Lawmakers are scrambling to avoid a government shutdown, as members of both parties say they don’t want funding to lapse next week. But one person might not mind if Congress misses the deadline: Elon Musk.
“Sounds great,” he wrote last week on X of a potential shutdown.
Musk has already demonstrated his ability to derail Republican leaders’ plans and destroy spending bills, as he did in December when he led a revolt against a carefully crafted bipartisan funding plan. If Republicans can’t win over Musk — who still has tremendous power in Donald Trump’s White House — on their tentative plan to extend current funding levels for several more months, they could find themselves facing another social media mob and rewriting the legislation at the last moment.
Funding lapses in the past have resulted in hundreds of thousands of federal workers being furloughed without pay until Congress reached an agreement. “Essential” workers who keep working during shutdowns also do not get paid until after a new spending bill passes (lawmakers have been able to codify back pay in recent years).
Shutdowns have also delayed clinical research, halted disease surveillance, limited access to national parks, frozen federal agencies’ work and slowed passport processing and other services. Basically, an expanded version of what Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is accomplishing while the government is open.
Musk’s allies on Capitol Hill are already offering some warning signs for Republican leaders on a continuing resolution.
“The greatest irony will be that there’s been a lot of attention paid to the waste and abuse at USAID and foreign aid, and yet the bill that they will vote on will continue spending on foreign aid at the same rate as we’re spending,” Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul told NOTUS of GOP leaders’ plans. “I will fight against the spending bill because I think to continue, particularly foreign aid at the current level, is really to ignore all of the waste that they’re finding with DOGE.”
Other far-right Republicans say they hope to support a stopgap funding bill, with several House Freedom Caucus members telling reporters after a meeting at the White House on Wednesday that they don’t want a shutdown to halt Trump’s agenda.
“Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are literally hoping and praying for a shutdown to stop the momentum of what the president’s agenda is and what the American agenda is,” Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania said.
Musk has shrugged off the effects of shutdowns in the past. In December, he said that “the government doesn’t actually shut down when they say ‘shut down’, as all essential personnel keep working.”
“So … shut it down,” he wrote.
Republicans have unified control of the government, but many GOP lawmakers have refused to vote for any government funding bills in recent years, while also calling for steep spending cuts. Instead, House Speaker Mike Johnson has repeatedly relied on Democratic votes to keep the government up and running. This time, Democrats are threatening not to help him, demanding assurances that the executive branch would actually implement spending provisions instead of ignoring Congress.
The showdown is testing just how willing Democrats are to challenge Trump, after many of them spent a decade slamming Republicans for using funding deadlines as leverage. And it is testing GOP leaders in the House, who hardly have a majority and have to contend with defiant rank-and-file members — let alone Musk.
Musk met with House Republicans on Wednesday night, but members told NOTUS they didn’t specifically discuss government spending during the conversation. When asked if GOP leaders should ask Musk to sign off on their plan first, Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia mentioned that Musk’s complaints about the spending bill in December weren’t entirely factual.
“We’re not as bad as they like to make us out to be,” Scott said of Congress.
Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina also said he doesn’t think it’s necessary for Musk to throw his weight behind the upcoming stopgap bill. “That’s up to us,” he said. “We’ve got to get to 218.”
Rep. Rick Allen theorized, perhaps optimistically, that Musk is “not gonna say anything” on the government funding legislation. “I think he’s busy,” Allen told NOTUS.
The Trump administration would face logistical challenges rolling out its agenda during a shutdown, because laws and court cases limit what kind of activities agencies can continue during spending lapses. But Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Montana Republican who served as secretary of the interior during Trump’s first term, said agency heads have a good amount of latitude in creating their own shutdown plans to comply with those rules. Officials could try to promote their own priorities absent new instructions from Congress.
“If you’re a Democrat, you don’t want to do this because you don’t want to give even more control to the administration to determine who’s critical and essential,” Zinke told NOTUS.
The Office of Management and Budget — now headed by Russell Vought, who has worked to expand the executive branch’s ability to slash spending — often advises agencies on shutdown plans. Trump’s cabinet members, likely with input from Vought and Musk’s DOGE team, would choose which employees would keep working during a shutdown.
Top appropriators in the House and Senate spent Wednesday working toward a full-year spending deal, although members said they expect Congress would still have to pass a short-term funding extension while those bills are completed.
Rep. Tom Cole, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, told reporters he still hopes to strike a deal for full funding bills, but he plans to introduce a stopgap spending bill this weekend to keep most of the government funded at current levels.
“We’re going ahead with the full CR through September 30, because we can’t get everything done,” Cole said. “But the speaker wants to continue to negotiate. We still think a deal is better than a CR.”
“I’d put it at a coin toss now,” Sen. Thom Tillis told NOTUS on Wednesday of the chances of a spending lapse. “If we have one, it wouldn’t be prolonged, and hopefully we can avoid it.”
“Nobody wants to shut down,” Tillis continued. “Everybody, particularly Elon, needs to take into account how unproductive it is. It’s very costly to do a shutdown, because what’s happening right now is that organizations have to plan for a shutdown. So the built-in cost of even preparing for something that may not happen is high.”
“It’s just a waste of time,” Tillis said. “Very un-DOGE-like.”
And Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, responded to Musk’s comments by pointing out that “elected officials in both parties are saying they don’t want a shutdown.”
“Hopefully they’ll prevail,” he told NOTUS.
Democrats point out that the Trump administration’s sweeping personnel cuts are already having similar effects.
“Donald Trump and Elon Musk are already shutting down the government,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren told NOTUS on Wednesday when asked if she would support a stopgap spending bill.
And a House Democratic aide who asked to speak anonymously so they could be frank said many members don’t see the use in “allocating money that they’re not going to spend.”
“It seems preposterous,” this aide said.
Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, warned Democrats against withholding their votes.
“Some of my Democratic colleagues have argued that there should be a provision to limit the powers of the executive branch to spend money. Republicans will never vote for that,” he said. “If they’re insistent on that provision, the government will shut down. Nobody benefits from a shutdown, and I don’t think anybody wants it.”
When asked about Musk’s comments that a shutdown “sounds great,” Kennedy replied that “everybody is entitled to their opinion.”
“It’s better than a poke in an eye with a sharp stick, as they say, but shutdowns are no fun,” he told NOTUS. “Inevitably, you open the government back up, and in the meantime, you scare people badly. So why do it?”
Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican, agreed.
“It’s not a smart thing to say,” he said of Musk’s view of shutdowns.
Rep. Mike Kelly, a Pennsylvania Republican, told NOTUS he doesn’t start to panic about shutdowns until closer to a deadline, because he’s witnessed so many last-minute deals since first being elected.
Kelly rejected Musk’s view that a shutdown is ultimately costless: “That’s not an option with us. We can’t shut it down,” he said. “There’s too many people depending on this.”
For Speaker Johnson, landing on a bill that can pass — but also won’t provoke Musk’s ire — is like walking a tightrope.
Johnon is “in a really difficult position,” Kelly said. “We’re never going to get 100% of the team buying into whatever it is.”
It’s the “hardest job in Washington,” Kelly said.
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Haley Byrd Wilt is a reporter at NOTUS. Ben T.N. Mause is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Riley Rogerson, a reporter at NOTUS, contributed to this story.