In a fiery tirade on the House floor on December 20, far-left Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) lashed out at tech titan Elon Musk, accusing him of orchestrating Republican resistance to a massive spending package that threatened to push the government into a shutdown. DeLauro, known for her eccentric purple hair and staunch progressive views, vented her frustrations during the debate preceding the passage of a last-minute spending bill.
The veteran congresswoman, who has enjoyed a taxpayer-funded salary since entering Congress in 1991, furiously claimed that Musk, whom she derisively dubbed “President Musk,” had spooked Republicans into defying the so-called “Uniparty” consensus. “We agreed on a bill,” DeLauro shouted, “and you know what? They got scared because President Musk told them, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it, shut the government down.’”
Her anger only escalated as she criticized the billionaire entrepreneur, who employs tens of thousands of Americans, for supposedly not understanding the ramifications of a government shutdown. “What does he know about what people go through when the government shuts down?” she fumed. “Are his employees furloughed? Hell no! Is he furloughed? No!”
DeLauro then proposed that lawmakers should also feel the sting of a shutdown by forfeiting their paychecks. “Maybe if none of us got paid when the government shut down, some people on the other side of the aisle would feel differently!” she yelled.
Pivoting back to Musk, DeLauro painted the businessman as a shadowy figure pulling the strings of the Republican Party. “The world’s richest man, an unelected contractor reaping billions in government contracts, is calling the shots in the Republican Party,” she raged. “At the behest of the world’s richest man, who no one voted for, the United States Congress has been thrown into pandemonium.”
The congresswoman also took aim at the spending bill itself, lambasting it for allegedly abandoning bipartisan priorities and serving corporate interests. “We had a bill on Tuesday that was the result of a year and a half of work,” she claimed. “This bill had no such bipartisan input. It removes key provisions to limit the power of pharmaceutical companies, abandons efforts to reinvest in American businesses, and instead fuels the Chinese Communist Party’s technology capabilities.”
Predictably, DeLauro could not resist turning her diatribe into a broader critique of Republican policies, accusing them of protecting the wealthy. “It includes a two-year raise of the debt limit to allow Republicans to cut taxes on the ultra-wealthy, like Elon Musk, and raise deficits on the backs of the American people,” she bellowed.
DeLauro concluded with a dramatic denunciation of what she labeled an “illegitimate oligarchy” led by Musk. “We must unequivocally reject the oligarchy that seeks to usurp the authority of the United States Congress and the American people!” she declared.
For all her theatrics, DeLauro’s meltdown is emblematic of a Democratic Party increasingly out of touch with everyday Americans. Her rhetoric reveals more about her disdain for innovation and free enterprise than it does about Musk, who represents the entrepreneurial spirit that fuels America’s success. While DeLauro rails against imagined oligarchies, the real question is whether her decades of taxpayer-funded privilege have insulated her from the needs of her constituents.
