Congress is careening toward a government shutdown after U.S. President-elect Trump, egged on by billionaire Elon Musk—who helped bankroll Trump's reelection campaign and is slated to help oversee cuts to government spending and regulation in the new administration—torpedoed a federal spending bill that would have kept the government open for the next few months.
The episode has drawn sharp rebuke from Democrats, and caused a number to muse whether it's Musk who's really in charge.
"The U.S. Congress this week came to an agreement to fund our government. Elon Musk, who became $200 BILLION richer since Trump was elected, objected. Are Republicans beholden to the American people? Or President Musk? This is oligarchy at work," wrote Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in a social media post late Wednesday.
During a Wednesday night appearance on MSNBC, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) called Musk "basically a shadow president."
These sorts of remarks continued Thursday, with Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) writing: "Welcome to the Elon Musk presidency, where Donald Trump is now clearly the vice president. They want a government shutdown that would hurt millions of Americans. It’s totally insane," wrote Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.)
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich echoed this sentiment in an opinion piece for Common Dreams published Thursday, writing: "If this isn't oligarchy, I don't know what is. You may not get access to services you depend on just before the holidays because an unelected billionaire shadow president wanted it that way."
Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance threw cold water on the spending bill Wednesday afternoon with a joint statement, arguing that the bill included "DEMOCRATIC GIVEAWAYS." The directive from Trump came after Musk spent much of Wednesday airing his opposition to the spending package on the platform X, which he owns. In total, Musk shot off over 150 posts demanding the members of the GOP back away from the spending bill, according to The New York Times.
The bipartisan spending package unveiled by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Tuesday would have funded the government at current levels through March 14, and also provided some $100 billion for disaster relief as well as $10 billion in economic relief for farmers.
In their statement denouncing the bill, Vance and Trump also called for an increase to the debt ceiling—adding the fraught issue of national debt, which currently stands at more than $36 trillion, into the debate. Trump also called for getting rid of the debt ceiling entirely, according to Thursday reporting from NBC News.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said this of the debt ceiling demand: "Ha! Trump wants to lift the debt ceiling for one reason and one reason only—so he can borrow shitloads of money to afford his new giant tax break for billionaires and corporations. In other words, saddle regular Americans with mountains more debt so the rich can get richer."
