C_Clayton_Jones
Diamond Member
‘Just before Christmas, Donald Trump and his sidekick Elon Musk were so eager for Trump to start acting like an ineffective lame duck president that they blundered into a debacle over a temporary spending bill, thereby positioning Democrats to exploit GOP plans to cut essential government programs.
The failed Trump and Musk show of “power” had no material impact on government spending and “succeeded” only in cutting funding for pediatric cancer research and nixing efforts to cut back on junk fees. (The cancer research spending was later revived by the Senate.) But the fiasco revealed the mendaciousness of Republicans’ supposed goal of increasing government “efficiency,” while confirming Trump/Musk’s actual plan to remake the federal government — not to make it spend less, but to make it provide less to those with less, and more to those with a lot.
The show of non-force began on the morning of December 18 with Musk, clearly unilaterally, unleashing a wave of uninformed tweets attacking a continuing budget resolution bill that it was wholly in Trump’s interest to pass without much fanfare.
The bill’s primary purpose was to continue government funding at current levels until March, when the GOP will have majorities in both houses of Congress and Trump will be in the White House (or on the golf course, as the case may be). But for calendar-related reasons, the spending bill also had to include aid both for large farmers (a key GOP constituency) and disaster assistance. And so Democrats and Republicans also negotiated the inclusion of some fiscally insignificant additional items, such as funding for childhood cancer research.
Musk had apparently glanced at some entirely predictable far right social media sniping about the bill, which he was inclined to repeat and amplify, particularly the false and misleading parts. He had self-interested reasons for making a stink. His business interests are tightly aligned with the Communist Party of China, given Tesla’s massive investments in that country, so he had cause to object to provisions intended to limit the transfer of technology to China.’
‘Businessmen’ are incapable of sound, responsible governance – Trump and Musk are proof of that.
The failed Trump and Musk show of “power” had no material impact on government spending and “succeeded” only in cutting funding for pediatric cancer research and nixing efforts to cut back on junk fees. (The cancer research spending was later revived by the Senate.) But the fiasco revealed the mendaciousness of Republicans’ supposed goal of increasing government “efficiency,” while confirming Trump/Musk’s actual plan to remake the federal government — not to make it spend less, but to make it provide less to those with less, and more to those with a lot.
The show of non-force began on the morning of December 18 with Musk, clearly unilaterally, unleashing a wave of uninformed tweets attacking a continuing budget resolution bill that it was wholly in Trump’s interest to pass without much fanfare.
The bill’s primary purpose was to continue government funding at current levels until March, when the GOP will have majorities in both houses of Congress and Trump will be in the White House (or on the golf course, as the case may be). But for calendar-related reasons, the spending bill also had to include aid both for large farmers (a key GOP constituency) and disaster assistance. And so Democrats and Republicans also negotiated the inclusion of some fiscally insignificant additional items, such as funding for childhood cancer research.
Musk had apparently glanced at some entirely predictable far right social media sniping about the bill, which he was inclined to repeat and amplify, particularly the false and misleading parts. He had self-interested reasons for making a stink. His business interests are tightly aligned with the Communist Party of China, given Tesla’s massive investments in that country, so he had cause to object to provisions intended to limit the transfer of technology to China.’
‘Businessmen’ are incapable of sound, responsible governance – Trump and Musk are proof of that.
It is going to be so L-O-N-G a four years for you.
