Unelected Billionaire Sh*tposter May Shut Down Government, Because F*ck Us All Is Why
We don't remember this being covered in Schoolhouse Rock.
Nearly the entire freaking US government is set to shut down at 12:01 a.m. Saturday if Congress doesn’t pass a bill to temporarily fund the government in time for President Joe Biden to sign it. And in fact, Congress was well on its way to doing that Wednesday, reaching a bipartisan agreement on a bill that would have funded the government though March 15 of next year. The bill had been scheduled for votes today.
But then America’s new de facto ruler, the richest man in the world, figured that since he’d bought the government, he could also break it if he wanted. Elon Musk posted more than 100 tweets against the bill all day Wednesday, many of them full of outright lies, and singlehandedly scared Republicans into withdrawing their support for the funding deal. Donald Trump, following the lead of his most recent purchaser, came out against funding the government as well, and within a few hours after Musk started lying about it, the agreement was dead.
No, there isn’t anything to replace it. Musk at one point called for the government to remain shuttered until Donald Trump is sworn in on January 20, although that is unlikely to happen. We think. If you had asked us yesterday morning if Musk could have forced Republicans to the brink of a government shutdown, we might have said that seemed a stretch even for him, but here we are.
It’s really pretty impressive, in a sick-making way, to see so much power wielded by an oligarch who was never elected to any office, and who is in fact ineligible to even run for president because he was born in South Africa. But his money was crucial to Trump’s election victory, and he’s effectively more important than Trump now, so Republicans heard Elon loud and clear when he threatened yesterday that “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!”
The usual rightwing House Freedom Caucus types were already preparing to oppose the bill, because in addition to funding the government at current levels instead of slashing funding, the bill included $110 billion in assistance for disaster victims, including help for their own Republican states hit by hurricanes Helene and Milton, and another $10 billion in help for farmers. In addition, it included provisions to transfer control of RFK Stadium from the federal government to Washington DC, funds for rebuilding that bridge in Baltimore after the ship hit the span, and a small cost of living increase in congressional pay. Those changes were enough that even before Musk’s shitfit, a number of rightwing Republicans were already talking about ousting Mike Johnson as speaker.
NBC News outlines some of Musk’s contributions to the grand pageant of American democracy yesterday:
Musk posted to X about the funding bill more than 100 times over the course of the day. He repeatedly called the bill “criminal” and asked his followers to call their representatives, but he also posted memes, including one of him taking a sword to the bill and another referring to the “Kill Bill” films from director Quentin Tarantino. Later in the day, the phrase “Kill Bill” was on X’s list of trending topics in the United States.
While he was at it, Musk lied flagrantly about the contents of the bill, reposting lies posted by others on Twitter as if they were gospel truth, because that’s what free speech is all about. He claimed that the congressional pay raise would be 40 percent, when in fact the maximum automatic cost of living increase allowed by law is $3.8 percent, or $6,600, the first time Congress has taken a COLA since freezing the automatic increase in every other spending bill in 2009.
Musk also repeated a lie involving the transfer of RFK Stadium to the local DC government, claiming it would come with $3 billion to build a new stadium for the Washington NFL team. As Politico explains, nope, no federal money for that:
The bill transfers control of the site of the existing RFK Stadium to the D.C. local government for redevelopment, which could potentially include a stadium. No federal funds are changing hands as part of the transaction.
Somewhere down the road, DC taxpayers might have to pay for some of the stadium development costs, but that would only be ripping them off for sportsball, not the federal government.
In a classic example of Twitter Stupid, Musk also passed along a SHOCKING DISCOVERY from serial liar Chaya Raichik at Libs of Tiktok, claiming that the bill included funding for “BIOWEAPON LABS”!!!!!! But nah, the funding actually would have gone to pandemic preparation by establishing regional “biocontainment labs” to help with research on any new nasty viruses or bacteria or microscopic South African billionaires threatening Americans’ health.
Nobody knows where this is headed now; Donald Trump took advantage of the confusion to demand that a new government funding bill include only minimal continuing funding and nothing Democrats want.
As for Democrats, despite their chronic addiction to being the adults in the room, it’s not looking like they’re in any mood to help Republicans clean up their self-inflicted mess this time. The best advice we’ve seen on what they oughta do comes from journalist Brian Beutler, who suggested on Bluesky that
All Dems have to do is concede nothing. They can offer votes for real Republican concessions—abolition of the debt limit, congressional tariff review, DREAM Act etc., no GOP riders—but not a single vote for GOP-only bills simply to save Republicans from themselves.
Whether that will actually be possible with so many weirdly accommodating congressional Democrats in both houses, we don’t know. But the smart thing for now is to let Republicans own this, and to help Republicans own it by introducing bills demanding concessions from them for once. We especially like the debt limit idea — it’s a stupid leftover from WWI — yes really! — that has never once limited spending in over a century, so getting rid of it altogether would remove a constant pain in the ass that periodically threatens the economy whenever a Democrat is president. Trump wants to increase the debt limit as Joe Biden is heading out the door? Fine. Let’s raise it to $999 quadrillion and remove it from our politics for good.
[WaPo (gift link) / NBC News / Politico]
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Not looking forward to the inevitable hot takes that the Founders *wanted* an unelected billionaire sociopath to run the federal government.
My money is on the Federalist going with that, probably with a fake Jefferson or Madison quote.
From this point on, everyone needs to start referring to him as 'President Musk' . . . if enough people do it and Trump sees it often enough, it will sufficiently damage his ego to the point where he'll want to throw Musk overboard . . . of course, Musk is now so deeply entrenched in government contracts, it might be tough to get rid of him . . . but it would sure be nice if somebody tried! 🤬