So Congress has passed a stopgap spending bill to avert a “shutdown” of the government after the House earlier passed a “framework” for an eventual “big beautiful bill” that would preserve the 2017 Trump tax cuts and cut trillions in government spending.

The Trump tax cuts need to be renewed, but not until Elon Musk’s DOGE team finishes its review of government spending. If President Trump wants to build a lasting high-integrity budgeting system, it’s got to be done right, and that means figuring out what the government actually needs to spend before setting out a tax plan to take care of the revenue side.

A majority of Americans currently support the Trump Administration’s efforts to cut the size of government and make operations more efficient, even after all the antagonistic coverage from mainstream media and all the judicial action from government employee unions and other special interest groups trying to undercut it. That opens a door for a once-in-a-century revision of how the federal government works.

Elon Musk and his team of budget investigators have made real progress in revealing just how rapaciously bad the federal government’s spending excesses have become. But wouldn’t DOGE’s findings – comprehensively assembled across the entirety of the government – become a clarion call to Americans for just how rotten the system has become?

And wouldn’t that pave the way for a durable plan calling for massive changes to both the revenue and expenditure sides of the federal budget?

But that’s going to take doing it right. No business-as-usual DC shortcuts, no happy talk about meaningless “frameworks”, no government-by-continuing resolution. That means a genuine budget process, just like the rest of world uses, to assess:

• What does it cost to do the things that must or need to be done?
• How much in transfer payments does the federal government owe to Americans?
• What amount of revenue is required to fund all those?
• What kind of tax system and tax rates will be required to raise that funding?

While it’s critical that the GOP-controlled Congress keeps the Trump tax cuts intact – letting them expire would cause a calamitous ratcheting of taxes on exactly the kinds of companies and entrepreneurs that fuel the most growth, innovation and investment in our economy – it’s also critical to transform the performative federal budget circus into a an actual high-integrity fiscal exercise.

Left to their own devices, GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune will fall into their natural inside-the-Beltway practices. The budget’s complexity becomes their sword and shield for defending the status quo.

But the DOGE approach has been very different. Its mission is both understandable – restore government efficiency – and comprehensive mission, as the executive order authorizing it made clear.

So in the interests of creating real and profound fiscal change, why not let the DOGE process play out through the entire federal government for a year, use its findings to set a real and enduring spending budget, and then figure out the simplified, pared-back tax code that could fund it?

The foundations of lasting meaningful cuts in the behemoth federal government – and of genuine reform that could turn the tax code from a bludgeon for meddling social engineers to an honest funding mechanism for necessary government functions and services – are going to be built on pillars of credibility.

If those foundations aren’t hammered into the bedrock of sound practice and public belief, everything built on top of them will be easily washed away.

As a tax professional, what I most crave for my clients and for the country at large is certainty. A tax code that’s based on principles rather than the politics of the day and whose overriding purpose is revenue generation, not social engineering.

President Trump has a rare opportunity to achieve that, but he’s going to have to explain it in gut punch solid terms that let Americans see the big picture while viscerally understanding its impact on their own households.

Congress is never going to achieve any real tax reform on its own, nor suddenly grow a spine and attack the runaway spending train that has created crushing deficits since the last balanced budget almost 30 years ago.

It’s the President that can and must lead here. And his prescription should be:

• Let Elon tell us how much we actually need to spend each year.
• Let Speaker Johnson and Majority Leader Thune tweak the existing tax code to meet the true financial needs of the country, or get as close as they can for now.

President Trump can sometimes be a hurricane of scattered ideas. With regard to taxation, this has included no taxes on tips, no taxes on Social Security, and no income tax at all (replaced by tariffs). While those make for great campaign sound bites and rally speeches, his real opportunity here is reform that’s much more profound.

With a little discipline, a little help from Elon Musk, and just a little patience, President Trump can pave the way for real spending and tax code reforms that would serve as his most lasting legacy to the country.

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Bruce Willey is the CEO of American Tax & Business Planning.