
Last week, Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin (Placer County), introduced legislation designed to curb the power of the California Coastal Commission after it rejected the Air Force’s plan to give Musk’s SpaceX company permission to launch up to 50 rockets annually from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the Central California coast.
During the agency’s deliberations, Commissioner Gretchen Newsom (no relation to Gov. Gavin Newsom) said, “Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet.” Musk is suing the commission in federal court over its decision, saying it violated his First Amendment rights. Gavin Newsom criticized the commission for politicizing the issue at the time, saying, “I’m with Elon.”
“The Coastal Zone Management Act was never intended to allow state agencies to prioritize partisan considerations over national security and economic progress,” Kiley said in a statement. “My legislation will ensure that critical projects are not held hostage by unnecessary red tape or political bias.” That measure was the second SpaceX-linked bill Kiley has introduced in the wake of Trump’s election.
In December, Kiley introduced the New Space Age Act, which would enable the Office of Commercial Space Transportation (or AST) “to report directly to the Secretary of Transportation and streamline the oversight process for the commercial space industry,” Kiley said in a statement. Kiley, who attended a SpaceX launch in November, said the legislation “eliminates the middleman in the reporting process and enables AST to keep pace with a rapidly growing industry.” The lawmaker’s news release announcing the bill also included positive comments from a SpaceX official.
Kiley has also volunteered to destroy the GOP’s poster child for government boondoggles, California’s high-speed rail project. Voters approved $9.95 billion of bonds for the project in 2008, with a promise that the first riders would be on board in 2020. Not only has the start date been pushed back to 2030, but the cost of the rail line has ballooned to more than $128 billion. Under a social media post from the DOGE group about the rail project’s failures, Kiley, a member of the House’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, wrote in November: “The Department of Government Efficiency has homed in on the single greatest example of waste and inefficiency in American history: California’s ‘High Speed’ Rail. I look forward to killing this project, once and for all.”
Rep. Pete Aguilar of San Bernardino, the third highest-ranked Democrat in the House, said that while he was unfamiliar with the new proposal that affects the Coastal Commission, “clearly there is a strong feeling among House Republicans that they need to do everything they can to curry favor with Donald Trump and Donald Trump’s friends. And so some of these might be efforts to build off of that.”
Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Big Bear Lake, name-checked DOGE in announcing proposals designed to rein in government spending. Obernolte is concerned that the national debt is more than $36 trillion — and could grow even more if Trump’s massive tax cut plan is approved.
“Congress and DOGE must prioritize cutting underperforming and nonessential federal programs to bring spending back under control and work together to finally balance the federal budget,” Obernolte said in a statement.
But one advocacy group noted that Obernolte’s proposal to set up a “bipartisan commission” to review government programs called Committee on the Elimination of Nonessential Federal Programs does not define “nonessential program,” which could mean virtually anything would be vulnerable to cuts or elimination, including Social Security and Medicare. Plus, the 16-member commission would be required to include only three Democrats, potentially giving it “the sheen of bipartisanship,” said Dan Adcock, director of government relations and policy for the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, an advocacy group that works to protect the social safety net.
“This seems like a vehicle to rush program cuts through the House before anyone knows what they are cutting — and to rope Democrats into being part of the charade,” Adcock said.
Obernolte spokesman Connor Chapinski brushed aside the notion that the bill was a nod to Musk, noting that “this is the third time Rep. Obernolte has introduced his Obernolte Balanced Budget and the Finding Federal Savings Commission. These have been issues on the top of his mind since he was elected to Congress.”
Tax policy legislation being discussed would also potentially provide a boon to Musk and his business. Reuters reported that Republicans want to kill a $7,500 consumer tax credit for electric vehicle purchases. Musk has said that cutting the credit would hurt Tesla, his electric vehicle company, but it would devastate his competitors in the EV market.
“Take away the subsidies, it will only help Tesla,” Musk posted in July on X, the social media site he owns.
Republicans also want to extend the 2017 tax plan that Trump signed, which included massive benefits for billionaires like Musk. He “experienced the greatest wealth boom, his fortune growing over eleven-fold,” or 1,222%, during the life of the tax plan, thanks in part to the tax breaks, according to a 2023 report from Americans for Tax Fairness, which advocates for the wealthy to pay their fair share in taxes.
More potential good news arrived for Musk when Senate Republicans elected South Dakota Sen. John Thune as their leader to replace Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell. Thune has been a longtime advocate of repealing the estate tax, a move Thune said would help family-run farms, ranches and businesses in his home state. But it would also benefit billionaires like Musk.
“With his current net worth of $420 billion, eliminating the estate tax would save his heirs up to $168 billion,” said Pablo Willis, a spokesman for Americans for Tax Fairness.
The measures aimed at pleasing Musk aren’t all financially based. Some are personal. Trump has nominated Ken Howery, Musk’s longtime friend and occasional houseguest, who helped Musk lead PayPal years ago, to become ambassador to Denmark, where Howery’s prime mission would be negotiating a deal to buy Greenland — a pet project of Trump’s. Howery was ambassador to Sweden during Trump’s first term.
Reach Joe Garofoli: [email protected]; X: @joegarofoli