Congress Vetoes Presidents Musk, Trump
Republicans and Democrats also united to sneak a much bigger funding bill past the two presidents
The United States Congress overnight voted not to do what Pre-Presidents Elon Musk and Donald Trump told them to do, a shocking violation of the last norm. Trump had ordered Republicans to suspend America’s debt ceiling — the cap on how much it can borrow — until January 2027.1
But in the new legislation — authorizing more government spending and preventing a government shutdown — Congress did not do what Musk and Trump had ordered. (Congress actually pulled two fast ones on the businessmen, who are inexperienced at government and whose brains have been dangerously squozed by excessive wealth and recurrent toadying.)
That means Trump and the Republican Congress — all on their own — will have to deal with the debt ceiling when we hit. And hit it we will.
The U.S. is forecast to hit its debt ceiling next summer, when Republican politicians — mostly brilliant businessmen who got into politics because they don’t like grownup-land’s lack of total business autonomy — will have to either (a) cave to Democrats and raise/eliminate the debt ceiling, (b) cut so much government spending that the only surviving domestic manufacturing industry will be handcrafted guilliotines, (c) default on U.S. debt payments, hurling the entire planet into an economic abyss as brilliant businessmen are wont to do, or (d) all of the above but in reverse order.
Congressional Republicans who balked at killing the debt ceiling only agreed to avert a shutdown overnight because they got kill some of the stuff that Trump and Musk (hereinafter referred to as “Mump”) didn’t like. Your keyword-searching TFN couldn’t find a comprehensive list with everything in it, so your list-cobbling TFN has cobbled together this list of what we won’t be getting, thanks to Mump killing the original bill:
Drug prices were going to come down. The killed bill was going to end tons of practices that allow “Pharmacy Benefit [sic] Managers,” PBMs, to cut out all kinds of shit that lets them Hoover up the cash that flows between drugmakers and drug takers. That’s dead thanks to Mump.
U.S. funding of offshoring jobs to China was going to be cut back. The killed bill was going to put new limits on U.S. investing in Chinese manufacturing. Democrats pointed out that killing this would benefit Musk. It’s dead thanks to Mump.
Revenge porn, including deepfakes2 were going to be banned. The killed bill was going to make it a crime to post explicit shit without the consent of the people depicted. That’s dead thanks to Mump.
Poor people whose food stamps are stolen would have been reimbursed. The killed bill was going to provide funding so that people whose food stamps are stolen — or accounts are cleaned out via “skimmers” — can still eat food. That’s dead thanks to Mump.
A program that’s already yielded 65 new pediatric-cancer drugs would have been extended. The killed bill included language from the Creating Hope Reauthorization Act which among other things would have incentivized research of diseases too rare to generate profits in the free market. That’s dead thanks to Mump.
Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program would have improved help for kids with cancer to cross state lines for treatment. The Accelerating Kids Access to Care Act language was also bundled into the original bill’s “extra” pages. That’s dead thanks to Mump.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would have gotten the power to fine pharmaceutical companies for failing to complete pediatric studies. The killed bill would have extended the fining authority that the FDA already has for adult drugs. That’s dead thanks to Mump.
Researchers would have gotten new incentives to test pediatric-cancer drug combinations. Language from the Give Kids a Chance Act would have led to more testing of curative drug/treatment combinations. That’s dead thanks to Mump.
Doctors would have kept getting Medicare bonuses that started under Covid. The killed bill would have prevented those Medicare doctors from getting a 2.8% pay cut. That’s dead thanks to Mump.
Competition that could have lowered drug prices would have been accelerated. The killed bill dealt with legal tactics that drug companies use to delay competition that can lead to price wars and lower prices. That’s dead thanks to Mump.
Medicare would have covered some blood tests for cancer. It’s not clear from the coverage whether this would have been a new benefit or an extended benefit, but the killed bill provided for Medicare to cover cancer screening tests. That’s dead thanks to Mump.
