Musk and Trump hijack government funding bill, putting Kansas farmers at risk | Opinion

The chaos has begun. Again.

Congress had a simple job this week: Pass a continuing resolution to keep the government running for three more months, then head home for Christmas and wait until the new year to do the hard work of long-term budgeting.

The alternative: A stupid, costly government shutdown starting on Friday.

A no-brainer, right?

Maybe not. When Donald Trump is involved — and when Elon Musk is by his side — nothing is ever simple. Everything gets crazy sooner or later. Usually sooner.

Sure enough, Musk — the world’s richest man, and the owner of the X social media platform — on Wednesday decided to scuttle the bill. “This bill should not pass,” he wrote early in the morning, the first in a series of posts aimed at what he regarded as wasteful spending in the bill. By day’s end, President-elect Trump joined him in killing the proposal.

Which kind of raises the question of who really is in charge here? The man who will become president next month? Or the guy who spent a ton of money helping him get into the office?

We don’t really know the answer to that right now. I don’t remember seeing Musk on the ballot, though.

Republican members of the Kansas congressional delegation — everybody but Rep. Sharice Davids — face a different but critical question: Do they owe their loyalty to Musk and Trump? Or to their own home state constituents?

The reason for the question: The now-dead continuing resolution contained $30 billion in funding for farmers — funding that ag-minded folks like Sen. Jerry Moran and Rep. Tracey Mann of Kansas’ Big First district have been seeking for months for Sunflower State farmers and ranchers.

And it’s not at all clear that that farm funding will survive Musk’s crusade.

‘Major wins for agriculture’

Passing a so-called “clean” continuing resolution — which is what a lot of Republicans are now calling for — would “mean dropping $30 billion for farmers, and a one-year extension of the farm bill, among other items, at least for now,” Politico reported on Wednesday afternoon.

Which wouldn’t be great for Kansas farmers who rely on federal support to do their work.

“If there is no assistance for our farmers and ranchers in the Continuing Resolution, I will not support the bill,” Moran posted Monday on social media, before Musk launched his attack on the bill.

Mann, meanwhile, was quoted Wednesday in a Brownfield Ag News article about how the continuing resolution “includes some major wins for agriculture.” Farmers, Mann said, ultimately need a long-term extension of the farm bill, not just the one-year bump everybody expected until Wednesday.

“It’s been infuriating to me that yet again we’re punting for another year,” Mann told Brownfield. “We’ve got to give our agriculture producers certainty that they need.”

Now, thanks to Musk and Trump, things are more uncertain than ever.

Farmers concerned right now

Leaders in the agriculture sector are extremely worried.

“Planting decisions and seed and fertilizer purchases are being made now,” Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, said in a Wednesday letter to Congress, “and farmers cannot wait another month for assistance.”

Maybe this will all work out. The situation is still very fluid, after all. Maybe the farm funding will still come through soon. Maybe Trump and Musk will somehow be able to walk away claiming a victory, and maybe Kansas Republicans in Congress won’t have to make a choice between the state’s economy and their desire not to get crosswise with the GOP’s biggest stars.

Or maybe not. The GOP-controlled House was unable to pass a Trump-backed replacement bill on Thursday. There’s talk that a shutdown fight could last a while yet. If so, everybody loses.

But even if things work out this time, that choice is probably coming for Kansas Republicans sooner or later. Trump’s promises of mass deportations would compromise the state’s meatpacking industry. His fondness for tariffs would almost certainly be a blow to the farm sector’s global exports. If Trump does what he says he wants to do, Kansas will suffer. Our representatives in Washington might be the only ones standing in the way.

The decision — for folks like Moran and Mann — can’t be avoided forever. Now we know it might not wait even until Donald Trump takes office.

This story was originally published December 19, 2024 at 1:02 PM.