A couple of Democrats on Capitol Hill referred to as B.S. on Elon Musk’s promised federal spending cuts and as a substitute introduced some other plan to President Donald Trump on June 11 that incorporates hashish reform.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., in a letter to Trump, mentioned needless federal arrests and detention systems are costing taxpayers billions of bucks and advised decriminalizing hashish. The congresswomen highlighted six suggestions to get rid of greater than $2 trillion in “wasteful executive spending” over the following decade.
Warren and Stansbury identified that the federal hashish prohibition stays in spite of 24 states legalizing the plant for the ones 21 years and older. In addition they advised Trump that imprisoning aged and terminally in poor health sufferers who “pose little chance to public protection” or the ones with minor technical violations of probation and parole is not sensible.
“Via finishing those practices, the federal government may just save billions of bucks,” they wrote within the seven-page letter, detailing their plan to additionally crack down on well being care profiteering to avoid wasting kind of $1.5 trillion and to focus on waste and abuse within the federal tax code to avoid wasting greater than $1 trillion over the following 10 years—amongst different measures.
In 2023, police officers made greater than 217,000 cannabis-related arrests, 84% of which have been for ownership fees simplest, in keeping with crime knowledge from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Compared, Warren and Stansbury mentioned the White Space’s tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, corresponding to businessmen like Musk, will value U.S. taxpayers $4 trillion over the following decade.
The letter comes within the aftermath of Trump and Musk’s fallout, the place the chief of the unfastened global and the richest guy on the earth showcased their feud previous this month on social media.
As Musk leaves his publish as Trump’s “particular executive worker” on the helm of the management’s made-up Division of Executive Potency (DOGE) and returns to the personal sector, Warren and Stansbury cited a Would possibly 30 Wall Side road Magazine document that indicated the president not too long ago requested his advisers, “Used to be all of it bullshit?” The query was once about Musk’s guarantees to slash $1 trillion in executive spending—a determine that was once halved from an unique promise to chop $2 trillion.
“The solution is plain: it was once,” Warren and Stansbury wrote. “Mr. Musk’s efforts at DOGE had been by no means in point of fact about chopping waste. Underneath the guise of streamlining executive spending, DOGE driven reckless insurance policies that gutted crucial services and products and ousted skilled civil servants, all whilst decreasing oversight and lengthening earnings for Mr. Musk’s firms.”
The congresswomen cited a 44-page memorandum launched in April via the Place of birth Safety and Governmental Affairs’ Everlasting Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI). The memo calculated the chance of Trump offering the arena’s richest guy extraordinary keep an eye on over the government and estimated the criminal legal responsibility Musk will have have shyed away from via his unelected executive takeover.
In step with the PSI memo, Musk and his firms confronted a minimum of $2.37 billion in doable legal responsibility as of January 2025, together with $1.2 billion in doable legal responsibility because of Tesla’s allegedly false or deceptive statements about its autopilot and entire self-driving options.
“Whilst the $2.37 billion determine represents a reputable, conservative estimate, it significantly understates the actual receive advantages Mr. Musk would possibly achieve from criminal chance avoidance on my own because of his place in executive,” in keeping with the PSI memo, which simplest tracked doable monetary liabilities for 40 of 65 movements Musk and his firms had been topic to via 11 federal companies. The ones companies had been objectives of investment cuts beneath DOGE.
Warren and Stansbury claimed of their letter to Trump that DOGE “failed” to spot and get rid of waste, fraud and abuse. As an alternative, they wrote, DOGE’s movements at the moment are expanding prices and struggling for American citizens.
The June 11 letter is very similar to a 21-page letter that Warren despatched to Musk 3 days after Trump’s inauguration in past due January, offering the DOGE chief with 30 proposals that would narrow a minimum of $2 trillion of “wasteful executive spending” over the following decade.
“The Drug Enforcement Management and Customs and Border Patrol proceed to raid marijuana companies and grasp marijuana crops, together with in states the place marijuana is criminal,” Warren wrote in January. “Those arrests and seizures unnecessarily drain federal sources. DOGE will have to counsel that [the Department of Justice] and [Department of Homeland Security] preserve sources via deprioritizing pricey arrests and different enforcement movements concentrated on marijuana task, a minimum of the place the task is criminal within the jurisdiction the place it befell.”
The most recent letter comes at a time when enhance for hashish legalization is at an all-time prime, with 70% of U.S. adults favoring federal reform, in keeping with Gallup pollsters.
It additionally comes because the DOJ’s proposed rule to reclassify hashish to Time table III beneath the Managed Ingredients Act is now greater than a 12 months outdated: The present procedure has remained dormant because the DEA’s leader administrative legislation pass judgement on granted an interlocutory enchantment 5 months in the past.
Trump signaled enhance for rescheduling throughout his 2024 marketing campaign, and his nominee to guide the DEA, Terry Cole, mentioned throughout his April 30 affirmation listening to that choosing up the rescheduling procedure that was once initiated beneath President Joe Biden could be “considered one of my first priorities.” Alternatively, Cole refrained from pronouncing the place he stands at the DOJ’s proposal.
For lots of hashish industry leaders, rescheduling represents the adaptation between losses and profitability within the type of deducting extraordinary industry bills from their federal taxes. Underneath a Time table I list, Segment 280E of the Inside Earnings Code prevents them from doing so.
Because the rating member of the Senate Banking Committee, Warren has lengthy sponsored banking reform for the hashish business in addition to aligning federal hashish rules with state reform.
“You will have to be told from Elon Musk and DOGE’s errors, finish your assaults on crucial federal systems, and as a substitute act on those suggestions,” Warren and Stansbury wrote to Trump.
