Musk Makes a Mess of Congress
Elon Musk was born a South African, so he’s ineligible to serve as either president or vice president of the United States. But he is swiftly showing, by dint of his enormous wealth and growing influence with the person Americans actually elected as president, that neither of those titles are necessary to dominate Washington.
Over the course of a few hours yesterday, Musk may have single-handedly tanked a carefully negotiated bipartisan compromise to fund the government for the next three months and provide billions of dollars in aid for disaster relief and farmers. The deal was the work of House Speaker Mike Johnson, who, like Musk, is (er, has been) a close ally of President-Elect Donald Trump. To secure support from Democrats—who still hold the Senate for another few weeks—Johnson agreed to add a host of unrelated provisions, including a long-sought but politically dicey pay raise for lawmakers.
Republicans weren’t happy. The 1,547-page bill, written behind closed doors and dropped in their lap a week before Christmas, represented everything they say they hate about how Congress operates. Yesterday, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, not known as a conservative rabble-rouser, called it a “monstrosity.” But Johnson believed that he could get enough Republicans to join most Democrats in passing the bill in time to avert a government shutdown due to start Friday night and allow Congress to adjourn for the holidays.
“Stop the steal of your taxpayer dollars!” “This bill is criminal.” “KILL BILL!”
With dozens of dashed-off posts, the billionaire co-chair of the Trump-invented Department of Government Efficiency demonstrated the political power he’s amassed in the two years since he completed his takeover of Twitter, the platform he renamed X. He declared that any lawmaker who voted for the bill “deserves to be voted out in 2 years”—an implicit threat to use his money to fund their opponents. This was governing-by-tweet, Trump’s signature method. For several hours, the president-elect was silent; Musk had taken charge. By the time Trump weighed in against the bill yesterday afternoon, his opposition was assumed, even anti-climactic.
[Franklin Foer: What Elon Musk really wants]
Notably, the Republican who spoke for Trump was Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio, the vice president–elect, whom Musk has seemingly shunted off to the sideline during the post-election transition. In a joint statement issued through Vance’s X account, Trump and Vance called on Republicans to scrap the “Democrat giveaways” in the bill while adding an increase in the debt ceiling. The demand complicates Johnson’s job: Republicans will be reluctant to pass a politically unpopular hike in the nation’s borrowing limit without significant help from Democrats. And House Democrats immediately vowed to oppose any proposal that wiped away the deal they first agreed to. Government funding runs out tomorrow night, and for the moment, Republicans appear to have no idea what they’ll do.
This is the new reality Johnson will face beginning next year as speaker—if he’s even able to secure reelection when the House reconvenes on January 3. Trump embraced the Louisiana Republican after his win last month, but the mess the speaker created—and Musk exacerbated—has thrown his future into doubt. At least one House Republican, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, has vowed to oppose him on the floor. Others are reportedly wavering. Johnson can’t afford to lose many more. His majority at the start of the next Congress will be two seats slimmer than it is now; if more than three Republicans refuse to vote for him, he won’t be speaker.
Even if Johnson wins, his job will be difficult if not impossible. Navigating a sizable majority was maddening enough for a Republican speaker with the mercurial Trump in the White House—just ask the now-retired Paul Ryan. Now slice that margin down to a few seats and add Musk to the mix. Republicans will have a larger advantage in the Senate, but at least when it comes to legislation, that won’t matter much if bills can’t get out of the House.
Johnson’s best hope might be that Trump tires of Musk or takes umbrage at his flex of power. The president-elect does not like to be upstaged. Democrats, too, would like to see Musk pushed aside. They quickly began referring to Musk as “co-president” and “president-elect,” an obvious attempt to drive a wedge between him and Trump.
But some Republicans want Musk to be given even more power. In an X post this morning, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky noted that the speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress. “Nothing would disrupt the swamp more,” he suggested, “than electing Elon Musk.”