Billionaire Elon Musk’s government takeover already crashes and burns

Elon Musk has given Donald Trump the lead that the billionaire capitalist class expects him to follow when it comes to the government funding bill. This AI-generated image, depicting Trump on a leash held by Musk, was shared on X by Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wisc., on Thursday, Dec. 19. | Photo: @MarkPocan via X

WASHINGTON—Billionaire Elon Musk’s try at taking over the U.S. government, by dictating a spending plan to his puppet, Republican President-Elect Donald Trump, crashed and burned on the U.S. House floor on December 19, leaving the government a day away from a shutdown.

Tesla tycoon Musk schemed to strip a temporary money bill to keep the government going of what he constantly derided on social media as Democratic-attached “pork” or worse, while clearing the financial decks for next year’s planned colossal Musk-Trump-GOP tax cut for corporations and the rich.

His plan went down the drain. The final vote in the Republican-run House was 174-235.

All but two House Democrats voted no, and so did 38 ultra-right Republicans from the so-called “Freedom Caucus.” They blasted Musk’s real goal: Lifting the federal debt limit for two years. Doing that would let the tax cut for billionaires go through next year, benefiting Musk and the corporate class.

All this whipsawing left lawmakers with only today to concoct a temporary spending plan to keep the lights on, the planes flying, the VA nurses tending patients, and Labor Department safety and health inspectors doing their jobs against malefactors like Musk, among other federal government duties.

The “pork” that got dumped included a one-year farm bill, which gives subsidies mostly to agribusiness. Disaster relief was reduced from $100 billion to $10 billion, despite all the hurricane damage in the Southeast and the wildfires raging in California, Arizona and upstate New York.

The “pork” also included more money to treat the lingering rare cancers and other illnesses for the surviving first responders to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington more than 20 years ago. That’s a key cause for the Fire Fighters, who normally win their battles on Capitol Hill.

Democrats and workers derided the Musk-Trump plan, the second such spending bill House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., offered in two days. The first, which he worked out with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and unveiled on December 17, never even came to a vote. Musk and Trump torpedoed it. Republicans followed like sheep. It had all the extra provisions and the full disaster relief.

At Musk’s prodding that day, Trump, joined by Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, the vice-president-elect, derided that bill’s alleged Democratic add-ons. Trump and Vance demanded that the current split Congress, not the next totally Republican-run one, lift the debt ceiling. That would hang a political albatross around Democratic necks.

Outspoken Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., a Painters Union member and past Progressive Caucus co-chair and AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler blamed the whole mess on Musk.

“Let’s put this into context,” Lee said on CNN. Johnson’s first plan “was a bipartisan, agreed-upon deal to move forward and keep the government open until March.

“It is really very clear to me that a non-elected billionaire, Elon Musk, has weighed in now and has put forth a message on Twitter, from his phone, that it’s OK to shut the government down and to disregard the bipartisan deal,” she said. Letting a billionaire like Musk to “run our government really has grave consequences on the American people,” Lee warned.

“Elon Musk, an unelected billionaire with a history of attacking his employees and unions, is now using his power to hurt the working people who make this country run,” Shuler tweeted.

“There’s nothing ‘efficient’ about a pair of billionaires shutting down the government and jeopardizing the paychecks and essential services that hardworking taxpayers and their families depend on days before Christmas,” Shuler’s second tweet said.

“’President-Elect’ @ElonMusk and Former President @RealDonaldTrump want to shut down the government. Nothing like a couple billionaires wreaking havoc on working families right before the holidays,” Pocan tweeted.

The Government Employees (AFGE) tweeted a graphic of an open dictionary and a burning candle. Above, it read “Government shutdown, n.” It divided the words into syllables, adding a definition: “1) When the government is forced to cease functioning because Congress failed to do its job.”

Besides Lee and Pocan other Democrats were no kinder to Musk and Trump. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., called their stripped-down spending bill “laughable.” Democratic caucus members emerged from a closed-door session chanting “Hell no.”

“We have an agreement with the Republicans that was hammered out over a few months, and we want to stick with that agreement,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told Government Executive.

“We will do everything in our power to stop another Republican shutdown like the one we saw in December of 2018 or the one we saw in the 1990s but we are not going to accept any kind of last-minute political shakedown” from Musk via Trump.

House Democratic Leader Jeffries and Senate Leader Schumer both proposed that Republican Speaker Johnson go back to square one and accept, for real, the compromise Johnson worked out with Schumer.

That compromise had nothing about the debt limit, which the Treasury expects to hit in the middle of next year. The House Democrats agreed to back the compromise before Musk and Trump doomed it.

The Freedom Caucus members were just as caustic. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who earlier this year blasted his own party for doing nothing during this Congress, went after the second deal, too.

“More debt. More government. Increasing the Credit Card $4 trillion with ZERO spending restraint and cuts. HARD NO,” Roy wrote on Twitter/X—the social platform Musk now owns.

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CONTRIBUTOR

Mark Gruenberg

Award-winning journalist Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People's World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but tough when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners.