The House just passed its budget resolution, with large cuts to the Medicaid budget over the next decade. It remains to be seen whether it can get the Senate to go along, but there is a more basic question that really needs to be answered as background to the budget negotiations. What do Congressional appropriations mean in the Musk-Trump MAGA era.

Unless you’ve been asleep since January 20th, you’ve been watching Elon Musk and his “super-high IQ” DOGE boys run around from one government agency after another, firing employers, canceling contracts, and in some cases, such as USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, closing down whole agencies. Musk and Trump are claiming that they have the power to do this unilaterally, even when Congress has explicitly appropriated the money for the contract or programs in question.

Thus far, with almost no exceptions, Republicans in Congress have all said this is fine. They apparently agree that the president doesn’t have to spend money if he decides not to. According to the word from the White House, the president not only doesn’t have to spend the money appropriated by Congress, he doesn’t even have to give a reason for not spending it. Trump can just yell about it being waste, fraud, or DEI and that’s good enough for Republicans in Congress.

Since this is now the law of the land, according to the MAGA Republicans, what is the point of spending endless hours haggling between the members in each house of Congress and then fighting between two houses to come up with a final document. Even the “super-high IQ” DOGE boys should recognize this squabbling as a colossal waste of time.

In the MAGA era, since all the decisions on spending are made by Trump, why shouldn’t Congress just appropriate huge amounts in each category and let the Dear Leader decide what should actually be spent. Since he will apparently make the decisions on spending anyhow, what’s the point of members of Congress pretending they are deciding how tax dollars should be spent when they have instead delegated that authority to Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

Supposedly, Musk is demanding transparency in government, even though DOGE largely operates in secrecy. (Anyone know where DOGE’s $30 million budget went?)  If we are going to have transparency, shouldn’t the Republicans in Congress stop pretending they are actually allocating money for specific programs. And if the Democrats in Congress want to pretend they are earning their paychecks, shouldn’t they refuse to go along with this ridiculous charade?