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OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
3:32 PM – Wednesday, December 18, 2024
The new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) leaders in Trump’s incoming administration, Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, blasted House GOP leadership on Wednesday, actively urging Republicans to kill a controversial stopgap measure to prevent a government shutdown.
“This bill should not pass,” Musk posted on his X platform.
“Ever seen a bigger piece of pork?” Musk continued, referencing an image showing the legislative text.
Ramaswamy also chimed in and explained why the new measure is unfavorable in his eyes.
“It’s full of excessive spending, special interest giveaways & pork barrel politics. If Congress wants to get serious about government efficiency, they should VOTE NO,” Ramaswamy posted on X.
“Congress has known about this deadline since they created it in late September. There’s no reason why this couldn’t have gone through the standard process, instead of being rushed to a vote right before Congressmen want to go home for the holidays. The urgency is 100% manufactured.”
Meanwhile, Johnson (R-La.) suggests that the two DOGE leaders should take into account his difficult predicament, even though both Musk and Ramaswamy chairs have widely criticized the spending patch that leadership revealed on Tuesday night.
“I was communicating with Elon last night. Elon and Vivek and I are on a text chain together, and I was explaining to them the background of this,” Johnson said on “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday regarding the controversial new measure.
“Vivek and I talked last night about almost midnight, and he said, ‘Look, I get it. We understand you’re in an impossible position. Everybody knows that,’” Johnson claimed.
The government will shut down on Friday night unless congressional leaders act to stop a lapse. The new resolution on Tuesday would provide government funding through March 14th, 2025.
However, the 1,547-page continuing resolution (CR) is reportedly jam-packed with a variety of add-ons, including $100 billion for disaster relief, a one-year extension of the farm bill, up to $2 billion for the reconstruction of Maryland’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, which collapsed earlier this year after a cargo ship collided with it, and $10 billion for farmer assistance.
Additionally, Breitbart News reported that “The (CR) released Tuesday night — negotiated on the GOP side by Johnson — includes tens of billions of dollars in waste and includes funding for controversial items, including a pay raise for members of Congress as well as a one-year extension of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), which funds organizations that censor conservative media.”
GOP officials continued to post their thoughts on the new CR.
Republicans are openly opposing Johnson’s efforts, accusing him of trying to push the bill through before the 118th Congress ends and lawmakers go home for the holidays.
The measure has angered a slew of Republicans, especially Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, who argue that it should have been a clean CR and that many of the additional provisions should be discussed separately.
Legislators have also complained that they were not given enough time to read the lengthy document.
Johnson has been courting Musk and Ramaswamy since the 2024 election. Earlier this month, he invited them to the U.S. Capitol for talks with senators, he mingled with them both at Mar-a-Lago, and again during one of President-elect Donald Trump’s UFC appearances.
“Remember, guys, we still have just a razor-thin margin of Republicans,” Johnson continued on “Fox & Friends.” “So any bill has to have Democrat votes. They understand the situation. They said, ‘It’s not directed to you, Mr. Speaker, but we don’t like the spending.’”
“We got to get this done because here’s the key: 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,” Johnson added.
At the beginning of next year, Congress will have a busy schedule as it must balance Trump’s plans with the unfinished business of federal funding for fiscal year 2025 before moving on to fiscal year 2026, which is due on October 1st, 2025.
Soon after the news broke, Trump logged on to his Truth Social platform and explained his thoughts on the matter.
“Congress is considering a spending bill that would give sweetheart provisions for government censors and for Liz Cheney. 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. This bill would also give Congress a pay increase while many Americans are struggling this Christmas. Increasing the debt ceiling is not great but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch. If Democrats won’t cooperate on the debt ceiling now, what makes anyone think they would do it in June during our administration? Let’s have this debate now. And we should pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t give Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want. 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,” Trump stated.
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