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The US Congress has just 24 hours to find a deal to keep the government open after the House rejected a funding bill Thursday night despite support from Donald Trump, who gutted an early version of the bill. legislation a day ago.
The 174-235 vote opens a race among House Republicans to pass the new bill, which would extend government spending through March 14, send billions of dollars to communities devastated by natural disasters and suspend the debt limit for two years, a crucial priority for the president-elect.
Earlier on Thursday, when President Mike Johnson unveiled the latest version of the bill, Trump urged Republicans and Democrats to vote for it. “SUCCESS in Washington!” published on his Truth Social platform.
Democrats, however, immediately criticized the proposal.
“The Musk-Johnson proposal is not serious,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters before the vote, referring to billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk. “It’s ridiculous. “Extremist Maga Republicans are leading us to a government shutdown.”
The bill fell far short of the two-thirds of House members it needed to pass, in a sign of the enormous challenge Johnson and Republican leaders face. A significant number of Republicans, 38, voted against the measure.
The House and Senate will need to work quickly to pass the bill so that it reaches President Joe Biden for his signature before the Friday night deadline, after which the government will begin shutting down.
Musk first put pressure on Johnson and Republicans in a series of social media posts on his X platform on Wednesday, criticizing the initial 1,500-page bill as “terrible” and packed with unnecessary spending and other measures.
Trump then made House Republicans nervous when he spoke out against the bill, largely because it didn’t also raise the government’s debt ceiling.
“At the behest of the richest man in the world, for whom no one voted, the United States Congress has been thrown into chaos,” Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House appropriations committee, said Thursday, referring to to Musk.
The legislative crisis has put Johnson’s leadership in doubt, with far-right members such as Marjorie Taylor Greene musing that Musk could replace him as spokesperson.
The joke underscored Johnson’s vulnerability. Asked by NBC News Thursday morning if he still trusted the president, Trump said, “We’ll see.”
The first three-month stopgap bill had been negotiated between Republican and Democratic congressional leaders. It would have avoided a government shutdown by maintaining current spending levels through March 14 and spending billions of dollars on farmers and disaster relief. By then, Republicans will have control of both Congress and the White House.
It also contained unrelated provisions, including a pay raise for members of Congress, restrictions on technology investment in China and an easier path for the Washington Commanders football team to move its stadium from Maryland to Washington, DC.
But the initial bill did not touch the debt limit, which was expected to expire in the early months of Trump’s second term. Trump called it a “Democratic trap” and threatened Republican members that he would field primary challengers against them in the next election if they voted for a short-term spending measure without raising the debt ceiling.
“Nothing will pass unless the debt ceiling is lifted,” Trump said. alphabet News. “If we don’t get it, then we are going to have a closure, but it will be a Biden closure, because closures only affect the person who is president.”
In a sign of the targeted attacks Trump and Musk have promised against Republicans who disobey their directives, Trump on Thursday criticized conservative House Rep. Chip Roy, who has consistently sought to cut spending.
“Chip Roy is just another ambitious, talentless guy,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “I hope some talented challengers are gearing up in the Great State of Texas to go after Chip in the Primary. You won’t stand a chance!
Roy responded in X that he would oppose the legislation anyway, pointing to concerns among Republican fiscal hawks. “New bill: $110 billion in (unpaid) deficit spending, debt ceiling increase to over $4 TRILLION with $0 in structural reforms for the cuts.”
The debt ceiling is a perennial problem for lawmakers, who suspended the borrowing limit until Jan. 1 in a deal reached last year. To borrow beyond that limit, the Treasury Department can use what it calls “extraordinary measures” to cover new expenses without exceeding the limit.
This can buy the government time before having to worry about a possible default, a disastrous outcome for the world’s largest economy and most important financial system.
