The federal government did not shut down on December 21. .

Hopefully, this is the first hint of what is to come in the next four years. The new Trump admistration will behave the same as it did during the 2017-2021 term except... more incompetently and with more chaos. That's what the voters seemed to want. But the House of Representitives on a bipartisan vote defied President-elect Trump and refused to eliminate the legislated debt limit.

Clearly Trump understands that even with all of the budget cutting that he has planned and all of the tarrifs he may put into place... federal spending will be greater than revenue and government deficit will continue to grow. He has claimed that his tariffs will reduce the deficit. Virtually all learned economists have said otherwise. The only way to balance the federal budget is to lower spending and/or increase tax revenue.

As much as Trump and Elon Musk talk about increasing government efficiency and cutting government spending, they can't do it without Congress. Congress controls spending. Congressional representitives have different goals than Trump, and as much as he can threaten members of the House of Representitives.. he can't control them. They are elected by their individual constituancies.

Congress,as an institution, is all in favor of reigning in government spendng and increasing efficiency. However, each of the 435 members of the House of Representitives are against this actuality when it cuts spending and/or employment in their individual districts. This is also true for members of the Senate and the states that they represent.

Ironically, the only jurisdiction that is not represented in Congress is the District of Columbia. But this is where individual members of Congress receive services, information and recognition of their individual importance. This where the lobbiests work also. They are even reluctant to cut spending in the District.

Counter-intuitively, Trump wants to move as many as possible government offices (service providers to Congress) out of the Distict of Columbia . Moving the government out of Washington will make it much more difficult to cut government spending.

I hope someone out there has a list of all of the campaign promises that Trump made, and is checking them off as they are fulfilled or fail to deliver.