Before he could get ByteDance to decide they need to placate him, he had to first show that he could make their lives miserable.

The cornerstone of any “protection” scheme.

While I’d want you to be right in your concerns, in practice the only hiccup ever encountered with the debt ceiling is when they want to screw over Democrats. Otherwise they never blink at raising it, making it a fairly ineffective guard against over borrowing.

I did hear NPR at least clarify that it would not be a “department”, but instead just some advisory body.

They also pointed out that the closest analog would be the grace commission, but that was largely ignored in the end.

So they can make recommendations, but no authority to make them happen. Currently every sycophant Republican is talking up just how much they are in support of the vague concept of this body, but it’s quite likely that if they ever make specific recommendations, they are probably going to face much more rigorous objections. Republicans have a tendency to complain loudly about the abstract, but then not want to touch any specifics that might have blow back.

See also how they easily kept passing killing the ACA when they knew it would be vetoed and the second they actually knew it wouldn’t be vetoed they lost their appetite for it (admittedly they came close, but still it took them a long time to even try).