Explaining the Right: Why won’t Republicans let the government help people?

Conservative members of the House staged a rebellion over the past week, opposing bipartisan legislation meant to fund the federal government and avert a shutdown. The entire process has been a mess, exposing fractures between the Republican Party’s narrow majority while also catapulting multibillionaire Elon Musk to a position of enormous influence within the party.

Led by Musk, conservatives repeatedly complained about “pork” and “waste” in the bill. This argument was amplified by right-wing media, particularly Fox News. In one instance, Fox prepared a graphic purportedly showing unnecessary, exorbitant spending in the bill.

Fox described the bill as a “pork-packed Christmas spending spree” and listed items like a “feral swine eradication” program and paying for the repair of Francis Scott Key Bridge, near Baltimore, as offensive examples of Congress apparently going overboard.

But taking a step back from this manufactured outrage reveals the truth: A lot of this spending is for projects that will significantly help Americans and American business.

For instance, the March collapse of the Key Bridge, which crosses the Patapsco River in Maryland, was a major blow to an important shipping access point for the country. According to the Maryland Chamber of Commerce, 12.4 million vehicles cross the bridge each year, and the loss of the bridge has negatively impacted access to the Port of Baltimore, creating a disruption for businesses along the Baltimore-Washington corridor. The Chamber estimates that Maryland alone is losing millions of dollars per day in revenue.

One would think conservatives, who have long claimed to be in favor of business and job creation, would support the rapid restoration of the bridge.

Meanwhile, feral hogs are a real problem. In Republican-led states, this has particularly been an issue. South Carolina crops and land are being destroyed by an out-of-control population of feral hogs, and the state government has been struggling to find a solution. Texas is also contending with the hogs, which the Texas Farm Bureau described as “one of the most destructive invasive species” in the country. The bureau also notes that the hogs “pose risks for disease transmission among livestock, pets and humans.”

Don’t Republicans want to help out farmers in the “heartland” of the country anymore? Or is it easier to give in to Musk and Fox’s derision?

The root problem is that the conservative movement has for decades loved to demonize government spending outside of a few narrow areas as a frivolous pursuit. They cannot directly attack popular programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, so they instead demonize research and infrastructure projects as a way to build public support for cuts that end up hurting the public at large.

At the same time, conservatives make little mention of exorbitant defense spending on projects that are absolute failures. Figures like Musk and outlets like Fox say little about things like the over $2 trillion—trillion—lifetime cost that the Department of Defense blew on the little-used F-35 fighter jet.

And almost needless to say, Musk has not gone on a posting spree about the millions of dollars in government funds he has received through congressionally approved spending for his companies, like SpaceX.

Better to talk about hogs and bridges.

The cynical motive behind this right-wing demonization is clear. The goal is to whip the public up into a frenzy about the supposedly wrong type of federal spending, leading elected officials to implement cuts for things like pediatric cancer research and medical assistance for 9/11 first responders—while deflecting attention from spending that serves little to no public value, except as a pipeline to enrich billionaires that donate to elect Republicans.