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To avoid a government shutdown just days before Christmas, House Speaker Mike Johnson acceded to pressure from Congressional Democrats to go along with a huge omnibus spending bill to keep the government funded through March 14, 2025. This year-end 1547-page bill was “full of excessive spending, special interest giveaways & pork barrel politics,” as described by Vivek Ramaswamy, the co-head of President-elect Donald Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE).

As their price for averting a government shutdown, the Democrats insisted on attaching an array of “Christmas tree” items that did not belong in what should have been a simple continuing resolution to keep the federal government operating. Fortunately, the tax-and-spend Democrats did not get their way in the end, thanks to the watchful eyes of Mr. Ramaswamy and his co-head of DOGE, Elon Musk. They fulfilled their mandate from President-elect Trump to bring efficiency and transparency to the federal government by blowing the whistle on this recklessly bloated spending package.

Mr. Ramaswamy did something that most members of Congress were too lazy to do. He read the entire bill and saw how bad it was.

“The bill could have easily been under 20 pages,” Vivek wrote. “Instead, there are dozens of unrelated policy items crammed into the 1,547 pages of this bill. There’s no legitimate reason for them to be voted on as a package deal by a lame-duck Congress. 72 pages worth of ‘Pandemic Preparedness and Response’ policy; renewal of the much-criticized ‘Global Engagement Center,’ a key player in the federal censorship state; 17 different pieces of Commerce legislation; paving the way for a new football stadium in D.C.; a pay raise for Congressmen & Senators and making them eligible for Federal Employee Health Benefits. It’s indefensible to ram these measures through at the last second without debate.”

Elon Musk was even more blistering in his attacks on the omnibus spending bill masquerading as a continuing resolution. “The more I learn, the more obvious it becomes that this spending bill is a crime,” Mr. Musk wrote in one of a succession of posts on X blasting the bill and urging its defeat. After President-elect Trump advised Speaker Johnson to get “rid of all of the traps being set by the Democrats, which will economically and, in other ways, destroy our country,” the so-called “bipartisan” omnibus spending bill was dead.

A drastically streamlined continuing resolution acceptable to Mr. Trump, which would have given the incoming Trump administration more financial leeway by suspending the debt ceiling for two years, went down to defeat in the House. All but two Democrats voted against it, along with thirty-eight fiscally conservative Republicans.

Finally, as the clock ticked down just past the Friday midnight shutdown deadline, the Senate approved a 118-page continuing resolution that the House had previously passed, which President Biden signed into law. This CR continues to fund the federal government at current levels through March 14, 2025, adds $100 billion in disaster relief primarily for hurricane victims, and adds $10 billion in agricultural assistance to farmers. Virtually all the Democrats’ Christmas tree ornaments were removed. But the Democrats did achieve one win – they managed to fend off President-elect Trump’s call to lift the debt ceiling before he takes office.

The spendthrifts in Congress are aghast that their usual push at the end of the year to rush through a bloated omnibus spending bill failed this year. In response, Democrats have trotted out their new talking point that Elon Musk is the real president-in-waiting and Donald Trump is merely his puppet.

For example, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) said on MSNBC: “It’s not Donald Trump asking for this, it’s very clearly President Elon Musk asking for this. The fact that Donald Trump has been completely AWOL during these negotiations, to the point where only after Elon Musk publicly tweets about his displeasure about this budget deal, all of a sudden Donald Trump, chief of staff to Elon Musk, comes trotting in and blows up the deal.”

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) posted on X: “It’s clear who’s in charge, and it’s not President-elect Donald Trump. Shadow President Elon Musk spent all day railing against Republicans’ CR, succeeded in killing the bill, and then Trump decided to follow his lead.”

Democrats are gaslighting the American people. President-elect Donald Trump is very much in charge and will remain in charge once he is inaugurated as the 47^th president of the United States. Mr. Trump appointed Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to serve as co-heads of his Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE’s stated mission “is to decentralize the narrative around government spending, giving power back to the people to hold government entities accountable for their financial decisions.” That is precisely what Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy did when they shone a light to expose the backdoor deal that would have led to a huge waste of taxpayers’ money. They were following President-elect Trump’s direction, not the other way around.

Besides, we only have one president of the United States at a time. Right now, that president is still Joe Biden, whose severe cognitive decline has caused him to disappear into the shadows and cede his presidential powers to unnamed, unelected individuals. President Biden was AWOL during the negotiations leading up to the passage of the final continuing resolution.

In one of the worst political cover-ups in American history, those surrounding Joe Biden, along with his other allies and a compliant media, hid the extent of his diminished mental faculties and unfitness to serve as president. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reported just recently, based on multiple sources, that White House aides were aware of this worsening problem in the early days of the Biden administration. They carefully controlled his schedule and public appearances to keep the American people in the dark.

Yet many of the same contemptible participants in the cover-up of Biden’s mental decline are trying now to portray President-elect Donald Trump as Elon Musk’s puppet. There is no limit to how low they will go to deceive the American people.

Not to worry, however. A new commander-in-chief in full command of his faculties, who will restore America to its rightful place as the shining city on a hill, will be taking over as president of the United States on January 20, 2025.