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Where the Hell is Rick Santelli’s Outrage Now? [1]
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Date: 2025-07-07
In 2009, CNBC’s Rick Santelli launched into a televised tirade over President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan and a $75 billion program to help distressed homeowners — policies designed to pull the country out of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. His rant gave birth to the Tea Party movement and inspired a wave of politicians who campaigned on “fiscal responsibility” and slashing federal spending.
But where the hell is Santelli and his ilk now? Where are the Tea Party voices who once claimed to speak for the “silent majority” and warned of runaway debt and socialism?
Their silence today is deafening.
Donald Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” (BBB), just signed into law, dwarfs the spending of 2009 — and not in response to a crashing economy, but during a stable economy – one that Trump inherited. The BBB racks up trillions in new debt, funds an astonishing array of pork-barrel projects, and is projected to balloon the deficit with no serious plan to pay for it.
And yet… no ranting from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange floor. No CNBC segments decrying moral hazard. No Tea Party heroes demanding accountability. In fact, several of the very lawmakers who rode into Congress on the anti-Obama wave have now voted for Trump’s bill. The hypocrisy is staggering.
Let’s be clear: the 2009 stimulus was designed to save an economy on the brink. It passed amidst mass layoffs, foreclosures, and collapsing consumer confidence. The goal was recovery and stabilization. Trump’s BBB, by contrast, adds historic levels of spending at a time of low unemployment and solid growth — squandering our ability to respond when a real crisis hits.
If Santelli truly believed in the dangers of deficit spending, if CNBC and other cable business pundits really cared about long-term economic sustainability, now would be the time for outrage. But there’s none. And that tells us everything.
This isn’t about economics. It’s about politics. It always was.
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