Member Newsletter
This article from the Post is just one jaw-dropper after another. Musk met yesterday with Republican senators and then the House GOP caucus. Notionally it’s about communication. The folks on the Hill are getting a bit unhappy there’s a “lack of communication” about DOGE plans to shut down departments and unilaterally rewrite the federal budget. The Republicans want more details about what Musk’s doing, which — setting aside the infinite absurdities of this moment — would seem reasonable enough. They’re Congress after all. They’re literally in charge of this stuff. Read this graf …
Musk told a group of Republican senators in a closed-door lunch that he wanted to set up a direct line for them when they have questions, allowing them to get a near-instant response to their concerns, senators said. Some senators were given Musk’s phone number during Wednesday’s meeting, and the entrepreneur said he would “create a system where members of Congress can call some central group” to get problematic cuts reversed quickly, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) said.
There’s a budget, appropriated money that defines what the government does and provides the money to do it. But Musk, absent any visibility even for much of the executive branch, is simply changing everything. But wait … he’s going to set up a system where Republican members of Congress can call and ask to “get problematic cuts reversed quick.”
What the fuck?
First of all, why are Republicans the only ones finding out what’s even happening in the government? That’s a good question. But set aside the privileged position of Republicans here. How on earth are we in this position where members of Congress, the ones who write the budget, appropriate and assign the money, now have to go hat in hand to beg for changes or even information from the guy who actually seems to be running the government? Elon isn’t just the President. In the realm of administering the fundamental structures of the state he’s something quite a bit more than the President. It’s impossible to capture the level of constitutional perversion this represents.
Later Elon told folks in the House he’d set up a special line for them too. “We have been operating so far just through Marjorie and her connections with Elon, with the Trump administration,” said Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO).
Okay.
I mean really, WTF, but let’s move on from the Marjorie Taylor Greene part of this.
Next we learn that Josh Hawley (R-MO) said that Elon told him that “unless Congress takes action on this, none of it is permanent.”
Did Hawley need Musk to tell him that? Again, what’s really key here is the structural obsequiousness. But hold on, there are key points coming here.
You don’t need to feel sorry for these clowns. It’s all on them. This is all happening because Trump is allowing Elon to run free. And Trump is all powerful because Republicans control Congress — the locus of the true power to restrain a renegade president — and they refuse to place any limits on him. But for all of that these are elected members of Congress begging this constitutional monstrosity, a metastasis on the state, to allow them to have back some of what Congress already mandated as a matter of law. It is perverse and grotesque.
But the real story comes into view in an unassuming paragraph.
The gist of the whole story is that DOGE is making these guys nervous. They’re hearing from constituents who are upset. They don’t really know what’s happening. So they’re worried about more and worse surprises. The Senate and kinda the House is saying this is ultimately our choice. They’re kinda sorta trying to assert control. But not really. Here’s the key graf …
But it remains unclear if Republicans are willing to vote to support Musk. Some lawmakers are worried about the political price they could pay for DOGE, as constituents deluge their offices with angry phone calls and show up in droves to town halls that leaders have urged lawmakers to avoid. Some members have resented that lack of communication.
Here we’re getting, if obliquely, to the convenience of DOGE and a decision these guys can’t seem to make. We’ve seen several bedraggled members of Congress on the defensive back in their districts saying basically, ‘hey, what can I do? I’m not in the loop.’ They want it to happen. Or at least they’re afraid to say it shouldn’t happen. In most cases it appeals to their ideological impulses. But at the end of the day you want to say, you’re uninvolved. What can I do?
But if you have to vote for it then it all gets written down. You can’t say ‘Oh I don’t know what Elon’s doing.’ It’s all there in a bill and you have to vote yes or no. Then you’re really on the line. That’s really the rub with all of this.
We say very rightly that Congress proposes a budget, appropriates money. They make a law with the amounts of money and what it’s for. This is our constitutional system. But there’s an equally consequential, in a way more fundamental part of this process sitting there in plain sight which gets less attention. Politics and democratic decision-making can happen because there’s a public discussion of the things that might happen. People have to vote yes or no on certain written out decisions. And then they’re responsible for those decisions at elections. Each stage of that process allows people to make their opinions and desired choices known. But the key is that the budget is being changed without anyone actually knowing what’s happening. Even members of Congress. It’s important to note that literally nothing DOGE is doing is public. Everything we think we know is from press reporting based on leaks. So no one knows what’s happening and no one who is accountable to anyone at an election is actually doing it. Some Republican senators are coming in now, as the article explains, and saying ‘hey we get the final word here. Nothing is official until we vote.’ But that’s BS. USAID and CFPB and huge swaths of the federal government have already been shut down. So for calendar 2025 the decision has already been made. And to a great extent DOGE is creating faits accompli into the future. Once you fire everyone and cancel all the contracts you can’t just flip a switch and it comes back into existence. That’s all by design.
Once things become public, once elected officials have to own things then stuff slows way down. Why? Because very little of this has any public support at all. That’s the heart of all of this. These guys don’t want to know. They want to say they’re uninvolved, have no say. Once this comes out of the coup space then everything changes. If it does.