CV NEWS FEED // President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday came out in strong opposition to a proposed spending bill that was supported by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, shortly after businessman Elon Musk and his allies lambasted the legislation.
Shortly thereafter, multiple sources reported that Republican lawmakers scrapped the proposed bill, a development which Musk celebrated on his platform X (formerly Twitter).
The Washington Post noted that the “rebuke, which built steadily through the day and culminated with a long written statement from Trump in the late afternoon, has forced Johnson back to the drawing board on a plan to prevent a Christmastime shutdown.”
FOX News reported that “House GOP leaders are working toward a backup plan after an initial bipartisan deal to avoid a partial government shutdown on Friday was killed by an avalanche of conservative opposition.”
In a Wednesday message posted to TRUTH Social, Trump wrote:
If Republicans try to pass a clean Continuing Resolution without all of the Democrat “bells and whistles” that will be so destructive to our Country, all it will do, after January 20th, is bring the mess of the Debt Limit into the Trump Administration, rather than allowing it to take place in the Biden Administration.
“Any Republican that would be so stupid as to do this should, and will, be Primaried,” he warned. “Everything should be done, and fully negotiated, prior to my taking Office on January 20th, 2025.”
“Congress is considering a spending bill that would give sweetheart provisions for government censors and for Liz Cheney,” Vice President-elect JD Vance wrote on X Wednesday afternoon in a joint statement with Trump.
“The bill would make it easier to hide the records of the corrupt January 6 committee—which accomplished nothing for the American people and hid security failures that happened that day,” the Trump-Vance statement continued:
This bill would also give Congress a pay increase while many Americans are struggling this Christmas.
…
Republicans want to support our farmers, pay for disaster relief, and set our country up for success in 2025. The only way to do that is with a temporary funding bill WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS combined with an increase in the debt ceiling.
“Anything else is a betrayal of our country,” Vance and Trump emphasized.
“Republicans must GET SMART and TOUGH,” Vance and Trump indicated. “If Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, then CALL THEIR BLUFF.”
“It is Schumer and Biden who are holding up aid to our farmers and disaster relief,” they pointed out. “THIS CHAOS WOULD NOT BE HAPPENING IF WE HAD A REAL PRESIDENT. WE WILL IN 32 DAYS!”
Musk, whom Trump has named as one of the two co-chairs of the newly announced Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), made his views on the bill widely known.
“This bill should not pass,” he simply wrote on X Wednesday afternoon.
“Please call your elected representatives right away to tell them how you feel!” Musk subsequently wrote, just hours before the Trump-Vance statement. “They are trying to get this passed today while no one is paying attention.”
Also on Wednesday, Vivek Ramaswamy – who is slated to co-lead DOGE alongside Musk – blasted the bill in a video he posted to TikTok.
“Congress is about to pass a bill that blows away your taxpayer money,” stated Ramaswamy, a businessman and former Republican presidential candidate. “But they made it over 1,500 pages long so you wouldn’t read it.”
“It’s supposed to be about keeping government operations open and providing disaster relief aid to hurricane victims,” he added:
But if you read the bill carefully, it contains pay raises for members of Congress … and expansion of their federal health benefits.
It contains all kinds of special interests and pork funding including opening up a new stadium in Washington, D.C.
“Pork barrel” is a term widely used in American politics to refer to a variety of taxpayer-funded projects which are often costly, local in scale, and considered to be unnecessary or superfluous.
Ramaswamy also noted that the bill “renews the Global Engagement Center (GEC) which is a key node of the censorship industrial complex.”
Last year, a House report determined that ”multiple government agencies,” including the GEC, “worked together to unfairly censor conservatives during the 2020 election cycle under the guise of fighting ‘disinformation,’” CatholicVote reported at the time.
>> 2023: HOUSE REPORT SHOWS GEC HELPED CENSOR CONSERVATIVES IN 2020 <<
Ramaswamy stressed that the “worst part” of the current spending bill is that lawmakers “didn’t want you to know about any of it and that’s why they made this a last-minute jam job.”
“The reason I’m co-heading DOGE,” the businessman said, “is I think we need outsiders to bring actual accountability to Washington D.C.”
In a Wednesday morning Newsmax appearance, Johnson defended his support of the bill, claiming that it “was the conservative play-call.”
“We don’t normally like what’s called a Continuing Resolution, a CR, but in this case it makes sense,” he said, “because if we push it into the first quarter of next year, then we have a Republican-controlled Congress and President Donald J. Trump back in the White House. We’ll be able to have more say over the funding decisions for 2025.”
On a similar note, Johnson wrote on X later Wednesday morning: “Republicans CANNOT allow millions of Americans devastated by the historic hurricane season, or our struggling farmers, go without the help they desperately need.”
“We will decide FY25 spending in March, when Trump is back in the WH and Republicans control the Senate and House,” the speaker added.
During a Wednesday evening appearance on FOX News, Johnson mentioned that he had been on a “text chain” with both Musk and Ramaswamy the night before.
“Vivek and I talked last night about almost midnight,” the speaker told host Steve Doocy, “and he said, ‘Look, I get it. We understand. You’re in an impossible position.’”
“Remember guys,” Johnson continued. “We still have just a razor-thin margin of Republicans, so any bill has to have Democrat votes.”
He went on to claim that Musk and Ramaswamy understood the situation and their frustrations were not directed toward him personally, but the spending bill itself.
“We got to get this done,” Johnson said, adding that the measure seeks to avoid a government shutdown. “By doing this we are clearing the decks and we are setting up for Trump to come in roaring back with the America-First agenda.”
