With an uncharacteristically feistiness, Speaker Mike Johnson took clear sides Sunday in President Donald Trump’s breakup with mega-billionaire Elon Musk.
The Republican House leader and staunch Trump ally said Musk’s criticism of the GOP’s massive tax and budget policy bill will not derail the measure, and he downplayed Musk’s influence over the GOP-controlled Congress.
“I didn’t go out to craft a piece of legislation to please the richest man in the world,” Johnson said on ABC’s “This Week.” “What we’re trying to do is help hardworking Americans who are trying to provide for their families and make ends meet,” Johnson insisted.
Johnson said he has exchanged text messages with Musk since the former chief of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency came out against the GOP bill.
Musk called it an “abomination” that would add to US debts and threaten economic stability. He urged voters to flood Capitol Hill with calls to vote against the measure, which is pending in the Senate after clearing the House. His criticism sparked an angry social media back-and-forth with Trump, who told reporters over the weekend that he has no desire to repair his relationship with Musk.
The speaker was dismissive of Musk’s threats to finance opponents — even Democrats — of Republican members who back Trump’s bill.
“We’ve got almost no calls to the offices, any Republican member of Congress,” Johnson said. “And I think that indicates that people are taking a wait and see attitude. Some who may be convinced by some of his arguments, but the rest understand: this is a very exciting piece of legislation.”
Johnson argued that Musk still believes “that our policies are better for human flourishing. They’re better for the US economy. They’re better for everything that he’s involved in with his innovation and job creation and entrepreneurship.”
The speaker and other Republicans, including Trump’s White House budget chief, continued their push back Sunday against forecasts that their tax and budget plans will add to annual deficits and thus balloon a national debt already climbing toward $40 trillion.
Johnson insisted that Musk has bad information, and the speaker disputed the forecasts of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that scores budget legislation. The bill would extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts, cut spending and reduce some other levies but also leave some 10.9 million more people without health insurance and spike deficits by $2.4 trillion over the decade, according to the CBO’s analysis.
The speaker countered with arguments Republicans have made for decades: That lower taxes and spending cuts would spur economic growth that ensure deficits fall. Annual deficits and the overall debt actually climbed during the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and during Trump’s first presidency, even after sweeping tax cuts.
Russell Vought, who leads the White House Office of Budget and Management, said on Fox News Sunday that CBO analysts base their models of “artificial baselines.” Because the 2017 tax law set the lower rates to expire, CBO’s cost estimates, Vought argued, presuming a return to the higher rates before that law went into effect.
Vought acknowledged CBO’s charge from Congress is to analyze legislation and current law as it is written. But he said the office could issue additional analyzes, implying it would be friendlier to GOP goals. Asked whether the White House would ask for alternative estimates, Vought again put the burden on CBO, repeating that congressional rules allow the office to publish more analysis.
Other Republicans, meanwhile, approached the Trump-Musk battle cautiously.
“As a former professional fighter, I learned a long time ago, don’t get between two fighters,” said Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
He even compared the two billionaire businessmen to a married couple.
“President Trump is a friend of mine but I don’t need to get, I can have friends that have disagreements,” Mullin said. “My wife and I dearly love each other and every now and then, well actually quite often, sometimes she disagrees with me, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t stay focused on what’s best for our family. Right now, there may be a disagreement but we’re laser focused on what is best for the American people.”
US Speaker Mike Johnson downplays Musk’s influence, says Republicans will pass Trump’s tax and budget bill
https://arab.news/gevnh
US Speaker Mike Johnson downplays Musk’s influence, says Republicans will pass Trump’s tax and budget bill
- “I didn’t go out to craft a piece of legislation to please the richest man in the world,” Johnson said on ABC’s “This Week”
- Musk had called the budget bill an “abomination” that would add to US debts and threaten economic stability
A month on, flood-struck Aceh still reels from worst disaster since 2004 tsunami
- Aceh accounts for almost half of death toll in Sumatra floods that struck in November
- Over 450,000 remain displaced as of Friday, as governor extended state of emergency
JAKARTA: Four weeks since floodwaters and torrents of mud swept across Aceh province, villages are still overwhelmed with debris while communities remain inundated, forced to rely on each other to speed up recovery efforts.
The deadly floods and landslides, triggered by extreme weather linked to Cyclone Senyar, hit the provinces of North Sumatra, West Sumatra and Aceh in late November.
Aceh, the westernmost province of Indonesia, was the worst-hit. Accounting for almost half of the 1,137 death toll, a month later more than 450,000 people are still unable to return to their homes, as many struggle to access clean water, food, electricity and medical supplies.
“We saw how people resorted to using polluted river water for their needs,” Ira Hadiati, Aceh coordinator for the Medical Emergency Rescue Committee, or MER-C, told Arab News on Friday.
Many evacuation shelters were also lacking toilets and washing facilities, while household waste was “piling up on people’s lawns,” she added.
In many regions, people’s basic needs “were still unmet,” said Annisa Zulkarnain, a volunteer with Aceh-based youth empowerment organization Svara.
“Residents end up helping each other and that’s still nowhere near enough, and even with volunteers there are still some limitations,” she told Arab News.
Volunteers and aid workers in Aceh have grown frustrated with the central government’s response, which many have criticized as slow and ineffective.
And Jakarta continues to ignore persistent calls to declare the Sumatra floods a national disaster, which would unlock emergency funds and help streamline relief efforts.
“It seems like there’s a gap between the people and the government, where the government is saying that funds and resources have been mobilized … but the fact on the ground shows that even to fix the bridges, it’s been ordinary people working together,” Zulkarnain said.
After spending the past two weeks visiting some of the worst-affected areas, she said that the government “really need to speed up” their recovery efforts.
Aceh Gov. Muzakir Manaf extended the province’s state of emergency for another two weeks starting Friday, while several district governments have declared themselves incapable of managing the disasters.
Entire villages were wiped out by the disastrous floods, which have also damaged more than 115,000 houses across Aceh, along with 141 health facilities, 49 bridges, and over 1,300 schools.
The widespread damage to roads and infrastructure continue to isolate many communities, with residents traveling for hours on foot or with motorbikes in search of basic supplies.
“Even today, some areas are still inundated by thick mud and there are remote locations still cut off because the bridges collapsed. For access, off-road vehicles are still required or we would use small wooden boats to cross rivers,” Al Fadhil, director of Geutanyoe Foundation, told Arab News.
“From our perspective, disaster management this time around is much worse compared to how it was when the 2004 tsunami happened.”
When the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami struck in 2004, Aceh was the hardest-hit of all, with the disasters killing almost 170,000 people in the province.
But MER-C’s Hadiati said that the impact of the November floods and landslides is “more extensive and far worse than the tsunami,” as 18 Acehnese cities and regencies have been affected — about twice more than in the 2004 disaster.
As Friday marks 21 years since the cataclysmic tsunami, Fadhil said the current disaster management was “disorganized,” and lacked leadership and coordination from the central government, factors that played a crucial role after 2004.
“The provincial and district governments in Aceh, they’ve now done all they could with what they have,” he said.
“But their efforts stand against the fact that there’s no entry of foreign aid, no outside support, and a central government insisting they are capable.”
