After Tesla CEO Elon Musk slammed a must-pass spending bill last December, lawmakers were pressured to remove two cancer-treatment measures from it.
In August, a poll found that Musk is the most unpopular person in America. From July 7 to July 21, Gallup asked Americans about their feelings towards 14 prominent American and global figures, and found Musk was the most unpopular public figure in the country.
In December 2024, Congress was involved in intense discussions about a spending bill to stop a government shutdown.
At the time, X user Eric Daughtery shared a post that showed a photo, initially from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) page, which emphasizes the difference in length between the then-continuing resolution, 116 pages, and the original bill, spanning 1,547 pages.
"The bill on the left is what would've passed without Elon Musk and our voices on X," Daughtery said. "The bill on the right is what did pass."
Musk replied to this post, saying his actions "turned a bill that weighed pounds into a bill that weighed ounces."
"You are the media now," he claimed.
He also replied with a Latin proverb, "VOX POPULI VOX DEI."
This proverb translates to, "The voice of the people is the voice of God."
According to the oncology news outlet, OncoDaily, Musk called the spending bill a "Christmas tree," a term used to describe bills filled with unrelated provisions.
The billionaire claimed that it was bloated and inefficient.
Even though the funding deal was first agreed upon by Congressional leadership, it came under attack after Musk condemned the bill on social media. His criticism put pressure on lawmakers, specifically Republicans, and eventually, the Gabriella Miller program and the Give Kids A Chance Act were stripped from the bill.
The Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0 was designed to increase funding for childhood cancer and rare disease research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It was named after Gabriella Miller, a ten-year-old advocate who died due to brain cancer in 2013
This legislation had strong bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress. Because of Musk's pressure, provisions that would have allocated $190 million toward life-saving pediatric cancer plans were removed from the final spending package.
Critics, who include various Democrats, blame Musk and his social media influence for ruining a bipartisan funding deal.
Republicans argue that Democrats neglected to pass the act as a standalone bill when they controlled the Senate in early 2024.
Other vital acts, like the Accelerating Kids to Research Act and the Give Kids a Chance Act, were left out of the final spending package and are pending legislation.
For advocates like Nancy Goodman, the founder of Kids v. Cancer, this decision to remove these acts was not just a political setback; it was upsetting to many children and their families fighting against cancer.
"I was just devastated, to be honest," Goodman said to Newsweek. "The pediatric cancer community has spent 15 years to get to this point. This is the most significant bundle of pediatric cancer bills ever to be considered in Congress."
"Tomorrow, there may be some pediatric oncologists at Texas Children's who have to call the family of a child in Louisiana and tell them that they can't treat that child because they can't have that child's treatment transferred from Louisiana to Texas," she added. "Even though Texas Children's is one of the leading centers. Even if the child lives very close to the hospital, just across state lines."
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