Senators lament Elon Musk’s influence and say shutdown would have been avoided if he ‘kept his mouth shut’

Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are both fed up after Elon Musk torpedoed a spending deal at the behest of President-elect Donald Trump and might trigger a government shutdown.

Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff criticized the fact that the legislation delayed crucial assistance to victims of Hurricane Helene and Milton in his home state of Georgia.

“Disaster relief and economic assistance for Georgia farmers would already be on the way if Elon Musk could kept his mouth shut,” he told The Independent.

The X/Twitter and Tesla executive whom Trump charged alongside businessman Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a Department of Government Efficiency advisory group forced House Republicans on Tuesday to scrap a continuing resolution to keep the government open until March.

In response, Republicans put in a much slimmer piece of legislation that all but two Democrats in the House and a handful of conservative Republicans opposed, killing the bill late Thursday.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska who has long criticized Trump, said Musk’s sinking the legislation showed the power of his influence.

“You would think that there is, there's value in your election certificate, that we're back here to do the work, and we will do the work,” she told The Independent. “This is obviously a level of influence that we saw the impact yesterday.”

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Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who had excoriated Trump for letting Musk criticize the original spending agreement before the president-elect commented, laughed at Musk’s influence.

“It's a new world,” Romney, a frequent critic of Trump who will retire at the end of the year, said, “New political world with new players.”

Musk’s new role means will also mean he will regularly have to clash with the members of both chambers who keep the government open. Susan Collins, who in January will take the reins of the Senate Appropriations Committee that writes the spending bills to keep the government open, blamed Trump for Musk’s influence.

“If he'd done it alone without the president's backing, I don’t think it would have torpedoed the agreement,” Collins told The Independent.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent democratic socialist from Vermont, said Musk’s influence confirmed his years of railing against the influence of the ultra-rich in politics.

“When you have Elon Musk, an unelected official, telling Republicans what they have to do and threatening to primary them if they don't obey his wishes, you’re really seeing the power of oligarchy and the power of big money,” he told The Independent.

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Democrats pointed out how the stipped-down version of the bill that Musk wanted had languge that removed crucial provisions to reign in pharmacy benefit managers, which serve as intermediaries between drug makers and consumers.

“So I think that Washington is consumed with all the fighting, but in coffee shops around America, people are going to say Donald Trump said that he was going to bust these middlemen who are ripping off seniors and taxpayers, and now he's letting them off the hooked,” Sen. Ron Wyden, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said.

Republicans in the House of Representatives spent much of the morning attempting to find a new way forward. But it would still have to pass the Senate, which Democrats will control until Janury 3rd.

Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat who lost his re-election in Montana, said Musk’s influence caused the deal to fall apart.

“I mean, look, the house has taken orders from the unelected false president, Elon Musk, that's the kind of s*** you run into when you started listening to people who aren't elected,” he told The Independent. “They need pull their heads out of the back end of whoever they got it up and get the job done.”