This is the time of year when the congressional class usually assrapes the American taxpayer by means of pork-laden “continuing resolutions” that shovel fat stacks of your hard-earned money into the insatiable maw of rich special interests. And they tried to do it again this year, when incoming DOGE head Elon Musk looked at the bill and went “Wait a minute.”
And indeed, it was a pork-laden nightmare.
The continuing resolution, or CR, was meant to kick the government funding deadline down the road by continuing spending at 2024 levels until March and buy more time for Congress to hash out a longer-term budget plan for fiscal year 2025. But it included 1,500 pages worth of policy and funding riders.
With a national debt of $36 trillion and a deficit of $1.8 trillion, conservatives are leery of CRs that don’t cut government spending to begin with, but they’ve argued only a “clean” CR without any riders attached could earn their vote. Others — Democrats and some Republicans — wanted policy and funding riders attached to get something done beyond the status quo.
Here’s a look at all the provisions that prompted Musk and Ramaswamy to step in and insist Republicans kill the CR:
Pay raises for lawmakersA nearly 4% pay raise would line the pockets of lawmakers if the legislation were to pass: $6,600 extra per year on top of their $174,000 salary.
That salary hasn’t been increased since 2009, but Congress created a program in 2022 allowing members of Congress to expense their food and lodging in Washington, D.C., while conducting official business.
Some members have been pushing for a pay raise for years, arguing that if members aren’t paid more it means that only independently wealthy people will run for Congress. Others are worried about the optics of a pay raise with voters.
Still, others just don’t think lawmakers deserve it.
“The worst part of the CR was the pay raise for members. That money should be earned and right now it is just being taken,” said Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., on X.
Exempting members from ObamaCare
The legislation also includes a provision stipulating that members of Congress do not have to participate in the health care system they wrote into law — the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare.
It would allow members to opt out of the program and instead participate in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. The lawmaker mandate was a contentious debate during the passage of ObamaCare in 2009 and 2010, and for years Republicans tried to overturn the health care bill entirely.
While the CR would exempt members from having to buy health care on the ObamaCare exchange, it would still require their staff to participate in it.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., whose job has come under renewed threat due to anger over the CR, has said he started with a “clean” CR plan but needed to add disaster relief for victims of Hurricanes Helene and Milton in the southeastern part of the country.
Some $100 billion for disaster relief was included, but some conservatives argue it should be paid for by cutting funding in other areas.
Rebuilding Maryland’s Francis Scott Key Bridge
The CR includes $8 billion for rebuilding the Baltimore area bridge, which collapsed earlier this year. Some conservatives don’t believe the federal government should be on the hook entirely for the bridge.
“Guess what, folks? Even though the Francis Scott Key Bridge is privately owned, insured, and collects tolls, you still have the honor of footing 100% of the bill to have it repaired. Oh, and it will continue to collect tolls once it’s fixed,” Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., wrote on X.
Musk was not amused:
Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2024
Also, there were novel techniques used to find the pork and drag it blinking into the light:
Huge implications for the use of AI. They used AI to "read" all 1,574 pages of that monstrosity and pull out the graft and corruption. This is a game changer. They can't hide things in multi-thousand page bills anymore.
— DJ Jones (@sgtdaviddjjones) December 19, 2024
And when faced with evidence of their free spending pork ways being dragged into the light, Republican congressional leaders quickly backed down and crafted a much smaller bill.
Some on the right have poo-pooed Musk’s venture into the budget process as “ill-informed.”
To which I say: Fuck that.
For more than forty years, Republican in congress have proclaimed their desire for a balanced budget, signing pledges and making campaign promises for same. And for all but three of those years (at the tail end of the dotcom boom when a Gingrich-led stalemate with the Clinton Administration slowed the rate of government growth), they have failed to deliver, even in those years where Republicans held the House, Senate and White House.
For whatever reason, something always seemed to take priority over balancing the budget, be it the war on terror, fear of being blamed for a shutdown, desire for campaign contributions from rich donors, tasty lobbyist favors, or their desire for hooker and blow parties (you make the call). The end result is that the national debt is now $36 trillion and rising, exceeding our GDP.
Enough.
More than enough.
There is no “We’ll get it in the next resolution” or “wait until the next budget.”
Now we’re paying attention, and the crooked lapdogs of the culture of corruption can’t get away with this bullshit any more.
Republican congresscritters can either start acting like Republicans, or else getting primaried is the least nasty thing we’re going to do to them.
After all this, Musk took a victory lap (as well he should):
Yesterday’s bill vs today’s bill
pic.twitter.com/L3Omn964mw
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 19, 2024
Now we just need to bring ten times this pressure for the first Trump47 budget.
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Tags: AI, Budget, Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk, Mike Johnson, pork barrel
“The CR includes $8 billion for rebuilding the Baltimore area bridge, which collapsed [sic] earlier this year. Some conservatives don’t believe the federal government should be on the hook entirely for the bridge.”
