Donald Trump’s second presidential term did not even begin before he and his allies started exercising complete authority over GOP congressional behavior.
With this weekend’s deadline to avert a government shutdown fast approaching, House and Senate leadership of both parties announced a deal to extend discretionary program funding through March 14. Long before Trump and his billionaire confidante Elon Musk scuttled the agreement, the resulting bill represented so many of the reasons that voters loathe business-as-usual Washington budgeting. Yet the specific cause of death may not bode well for the next four years.
It was a classic Washington deficit-spending arms race.
In addition to averting a government shutdown — which had strong bipartisan support — congressional leaders attached 1,500 pages of additional spending, pork and red tape. There were significant expansions of payments to medical providers and roughly $100 billion in mostly bipartisan disaster aid, which deserved its own stand-alone bill and debate. Republicans demanded supplementing generous farm subsidies with an additional $10 billion bailout for farmers, even though the average incomes of farm households are well above nonfarm households. Congress even included a provision giving itself its first pay raise in 15 years.
It was a classic Washington deficit-spending arms race: Every lawmaker faction secured its own pork by promising another faction their own pork. Then, they added language blocking the PAYGO law that requires legislation to be paid for. These are the bricks that build a $36 trillion national debt.
Many of these spending increases and government favors could never pass Congress on their own. So — in what has become an annual tradition — congressional leaders waited until the week before Christmas and attached thousands of pages of spending and pork to a must-pass bill to keep the government open. All other lawmakers were given perhaps two days to read and decipher thousands of pages of provisions, after which they’d be forced to vote up-or-down on the entire package with no hearings, no opportunity for amendments and not even a Congressional Budget Office tally of the total cost. And anyone who votes against this monstrosity would be attacked for “shutting down the government” and for blocking whatever few provisions may have been popular or wise.
No taxpayers should shed a tear for the collapse of a bill that weighed more than 15 pounds when printed. But that doesn’t make the way the deal collapsed any less concerning.
Early Wednesday morning, Musk began posting to his 208 million followers on X that the bill was, according to a Washington Post summary, “‘terrible,’ ‘criminal,’ ‘outrageous,’ ‘horrible,’ ‘unconscionable,’ ‘crazy’ and, ultimately, ‘an insane crime.’” Building momentum with an endless stream of overheated posts, Musk eventually threatened that “any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!”
Trump’s critique was even more incoherent.
Musk’s words mobilized his social media army. “My phone was ringing off the hook,” Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., told the Associated Press. “The people who elected us are listening to Elon Musk.” House Republicans began posting about opposition to the deal, even threatening House Speaker Mike Johnson’s re-election as speaker in two weeks. Finally, Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance posted opposition to the bill, and it was pulled from consideration.
Yet Musk’s criticism of the bill consisted largely of brazen falsehoods and unfounded social media rumors. He falsely claimed or shared claims that the legislation gave Ukraine $60 billion; funded a new $3 billion football stadium in Washington, D.C.; and raised congressional pay by 40% (the correct figure is 3.8%). He also demanded that Congress pass no legislation until Trump returns to the Oval Office on Jan. 20 — which would shut down much of the federal government at least until then. Trump’s critique was even more incoherent. In a series of jumbled and incomprehensible social media posts, Trump attacked the bill and its spending while also endorsing most of its spending provisions and taking shots at Hillary Clinton and Liz Cheney. Notably, Trump also demanded that Senate Democrats and President Joe Biden use their final days in power to eliminate the debt limit so that Trump may enter the presidency with a blank check to run up more red ink. After congressional Republicans went to war in 2023 to punish Biden for needing to raise the debt limit, the idea that congressional Democrats will suddenly turn around and take an unpopular debt limit vote as a favor to the incoming Republican government was not just hypocritical, but delusional. The immediate challenge is that parts of the federal government remain on track to shut down within days unless House Republicans, Senate Democrats and Biden can craft a compromise to extend these programs until the next Congress convenes in January. Yet it is unclear why Democratic leaders should sit down and negotiate with Republican lawmakers who are ultimately beholden to the whims of Trump and Musk. If no Republican legislative agreement matters until it is blessed by the president-elect and the billionaire CEO — and if that blessing can disappear at any time — then perhaps Democrats should cut out the congressional middlemen and negotiate directly with them. Never mind that neither Trump nor Musk is currently in the government, subject to government ethics rules, or seems to have any real idea what is in the government funding legislation. But don’t expect the collapse of the budget-busting omnibus bill to signal any real change in Washington’s irresponsible debt binge. The same day the omnibus crashed, a bipartisan congressional majority voted to expand Social Security by $200 billion and consequently accelerate the system’s insolvency date by six months. As long as Republicans and Democrats can run up more debt, bipartisanship will never truly die.
Jessica Riedl
Jessica Riedl is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. 
