of conversation starters from scholars at the American Enterprise Institute that Congress should use to build a more pro-family America, featuring Tim Carney on child care and housing, Scott Winship and Kevin Corinth on tax policy, Yuval Levin on childbirth costs, Christopher Scalia on cell phones in schools, Brad Wilcox on marriage penalties, and Ed Pinto and Howard Husock on housing policy (AEI)

• Cannot recommend this strong exploration of the moral issues at work in policy around in vitro fertilization by EPPC’s Carter Snead and AEI’s Levin strongly enough (EPPC)

• More IVF executive order reaction from Tony Perkins (Family Research Council), Jordan Boyd (The Federalist),

• Kristen V. Brown predicts that the Trump presidency will lead to a slump in birth rates in blue states — do note, though, that the study that it's based on is using 2016 data, prior to the broader racial realignment we saw in 2024 (The Atlantic)

• Katie Benner offers a stark, unsparing portrait of Planned Parenthood's sub-par care for some of the women it treats (New York Times)

• Once you account for income and payroll taxes, most low-income workers pay more than they receive in welfare benefits, reports the Manhattan Institute’s Chris Pope

• Two Republican and two Democratic House members have proposed doubling the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, the Dependent Care FSA limit, and the Employer-Provided Child Care Credit.

• I do not believe 63% of voters know what the CDCTC is, much less that many would be less likely to vote for a candidate who voted to eliminate it, but the First Five Years Fund has polling on that and other questions

• Richard Davis, Jr., has a short piece on improving the Child Care Access Means Parents in School program, which provides child care assistance to Pell-eligible parents in college (New America)

• Derek Robertson reports on the conservatives who take issue with Elon Musk's approach to 'pro-natalism,' as opposed to pro-family approaches to boosting the birth rate (Politico) …And in an interview with Adam Wren, Brad Wilcox argues that Elon Musk “hasn't yet demonstrated an appreciation for the important role that marriage as an institution plays” — perhaps the reason why Musk hasn’t demonstrated it is because he is not interested in appreciating it. (Politico)

• Not unrelatedly, I don’t have to like the trend being explored by

  Charles Fain Lehman
  to agree he has a point (The Free Press)

  Elon Musk, Ashley St. Clair, and the New Moral Majority

Comments and criticism both welcome, albeit not quite equally; send me a postcard, drop me a line, and then sign up for more content and analysis from EPPC scholars.

1. Do not try this line at home.

2. Estimates come from Erica York, Garrett Watson, Alex Durante, and Huaqun Li at the indispensable Tax Foundation.