Democrats have slammed Elon Musk after his opposition to House Speaker Mike Johnson’s proposed congressional spending bill led Donald Trump and JD Vance to order Republicans not to support it, leaving the federal government hurtling toward another shutdown.
Johnson’s stop-gap continuing resolution (CR) would have bankrolled the government at current funding levels through to mid-March 2025, but the president-elect and his deputy’s intervention now appears to have tanked its chances of passing in its present form before Friday’s deadline, sparking chaos on Capitol Hill.
After Musk spent the day posting comments expressing his objections to the bill on his social media platform X, Trump and Vance weighed in with their own opposition to Johnson’s measure, saying it failed to address the national debt ceiling and granted too many concessions to Democrats.
They called on Republicans to abandon it or face a future primary challenge and favor a new “streamlined” alternative instead.
Leading the Democratic jeering was Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who wrote on X: “Democrats and Republicans spent months negotiating a bipartisan agreement to fund our government. The richest man on Earth, President Elon Musk, doesn’t like it.
“Will Republicans kiss the ring? Billionaires must not be allowed to run our government.”
Also enjoying the apparent power struggle within the incoming Trump administration and questioning who is really in charge was David Axelrod, former White House adviser to Barack Obama, who asked on X: “So will President-elect Musk join the budget negotiations now?”
Adding their voices to the row were Democratic representatives Pramila Jayapal and Maxwell Alejandro Frost.
“It’s clear who’s in charge, and it’s not President-elect Donald Trump,” the former wrote.
“Shadow President Elon Musk spent all day railing against Republicans’ CR, succeeded in killing the bill, and then Trump decided to follow his lead.”
“An unelected billionaire was crowned co-President by the Republican Party,” Frost posted.
“They’ve given him the influence to make a damn post that throws a spending bill into limbo cause House Republicans are scared of him.
“No greater example of oligarchy. Where the ultra-wealthy run the show.”
Republicans were also reportedly left blindsided by Wednesday’s developments, according to The Hill.
Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins said she was “surprised” by the demand.
“I was surprised that he wants to move the debt limit vote up to this year,” she told reporters. “I don’t know his rationale.”
Her North Carolina GOP counterpart Thom Tillis said he has “no problem” with the demands made by Trump and Vance but added: “I just don’t know why Senator [Chuck] Schumer would accept it.”
But perhaps the most withering comment of all came from the outgoing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said that his colleagues should not be remotely shocked by disagreement between Musk and Johnson.
“Oh, this is the way it’s going to be next year,” McConnell assured a reporter as he left his office for the day, evidently glad to be washing his hands of the infighting by sailing off into retirement.
As McConnell suggested, the row exposes what could prove to be a volatile fault line between two key allies of the new president in Johnson and Musk, head of the newly-formed “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), with the former working to find consensus in Congress and negotiate departmental budgets and the other seeking to trim the fat and slash and burn “excessive” spending wherever he finds it.
Johnson, who met with Vance for an hour last night to attempt to iron out their differences, is already facing speculation that he could now be challenged for the gavel in the new year as he seeks re-election to the speakership, with the MAGA wing of the GOP reportedly drawing up a list of possible candidates to replace him.
Asked about Musk’s criticism on Fox and Friends earlier in the day, Johnson said he had discussed the matter with the tech mogul and his DOGE colleague Vivek Ramaswamy by text and said: “They understand the situation. They said, ‘It’s not directed at you, Mr Speaker, but we don’t like the spending.’ And I said, ‘Guess what fellas? I don’t either.’
“We’ve got to get this done because, here’s the key, by doing this, we are clearing the decks and we are setting up for Trump to come in, roaring back, with the America First agenda.
“That’s what we’re going to run with gusto beginning January 3, when we start the new Congress, when Republicans again wrench control and all of our fiscal conservative friends, I’m one of them, will be able to finally do the things that we have been wanting to do for the last couple of years.”
