By Michael Woyton
Another day another failed attempt to pass a budget?
As this is being written, there is talk that the House of Representatives under the “leadership” of Speaker Mike Johnson may or may not vote on another bill to avoid a government shutdown.
What caused this congressional kerfuffle?
President-not-elect Elon Musk and his Mar-a-Lago bestie, the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist Donald Trump, that’s who.
Only three days ago, there was a bipartisan deal between the leaders of the Senate and the House that, of course, contained stuff that not everybody liked, but everyone could live with it, according to NBC News.
Everyone except faux president Musk and the Florida senior citizen who decided they needed the debt limit either extended or abolished now, before Musk, er, Trump officially takes over.
Dutifully, Johnson pulled the bill and came up with another version, but that didn’t pass the House Thursday night.
For the record, all but two Democrats voted against the spending package as did a whopping 38 Republicans, who NBC reported were against the debt extension.
There’s a lot of inside baseball that could be discussed, but suffice to say Musk’s inaugural bill proposal suffered an amazingly stunning defeat.
He even took to his social media platform to threaten Republicans: “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!”
According to a timeline from USA Today, 14 hours before Trump saying the original bill should be replaced, Musk was doing his muskiness on what used to be Twitter “repeatedly writing that lawmakers should ‘kill the bill’ in a tsunami of more than 100 posts on Wednesday that swamped the carefully negotiated funding measure.”
Those who follow politics “took notice, questioning who was setting the Republican agenda, Trump or Musk?” USA Today said.
There is a Plan C, according to Fox News, that the House GOPers have tentatively reached to avoid closing the government’s doors and turning off the lights at the end of Friday.
It includes an agreement to act on the debt limit next year — which was going to happen in June anyway — as well as disaster aid and agricultural support.
However, it’s anybody’s guess whether the bill will get through the House, then get passed by the Senate and land on President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature before a shutdown happens.
And because they so spectacularly failed to get what they wanted, maybe Presidents Musk and Trump should take a few minutes and watch Schoolhouse Rock’s “How a Bill Becomes a Law.”
Lead art: Screen grab from Schoolhouse Rock How a Bill Becomes a Law from YouTube.com
On Second Thought 