WASHINGTON—Apparently heeding his corporate “handler,” multibillionaire Elon Musk, Republican President-elect Donald Trump torpedoed a spending agreement covering the federal government from now through March 14 unless congressional Democrats raised the U.S. debt ceiling.
Musk and his lap dog Trump don’t want to deal with the mess of raising the debt ceiling next year even though it doesn’t need to be raised until at least June. And, most important, they want it raised now to allow for a massive tax cut for billionaires promised by Trump during his campaign.
Musk went on social media all day long yesterday to rant and rave about the bi-partisan compromise deal reached by House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a deal which put money into the hurricane and storm relief efforts across the country and continued the funding of essential government programs until next January.
If all this sounds convoluted, it is. Showing his ignorance about law-making in a democracy, Musk said that there should be no agreements on legislation until after Trump takes over on January 20.That would mean intense suffering immediately for millions of Americans and guarantee long term suffering for them next year while he, Musk, wallows in comfort becoming the richest man in the world.
It doesn’t matter that Musk is lying when he claims he deserves, because of his innate brilliance, all his riches and wealth. He conveniently ignores that his wealth comes from government contracts paid for by the U.S. working class. Even more important, he forgets that when Tesla was about to collapse into insolvency he went, hat in hand, to then-President Obama to beg for a 600 million-dollar handout from the government which Obama granted to him. Today he shows gratitude to the people who provide him with the money lining his pockets by not even offering a slice of cake to the hungry, as Marie Antoinette famously did just before the French Revolution.
The blowing up of the budget deal and the impending government shutdown show Musk’s clout and Trump’s satisfaction with being his lap dog as long as he (Trump) gets his stay-out-of-jail-card by being elected again and, if Musk allows him to do it, the power to grant unlimited drilling rights to his pals in the fossil fuel industry.
The collapse of the deal, already on shaky ground due to flak from Trumpite right-wingers in the U.S. House and the twitterverse, raises the prospect of a government shutdown of all but essential services at midnight at the end of tomorrow December 20.
Worked out the spending plan
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., had worked out the spending plan, which would give the pro-rated share of a trillion dollars to the military and its contractors and keep domestic spending, also pro-rated, at the same level as it is now, at about $200 billion less. Those two shares began this past October 1. Their plan would avoid the shutdown.
Musk and, then Trump, only in the last minute when it was clear he had marching orders from his master, opposed it. Trump did not even get involved in this fight until after Musk spent a full day sabotaging it on social media.
“We should pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t give Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want,” Trump and Vance tweeted out of reverence for the wishes of Musk. “The only way to do that is with a temporary funding bill WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS combined with an increase in the debt ceiling.”
Musk tweeted that anybody “who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in two years!” Musk owns twitter, now called X. He purchased it allegedly to promote freedom of the press which he and his billionaire pals are busy taking away. The billionaire owner of the LA Times recently hopped on the “free press” bandwagon by ordering his writers to stop producing articles critical of Trump.
The debt ceiling hike is the financial and political key to Musk’s clout, however. Both Trump and Musk know full well why the debt ceiling must be raised. If it isn’t raised eventually the federal government will run out of financial room to pay its debts.
Demagogues, almost all Republicans, rail against and vote against raising the debt ceiling. They portray it as akin to failing to balance your checkbook. It isn’t. It’s the equivalent of maxing out on the national credit card and asking for and getting a hike on your credit limit. No increase, and you default.
That debt limit hike not only lets the government borrow to pay past bills, but also to run up future debts—like debt from the planned Trump-GOP tax cuts for corporations and the rich after January 20.
In prior financial fights, the House’s Democrats bailed the Republicans out by voting to raise the debt limit, as well as to pass temporary money bills, like the one that Musk via Trump torpedoed. The Democrats bailed out the GOP the only time the Republicans led the nation to the brink of a default, in 2011.
It was close. Wall Street downgraded the U.S.’s world-leading credit rating from AAA to AA+.
“The downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned,” Standard and Poor’s said then. Sound familiar?
This time, after Trump, under orders from Musk, torpedoed the spending deal, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said the Democrats weren’t necessarily going to play the game or be the political patsies for Trump and Musk.
“House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government. And hurt the working-class Americans they claim to support,” Jeffries retorted in a tweet. “You break the bipartisan agreement, you own the consequences that follow.” In other words, the shutdown.
You break it, you own it
Or as Gen. Colin Powell said of the results of one U.S. Middle East war: “Once you break it, you are going to own it.”
The money bill’s numbers count only “discretionary” spending which Congress controls, for everything from air traffic control to food inspections to wage and hour law enforcement to battling monopolies. That spending, and half the government with it, would shut down if Congress doesn’t meet the deadline.
That figure doesn’t cover pre-set programs available to all, notably Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, all of which Trump has mused about cutting. But “discretionary” spending also includes paying workers who run those three big programs, and all others.
The 1,547-page bill had more than just continuing present levels of spending. Add-ons included $110 billion in relief for disaster victims, a one-year extension of farm subsidies, and curbs on so-called pharmacy benefit managers whose rulings on which medicines are covered and which aren’t help drive up health care costs.
It also had a congressional pay raise—the first in 16 years—and renewal, with more available money, of federal flood insurance. With GOP support, Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., inserted a streamlined federal worker retraining program, too.
The bill even demanded the military probe and provide information on potential threats from drones near busy U.S. airports. Drones buzzed the New York metro area’s congested airspace the week before.
Both Trump and Vance claimed the congressional pay raise would be 40%. Factcheck.org, from the Annenberg Public Policy Center, reported it would be—at a legal maximum—3.8%.
Opposition to the deal wasn’t confined to congressional Trumpites. The tweeters on Musk’s platform X were even nastier. Jeffries cited them as well as the flak from the House Trumpite Republicans. And even Speaker Johnson wasn’t enthusiastic.
Most tweeters slammed the pay raise. One falsely claimed the feds are giving money to D.C. to erect a new stadium for the city’s football team. Another listed all the military aid for Israel, the Ukraine, Egypt and Jordan and demanded its elimination.
Defending his money bill, Johnson said it would also “clear the decks” for Trump. “That’s when the big changes start, and we can’t wait to get there,” he said. The big changes are in separate, and temporarily sidelined, Republican-written money bills. They feature draconian cuts in domestic spending and social issue riders to appease the Trumpites (see previous story).
And Johnson pointed out the Democrats still control the Senate, and will until the new Congress convenes, so he must compromise with them. Paraphrasing a quote wrongly attributed to famed German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Johnson told Trump megaphone Fox “News”: “This is the sausage-making process, OK?”
Bismarck’s alleged quote was, “Laws are like sausages. It is best not to see them being made.”
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