Harvard graduate and Emmy Winner, Kaizen D. Asledu, breaks down the CR Bill for the American people.
Congress failed to pass a budget Bill and it looks like we're headed for a government shutdown. In large part this is due to Elon Musk now depending on how you feel about Elon you might view this as a positive thing or negative thing, and in this video I'm going to give you comprehensive context on what exactly is going on and I'm also going to offer you my perspective on the influence of Elon, billionaires more generally, and the legislative process.
Here are the facts.
Every year Congress has from about February to October 1st to pass a bill for the following year. So this year in 2024, they are forming the budget for 2025. However, if they miss that October 1st deadline, then they form what is called a CR Bill, or a Continuing Resolution Bill. That bill is meant to be a temporary measure that maintains a prior year's level of funding in order to prevent a government shutdown, and they need to pass that bill before December 20th when all the Congress people go home for Christmas in order to ensure that the government doesn't shut down.
Now, the concept of a government shutdown sounds bad, but it's pretty common. There have been 21 government shutdowns in the last 50 years and even during a government shutdown essential services are still maintained, like the operation of our military or Social Security. So in this case, the CR bill would have just typically mimicked 2024 levels of funding for 2025.
However there are several things that make this year unique. First, is its length. It's 1547 pages long, and only 8 [pages] are actually CR Bill. The rest of them are supplemental funding and legislation. [I'd be very concerned about that legislation that no one has read.]
The second thing is that rather than just maintaining 2024 levels of funding, there's actually $100 billion dollars extra allocated to this CR Bill. Most of that $100 billion is for disaster relief. And $100 billion constitutes a 6% increase over 2024's budget.
Now you might not have any issues with that, but what is raising hackles is the fact that most Congress people had less than 24 hours to read the entire 1500-page bill. Most Congress people were given the Bill on December 17th and expected to vote on it less than 24 hours later on December 18th. This is because both Democratic and Republican leadership in the house formed the Bill, but that process wasn't transparent to the rest of the Congress people. On top of all that, there were specific provisions in the Bill that many people objected to, like, for example, the fact that it gave a pay increase to members of Congress; it's worth noting that the pay increase is relatively modest, around 3%, and it's a cost of living increase. That said, many people objected to the fact that Congress people would be giving themselves a pay increase at all, given the state of the country and the fact that many people are struggling to get their bills paid. There's also the fact that the bill would allow Congress people to be exempt from Obamacare, even though the average American is not. Or the fact that the bill allocates funding for the Global Engagement Center which many people have critiqued as a propaganda instrument and censorship instrument that is been used against the American people and now it's getting even more funding.
Now I think it's fair to say that under normal circumstances, the vast majority of Americans would not have any idea what a CR bill is what a CR bill is being passed or the fact that it's being passed or the fact that is 1500 pages and Congress people are given less than 24 hours to read it. But what's unprecedented about this is that Elon Musk heard about it and started posting a lot about the whole situation on X.
Because Elon has such a huge following, that caused many people to get into an uproar and that caused many people to start calling their Congress people to have the CR Bill not passed. And for the record, I called representative Mike Johnson, who is a leader of Republican in the House to express my personal disapproval for the manner in which the CR bill is being passed, And if you feel the same, I recommend that you take action by calling his office too. What Elon and many people were objecting to is the manner in which the CR Bill was being passed, the contents of the CR Bill, and the timeline for the CR Bill being passed as well. And the CR Bill did have bipartisan support from leadership of the Democrats and the Republican party. Now that leadership has argued that this is a bipartisan Bill and the $100 billion extra is needed for disaster relief that the American people have wanted for months. But I would argue, if that's the case pass the disaster relief as a separate bill rather than making it part of a 1500 page behemoth that none of you are even actually reading and regardless this is a fundamentally broken process we have politicians using money that is not theirs to give themselves pay raises and paying for things that they haven't even read using our money that we can't afford.
Now some people have objected to Elon Musk influence, particularly Democrats and to that I would respond with three things one on the partisan angle there's actually a two to one ratio of Democratic donors to Republican donors who are billionaires. In fact, in the 2024 election, the Kamala campaign had $1 billion dollars that they spent, whereas the Trump campaign had $400 million. But partisanship aside, Elon is actually quite unique in that we can actually see the influence that he is having in large part because in this particular case his influence was simply using his voice and amplifying it to his large audience and in reality it was not just Elon saying that he opposes it was the people agreeing that they also oppose the CR process as well. Now, I think it's reasonable to be skeptical of anyone's influence, billionaire or not. And Elon certainly has a lot of influence and some of it we can't see and is not transparent but in this particular case we can see exactly what he was standing for and his individual voice only helped amplify the voices of millions of people who disagreed with this entire dysfunctional process. Now on the flip side, do we get to see any of the influence of George Soros or Bill Gates or any of these democratic Mega donors or Republican Mega donors for that matter on the Democratic process? But all of that aside, I think this is actually a tremendously positive development for all of America. So many of us have become disillusioned by politics because we feel that politicians don't have our best interest in mind and we feel like no matter who is in office nothing seems to change but what's changed this time is that we have a degree of transparency and a Public Square in X, where we can actually speak up and we can actually be listened to if enough of us actually exercise our power as a people. I mean look at what happened. Elon Musk his Watchtower and the rest of us did as well. [What, so the virtues of mob rule?] And as a result of that public pressure our elected representatives heard our voice is realize that we are watching and realize that they could not engage in this dysfunctional process and waste our tax money because they didn't have their shit together. We made it clear to our Representatives what we actually want done with our money and they responded and that if that's not Democratic principles in action I don't know what is the reason we felt so disempowered about American politics for so long is because for so long the government has operated in secrecy and when there is secrecy the government has power over the people but when there's transparency the people have power over the government and this bodes extremely well for the success of DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency for the next four years. Because now that we see that when we have transparency, the voice of the people actually matters. Imagine what's going to happen when there's a dedicated Department that is focused on bringing transparency to the people so that we can call out abuses of power and make sure that our money is responsibly spent? So are there things to watch out for with the influence of billionaires more generally? Of course. Are there things to watch out for the influence of Elon Musk in particular? Of course. But at least we can see what he's doing, and in this case I think what he's doing is a good thing
