How many people will be working without pay this holiday season? How many citizens will lose access to parks and museums, or face delays accessing public health services or Social Security?

Among other things, these are questions that will be answered on December 20th in the US House of Representatives, where Congresspeople are scrambling to pass a government operations spending budget before the Friday midnight deadline.

What happened? A previous version of the bill became a target for Elon Musk, soon-to-be head of DOGE (or the Department of Government Efficiency). Musk felt that the previous spending bill was too wasteful, so he went on a tweet rampage on X, subtly warning that any Republican who votes for the bill “deserves to be voted out.”

Only after Musk criticized the bill did President-elect Trump also condemn the bill as a “betrayal” of America. This bizarre example of the tail wagging the dog led Democrats to make jokes about President Musk (social media would soon later create “Vice-president Trump”).

But this does raise some serious questions. Trump isn’t even in power yet, so why are members of his team already calling the shots? And for that matter, how much power does Elon Musk have that he can take the initiative to bully elected officials and Trump just goes along with it?

And, most importantly, how many ordinary, everyday Americans going to have to pinch pennies until a budget is decided?