PATHETIC: GOP Senators Beg Elon To Let Them Have A Say In Cuts

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I didn’t even know where to begin with this insane ball of crap in yesterday’s edition of Jeff Bezos’ Big Swinging Dick. I mean, imagine being the reporters who had to work on this AND PRETEND EVERYTHING IS NORMAL. Nothing about this is normal. Elon Musk holding an audience with Republican senators where they’re basically asking his permission to have input on all the pillaging he’s done? Hoo boy.

And of course the Bezos bozos write this story without hammering home the obvious: Musk is offering to fix anything that’s upsetting the REPUBLICAN senators with a phone call. He even promises to set up some kind of hotline for them.

By the way, Musk’s cuts meet what any smart lawyer should recognize as meeting the “arbitrary and capricious” standard. When applying this standard, courts take a so-called “hard look” at the agency’s decision-making process, examining whether the agency considered enough relevant factors, provided a rational explanation for its choice, and didn’t rely on unsupported assumptions.

Like, I don’t know, maybe saying millions of people are collecting Social Security checks on the same number?

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo sums it up via his Backchannel newsletter:

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.

Josh points out their entire defense to constituents boils down to “hey, don’t look at me, I didn’t do it!”

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.

Republicans want to make Trump (via Musk) happy without taking responsibility for their own weakness. Once things become public, once elected officials have to vote on these cuts, they put targets on their own backs, because these cuts really have no public support at all.