Ticket sellers would have had to start telling you from jump what the final cost of your ticket will be. For concerts, games, and other events, ticket sellers would no longer be able to surprise you with fees and other bullshit only after you went through the whole fucking process to find the best price and checked out other sites to see what your view of The Nude Party would be like from the seats you found. That’s dead thanks to Mump.
Same thing with hotel fees. Dead. Mump.
The U.S. supply chain for semiconductors would have been strengthened. The killed bill included the Securing Semiconductors Supply Chain Act, which provided incentives for creating more chip manufacturing here, to insulate the supply chain from disruptions in other countries. That’s dead thanks to Mump.
Internet customers in rural areas would have gotten new consumer protections. The killed bill included measures to prevent internet providers from ripping them off. That’s dead thanks to Mump.
We don’t know specifically all the measures Mump lobbied against. But we do know Musk wasn’t happy that some bills contained more than one thing, reposting someone else who doesn’t know how legislating works.
And we also know that Musk celebrated the legislative excisions — apparently based on their mass rather than material impact on people’s lives:
Hilariously, and as evidence of just how incompetent billionaires are when they try to do governing shit without checks and balances, the Senate literally snuck through billions of dollars in spending last night right under Mump’s nose.
Here’s TFN’s favorite. After Mump objected to the number of pages in the prior bill — like a child who can’t read long good — House Republicans killed language in it that would have extended the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act.
Gabriella Miller was a ten-year-old who died of brain cancer — while fighting for funding to fight (Spoiler Alert!) pediatric brain cancer. So, Mump performed a Gabriella Miller-ectomy on the funding bill, killing the act’s funding extension and protecting America from, uh, $190 million in research to fight pediatric brain cancer.
So what did the Senate do just prior to voting for this Gabriella Miller-free legislation? They approved a stand-alone bill that the House voted for back in March and the Senate hadn’t gotten around to. Guess what it’s called?
The Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act!
That’s right. House Republicans stripped from the funding bill the funding they had already sent to the Senate in a stand-alone bill. So the Senate simply okayed the stand-alone version, along with an amendment reading “Suck it.”
And while Mump was trying to figure out how to read the $110-billion headline-making funding bill in time to prevent a shutdown, Congress finalized another bill last night authorizing federal spending in the amount of $196 billion.
For years, federal law has screwed over public-sector, non-federal workers by reducing the Social Security payments for them and their families. A fix for that passed the House easily last month and then passed the Senate sneakily this morning during the one-two hours overnight when Musk takes his nap.
First, of course, some Republicans tried to use the fix as justification to raise the retirement age from 67 to 70. Which would be fine if that’s when they retire. Either way, though, they failed. And Mump apparently didn’t realize that the Congress they think they control just spent almost twice the money everyone spent the past week arguing about — to make life better for more than two million retirees and their families.
Maybe the next four years won’t be as bad as we think!
If you haven’t seen anyone else with a rundown as exhaustive as TFN’s of everything Congress just did last night, please consider becoming a donor or paid subscriber to support me spending last night and this morning compiling it. Thank you!
Trump presumably wanted to blame the next shutdown threat on Democrats. Because January 2027 is when the next Congress will be seated, with pretty much everyone expecting the next two years to be so disastrous that Republicans will hold fewer seats than Democrats, the Green Party, Working Families Party, Democrat-Labor-Farmers Party, and the Nude Party.
TFN supports criminalizing non-consensual posting of real, intimate videos, but as a First Amendment absolutist confesses to having some qualms about banning deepfake stuff, which seems perilously close to telling people what they can and can’t draw by hand. Not, however, a hill especially worth dying on at this point in our fucked timeline.
Jon, you're great, thank you for deep diving. i had heard about some of the things in the CR, obviously not enough.
We're never gonna get nice things are we?
I will keep donating as often as I can.
Re: rural internet- some rural areas have almost no options for high speed internet except Starlink, so conflict there for Musk.