Democrats should make Elon Musk the face of the GOP budget
He’s unpopular and House Republicans are starting to get nervous.
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Republicans in Congress this week staggered a step forward to passing a brutal budget that would strip healthcare from those most in need, in exchange for (another) massive tax cut for the wealthy. But it could be a Pyrrhic victory for MAGA.
One bright spot is that Democrats in the House — who have struggled to figure out how to respond to a second Trump term — remained totally united in voting against the budget framework. As Trump’s approval sinks, the opposition appears to be organized and more willing to fight.
Republicans are nervous, and Democrats may have a real chance to derail their grim priorities — especially if they can connect the unpopular Republican billionaire budget to Elon Musk, the unpopular billionaire illegally and unconstitutionally rampaging through the federal government at Trump’s behest.
2017 all over again
The budget process is complicated in large part because of the filibuster in the Senate. Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the chamber, but that is not enough to reach the 60 vote threshold needed to pass legislation through normal procedures. So the GOP is planning to pass a budget through reconciliation — an expedited process that allows certain vital bills to pass without a filibuster.
Before they can vote on reconciliation, the Senate and House first need to pass budget resolutions that set out priorities and determine which committees will be responsible for expenditures, and cuts. The Senate passed a two-track budget resolution earlier this month that separates extending Trump’s tax cuts from most other spending measures. This week, the House passed its own budget resolution with only one vote to spare. Unlike the Senate bill, the House plan would roll tax cuts and all other spending into “one big beautiful bill,” as Trump calls it.
Senate and House Republicans need to agree on the same budget resolution before they can move forward on reconciliation. But the House bill sets out some terrifying priorities. In order to pass $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, the resolution orders $2 trillion in spending cuts.
The resolution instructs the House Energy and Commerce Committee to slash $880 billion from the budget. Most of that money is going to come from Medicaid which, along with the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), covers healthcare for low-income people, people with disabilities, pregnant people, and seniors — a total of one in four Americans.
If the House budget is enacted, some 15.9 million people could lose healthcare coverage. Each congressional district would lose around $2 billion in federal funds for Medicaid coverage. It’s 2017 all over again — and it’s worth remembering how poorly that effort to take away healthcare from tens of millions of people in the first year of Trump’s first term worked out for Republicans the next year, when they were waxed in the midterms and lost control of the House.
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Democrats in array
In January, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries emphasized his willingness to seek bipartisan compromise and work with Republicans. That stance infuriated the Democratic base, which deluged House members with calls demanding stronger opposition to the new Trump administration.
Those calls, and the extreme cruelty of the Republican House budget, have stiffened Democratic spines. Before the budget resolution battle on the floor, Jeffries declared Tuesday that “they will not get a single Democratic vote.”
Jeffries was true to his word. Every Democrat voted against the bill.
Only one Republican, the deficit-obsessed Thomas Massie, voted against the resolution on the grounds that it would massively increase debt (which it would). That gave Johnson an extremely narrow 217-215 win. But there are plenty of other fault lines in the GOP which could open up as the process grinds on.
Republican House members from purple districts like Nicole Malliotakis (New York) and Jeff Van Drew (New Jersey) have expressed concerns about Medicaid cuts. Johnson has papered over those concerns in part by mendaciously suggesting that the cuts he’s proposing won’t come from Medicaid, even though everyone knows they will.
It’s unclear whether Malliotakis, Van Drew, and other members in potentially vulnerable districts will vote for Medicaid cuts when they can no longer pretend that’s not what they’re doing. As political scientist Jonathan Bernstein notes, “The long-term history of the less extreme conservatives is that they regularly fold.”
On the other hand, Republicans are already facing substantial resistance and blowback from constituents angered by chaotic spending cuts and federal worker firings instituted by Trump and his sugar daddy Musk. Musk’s unilateral austerity measures included 1,000 layoffs at Veteran’s Affairs — layoffs so indiscriminate that the VA had to stumble over itself to rehire many of those fired as it realized it could not function adequately without them.
