This article is the third in a six-part MSNBC Daily series, “Meet the Freshmen,” featuring six of Congress’ newest faces — three Republicans and three Democrats — in a series of diverse columns that explore the new members’ backstories, policies, home districts and where they fit in this historic political moment. You can read the rest of the series here.
Newly minted Rep. Tony Wied, R-Wis., is unique among the incoming House freshman class in that he was elected in November and immediately took office because his predecessor, Green Bay-area Rep. Mike Gallagher, formally retired earlier in the year. So Wied served the rest of Gallagher’s term until he began his first full two-year term last week.
On Dec. 20, Wied issued a statement boasting of his distaste for government spending. He crowed that he had “vocally opposed” the House’s initial continuing resolution that would have “continued Washington’s reckless spending spree and doled out billions of taxpayer dollars to unnecessary and harmful projects and programs.”
For traditional Reaganite conservatives, so far, so good. But it turns out distasteful federal spending can become a succulent meal when your party’s president deems it so.
it turns out distasteful federal spending can become a succulent meal when your party’s president deems it so.
The initial resolution, which would have avoided a pre-Christmas government shutdown, went belly up after Elon Musk — the world’s richest man and President-elect Donald Trump’s top campaign donor — spent a day torpedoing it on social media. But Wied then joined 171 other Republicans in supporting a subsequent version of the CR that would have suspended the debt ceiling for two years of the upcoming Trump administration, a move that would effectively lock in excessive spending for years to come.
The two-year debt ceiling suspension wasn’t even enough for Trump, who later called for its elimination altogether. Abolishing the debt limit has been a goal of progressive Democrats for years — Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., most likely dreams of axing the debt limit more than she fantasizes about breaking up America’s sandwich monopoly.
Wisconsin, of course, is the home of many of America’s most ardent defenders of traditional fiscal conservatism. Former Rep. Paul Ryan rose to the House speakership with plans to rein in spending on entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. Former Gov. Scott Walker gained national headlines in 2011 when he battled public-sector unions over their lavish publicly funded benefits. Gallagher seemed like the next iteration of young conservatism until the emergence of Trump seemingly made fiscal principle untenable.
With Trump’s elevation to a second nonconsecutive term, it seems the Republican Party has settled on rhetorical conservatism over actual fiscal discipline. For instance, Trump, knowing the benefit of having Musk on his side, has created an amorphous Department of Government Efficiency (the acronym for which coincidentally syncs up with Musk’s cryptocurrency coin) to cut trillions from the federal budget.
Few people actually believe Musk or his DOGE partner, Vivek Ramaswamy, are familiar with how the federal government is funded. Nevertheless, they have promised to cut at least $2 trillion annually — over one-third of total noninterest spending — even though, as the Manhattan Institute’s Brian Reidl has pointed out, 75% of the federal budget funds Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, veterans and interest, with the final 25% supporting infrastructure, justice, border security, health research, national parks, unemployment benefits, disaster aid and disability benefits.
But like Wied’s promise to attack “Washington’s reckless spending spree,” the DOGE plan will almost certainly detonate when Trump weighs in and breaks the whole thing up. In fact, the last Republican-controlled Congress during Trump’s first administration refused to pass any cuts at all; as Reidl put it, the GOP “talks like Barry Goldwater and spends like Lyndon Johnson.”
To wit, debts and deficits may be the only conservative economic policy that maintains even rhetorical prominence within the Republican Party. Trump’s GOP has been overrun with MAGA economists singing the praises of progressive ideas like government-run industrial policy and excessive tariffs meant to ward off “globalization.” Yet all is not lost, as, if you squint hard enough, you can see the seeds of small-government conservatism among the younger batch of GOP electeds. Wied was right — the initial CR was larded up with giveaways meant to buy votes. The government is too large and wasteful, effectively funded by $28 trillion in federal debt. This rhetorical point is the faintest glimmer of hope to which traditional conservatives must cling: It seems like fiscal sanity is still a popular selling point, at least until the commensurate cuts must come to rectify the excessive spending. Debts and deficits may be the only conservative economic policy that maintains even rhetorical prominence within the Republican Party. And there is still a tiny, inspiring group of holdouts within the GOP, clinging to the notion that any debt limit suspension must be paired with spending reductions. When the two-year debt limit pause bill came to the floor, 38 Republicans voted against it, and it died. Naturally, Trump attacked those who voted against it, bellowing that infidels like Rep. Chip Roy, of Texas, should be primaried for their traitorous behavior. In turn, Roy posted that he offers “no apologies.” Yet restoring America’s fiscal footing — including shrinking debt and deficits — can’t be done by a billionaire tweet. Reform is a serious process, not a branding exercise for the world’s richest man. Hopefully, Wied and his new colleagues have seen enough to avoid the chaos they’ve seen over the past few weeks and behave like adults.
Christian Schneider
Christian Schneider writes the Anti-Knowledge newsletter. He is a co-host of the podcast "Wasn't That Special: 50 Years of SNL." 
