Thanks to House Democrats, Congress is poised to avert a government shutdown by the midnight deadline. Elon Musk got what he wanted, Donald Trump did not.
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On Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Vice President-elect JD Vance, and Government Overlord Elon Musk all said that, if the government were to shut down due to the mess they collectively created, then it would be the Democrats’ fault.
On Friday, that shutdown was averted with hours to spare solely because House Democrats nearly unanimously voted for a continuing resolution (CR) that will keep the government funded (and that the Republican majority could not have passed on its own).
Therefore, by the logic of Musk et al. from 24 hours ago, surely all the credit for ensuring that millions of Americans have a nice Christmas must go to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and his party.
Without them, soldiers would have gone without paychecks, air travel would have been greatly impacted by the absence of furloughed TSA employees and air traffic controllers, and taxpayers would have ended up paying billions of dollars for the privilege of having their government services curtailed.
Democrats clearly felt that bailing out Johnson was the right thing to do. The alternative was to leave him flailing around, without being able to get enough Republicans to pass the CR. But that would have been a victory that came at the expense of ordinary Americans.
Another winner in this mess is someone who seems to care very little about the painful consequences of a shutdown: Musk.
After congressional negotiators from both chambers and both parties had reached a deal to keep the government open, provide disaster relief funds, and extend the farm bill for one year, Musk had blown up that agreement by threatening lawmakers who would vote for it with being primaried because he, an unelected billionaire, objected to the extraneous provisions that legislation included.
As a result, Johnson scrapped the negotiated deal and, after flailing about for 24 hours, proposed the passage of a “clean” bill that funds the government at current levels through March and also includes the disaster relief funds and the farm bill extension.
That’s a win for Musk, who has shown that he can control House Republicans with a tweet. And, perhaps most importantly for him, the version of the funding bill that passed excluded language that harmed his business interests.
Or, as Rep. Rosa DeLauro (CT), the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, put it in a letter to congressional leaders: “It is particularly disturbing that Musk may have sought to upend this critical negotiated agreement to remove a bipartisan provision regulating US investments in China in order to protect his wallet and the Chinese Communist Party at the expense of American workers, innovators, and businesses.”
The biggest loser in the spending fight, apart from the credibility of House Republicans, was President-elect Donald Trump.
His top priority in this fight was to eliminate the debt ceiling, which would allow him to rack up larger deficits when he takes office in January. He even threatened lawmakers who helped pass a clean funding bill (which 170 Republicans ended up doing) with getting primaried.
However, his threats proved to be less effective than those of Musk.
And that may be the greatest political takeaway of what happened over the past 48 hours: The kingmaker got what he wanted; the king did not.