Ruthlessly stripping healthcare from veterans is popular with basically no one, and Musk’s other measures have inspired pushback as well. Belligerent constituents in Glenn Grothman’s solidly conservative Wisconsin district caught him flatfooted at his town hall, booing and jeering as he tried to tout Trump’s achievements and demanding he oppose Social Security and Medicaid cuts. Alaska’s Nick Begich hosted a virtual town hall which was flooded with constituent comments demanding he address federal job losses and illegal executive actions.
One rattled Republican, speaking anonymously, told Axios, “It would be more helpful if some of those DOGE folks showed more sensitivity to the people who are being terminated this way ... who didn't do anything wrong."
The honeymoon is already over
The anger at the town halls is showing up in polling.
Musk, who has been boasting about the cuts made by DOGE, is extremely unpopular. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll found him with 34 percent approval to 49 percent disapproval — a net 15 point deficit. Musk did have 70 percent approval among Republicans. But even there, only 56 percent said they approved of him (illegally) shutting down government programs that he decided are unnecessary.
Musk’s unpopularity seems to be undermining the president as well. Most presidents get a honeymoon bump at the start of their term, and Trump entered office on January 24 with 49.7 percent approval and 41.5 disapproval, or 8.2 points above water. A month later, his numbers in 538’s poll aggregator are sinking fast; he’s now less than one point above water.
Put it all together, and Democrats have a prime opportunity to make Musk the face of the budget deal and of the Republican Party.
Flailing House Republicans are already doing much of the work for Democrats. In a CNN interview yesterday, for example, Montana’s Ryan Zinke tried his best to avoid admitting he was willing to cut Medicaid, and ended his bumbling display of disingenuousness by citing the authority of … Elon Musk.
“Elon Musk has said there could be a trillion dollars — a trillion with a T — a trillion dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse,” Zinke burbled. (Musk himself admitted Wednesday that he’ll “make mistakes” and “won’t be perfect.”)
Again, Musk’s approval is 15 points underwater, and even Republicans are extremely skeptical that this unelected billionaire should be the one in charge of deciding whether poor people receive healthcare. Yet Republicans like Zinke are touting Musk as a guru leading the way on spending cuts, even while others like the aforementioned Malliotakis try to publicly distance themselves from DOGE’s “rash decisions.”
Democrats should take Zinke at his word and staple Musk to his shiny forehead. A great opportunity to do that is the government funding deadline, which is March 14. Congress needs to pass legislation to fund the government by then or there will be a shutdown.
Since far-right House members love any opportunity to vote against spending, Republicans in the past have relied on Democratic votes to keep government open. But Jeffries in early February told his caucus that the illegal executive assault on government programs “must be choked off in the upcoming government funding bill.” For the sake of our democracy, hopefully that means Dems will provide no votes unless there are enforceable provisions to curtail Musk’s lawless rampage.
Democrats are in the minority in the House and the Senate. As a result, they don’t have the ability to prevent budget deals from moving forward on their own. But Musk is increasingly unpopular, Trump is increasingly unpopular, and the GOP coalition is wavering. Democrats have a chance to tie every Republican to Musk’s ugly regime — and maybe even to derail Trump’s grotesque and illegal power grab.
The unified vote in the House earlier this week was a good first step. If Democrats stay united, maybe they can make March a worse month for Musk, and a better month for the country, than this miserable month of February has been.
That’s it for today
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Thanks for reading.
Beware, however—Johnson tried to claim the Republican town halls were packed with paid Democrat demonstrators on Kaitlin Collins’ CNN show Wednesday night. That will be the new narrative—Democrats are harassing reps who are trying to work for you in Congress. 😕
"One rattled Republican, speaking anonymously, told Axios, “It would be more helpful if some of those DOGE folks showed more sensitivity to the people who are being terminated this way ... who didn't do anything wrong."" This sentence clearly demonstrates how Republicans feel about hurting people - don't stop the hurt, just speak softly and say how sorry you are for their pain. Thoughts and prayers ad nauseam.