MV DALI, the ship that destroyed the the Baltimore bridge, is owned by a South Korean corporation recognized as the world’s largest shipping company. They benefit from their Maryland docking operations. Why aren’t they held accountable for their misconduct?
It is earnestly to be hoped that Hyundai’s insurer will absorb the entire cost of reconstruction. Otherwise, seize their US assets as indemnity against the loss.
Here’s a question that I think needs answering: Given that there are now credible reports saying that Joe Biden was senile and demonstrating actual dementia from day one in office…
Where, pray tell, does that leave the legitimacy of anything done under his signature and authority over the last four years?
I’m pretty sure that the Constitution doesn’t empower any of the executive branch agencies or authorizations to operate independently; they’re all supposed to be subordinate to the President, not acting on their own. If they have been acting on their own…? If Joe Biden was legally incompetent, which is something that apparently the nice people who were looking into his classified documents possession determined… Then what?
It’d be highly entertaining if we were to make the determination that since the man was incompetent to hold office from day one, then everything done under his name over the last four years was illegal, and the people doing it broke the law.
I don’t think the argument is that far-fetched. Unlikely to actually become a thing, but… Still…
How can someone actions as President, to include all the pardons, be construed as legal, when they were never competent to hold that office in the first place? Shouldn’t he have been Article 25’d the day after that Federal Prosecutor determined he shouldn’t be held responsible for his actions? Why wasn’t he?
“…Joe Biden was senile and demonstrating actual dementia from day one in office…
“Where, pray tell, does that leave the legitimacy of anything done under his signature and authority over the last four years?”
Since when does cognitive impairment hinder the activity of Democrats?
[…] A DIRTY JOB BUT SOMEBODY HAD TO DO IT: Musk Forcing Republicans To Act Like Republicans. “For whatever reason, something always seemed to take priority over balancing the budget, be […]
In past years we’d have had no way of knowing what kind of assraping we were about to experience, and no way to object. Suddenly, that is no longer the case.
I think Elon Musk may well have saved the United States of America.
I got on Mike Johnson’s contact page and wrote him a nastygram. I was respectful but called him out on the ridiculous 1st draft bill. I had to put in an address inside his district so I copied one from his office in LA. Heh. It worked. Everyone who cares should take a minute and write your congressman. I don’t bother with mine because I live in CA. No point in it.
Musk says Members of Congress who voted for the giant CR “…deserve to be voted out in two years.” Actually, they deserve to be taken out and shot right now; maybe we could borrow Luigi Mangione for a few weeks while he awaits trial.
To Malthus: what’s more, the Key replacement bridge is supposed to come in at $1.7 to $1.9 billion, per Maryland state officials. One might begin to wonder why the Feds budgeted it at $8 billion. And yes, the ship owner has maritime insurance, and the insurer should cover. I’d very much like to see where the extra $6 billion was “budgeted”…
To Kirk: careful, my friend, you might undermine the legitimacy of the last four years with those questions, and we can’t have THAT, now can we?
Yes, a 25A proceeding would have been appropriate — if one believes the WSJ, such a proceeding should have been done on 1/22/21. In the absence of that, Joetato must be considered competent, and thus all executive actions are blessed, including the odious pardons.
With a better class of journalists various Dems would be hounded into answering whether they support these pardons, but alas, we don’t live in that world.
Okay. Speaking here as very much a small-government-pro-federalist voter, the whole FSK bridge thing pisses me off on a number of levels.
My first question was ‘is the bridge part of the interstate highway system?’ since that is one of the very few things fedgov does that is actually arguably their responsibility. The answer was ‘yes, it’s part of I-695.’ So, okay, it belongs (for good or ill) to fedgov, right?
Wrong.
The Fox News article says it’s privately owned, which is wtf, but okay, who does own it? Who reaps the benefits of tolls and the like? Google says it’s the State of Maryland. So … why is Maryland — or Maryland’s insurance carrier — not completely on the hook for the cost of repair? Don’t get me wrong, since I-695 is on an interstate, I’m 100% on board with fedgov pressuring Maryland to get it fixed as soon as possible. And, as the ship that caused the damage was under a foreign flag I am also 100% on board with fedgov leaning on said foreign government to reimburse the expense to the insurance company or Maryland, whichever paid it. Either way, this does not belong in the federal budget.
The whole “FSK bridge thing” is that it never should have been an ‘effing bridge in the first damn place.
Given the strategic nature of that harbor and what we have there, the bridge shoulda been a tunnel, from the beginning. Building a bridge that conveniently blocks harbor access in case of someone attacking it is just plain ‘effing stupid. Either that, or rebase all those maritime support vessels and find somewhere else to use as a military port…
FEDGOV should have stepped in at the design stage, back when, and demanded a total revamp of the project such that it could not possibly cause problems for harbor ops, come war. I’ve heard complaints from the Merchant Marine types from back during the 1980s, when they were complaining that putting that bridge where it was created problems for them… Back then, the expectation was that there’d be some convenient Soviet “merchant vessel” that’d have a convenient “accident” in case of war in Europe, which would have significantly affected sealift capability.