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Congress has just 24 hours to find a deal to keep the government open after the House of Representatives rejected a funding bill Thursday night despite support from President Donald Trump.
The 174-235 vote puts House Republicans in the race to approve the new bill. If the deal fails, it would extend government spending deadlines until March 14, send billions of dollars to communities affected by natural disasters, and suspend federal borrowing limits for two years. , this is a critical priority for the next president.
Earlier Thursday, after Speaker Mike Johnson announced an updated version of the bill, President Trump urged Republicans and Democrats to vote yes on the bill. “Success in Washington!” he posted on his Truth Social platform.
But Democrats immediately attacked the proposal.
“Musk-Johnson’s proposal is not serious,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters ahead of the vote, referring to Trump’s billionaire adviser Elon Musk. Ta. “That’s hilarious. Super MAGA Republicans are forcing us into a government shutdown.”
The bill fell far short of the two-thirds of House members needed to pass it, underscoring the major challenge facing Johnson and the Republican leadership. A significant number of Republican senators (38) voted against the bill.
The House and Senate will have to work quickly to approve the bill for President Joe Biden to sign by a Friday night deadline, after which the government shutdown will begin.
“We will come together again and find another solution,” Johnson told reporters after Thursday’s vote. “Then please look forward to it.”
Musk first put pressure on Johnson and the Republican Party on Wednesday with a series of social media posts on his X platform, calling the original 1,500-page bill “terrible” and filled with unnecessary spending and other measures. It was criticized for being bloated.
House Republicans then panicked when President Trump announced he opposed the bill, largely because it also wouldn’t raise the government’s debt ceiling.
Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said Thursday, referring to Musk, “The United States Congress has been thrown into chaos at the behest of the richest man in the world for whom no one voted.” .
The legislative crisis has raised questions about Johnson’s leadership, and far-right lawmakers such as Marjorie Taylor Greene believe Musk could replace him as speaker.
This irony highlighted Johnson’s weakness. Asked by NBC News on Thursday morning if he still had confidence in the chairman, Trump said, “We’ll see.”
The initial three-month interim bill was being negotiated between Republican and Democratic Congressional leaders. Maintaining current spending levels through March 14 would have avoided a government shutdown and freed up billions of dollars for farmers and disaster relief supplies. By then, Republicans will have control of both Congress and the White House.
The bill includes unrelated provisions, including pay increases for lawmakers, limits on technology investment in China and an easier path for the Washington Commanders football team to move its stadium from Maryland to Washington. was also included.
But the original bill did not address the debt limit, which was expected to expire within the first few months of President Trump’s second term. President Trump called it a “Democrat trap” and threatened to mount a primary challenger in the next election if Republicans voted for short-term spending without raising the debt ceiling.
“Nothing will be approved until the debt ceiling ends,” Trump told ABC News. “If we don’t get it figured out, there’s going to be a government shutdown, but it’s going to be a Biden shutdown, because a shutdown only affects the person who is the president.”
In a sign that Trump and Musk are promising targeted attacks on Republicans who don’t follow their orders, Trump on Thursday targeted conservative congressman Chip Roy, who has consistently called for spending cuts. He was singled out as a target of criticism.
“Chip Roy is just an ambitious man with no talent,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Hopefully there are qualified challengers preparing to take a shot at the Texas primary. He won’t stand a chance!”
At X, Roy said he would vote against the bill anyway, nodding to the concerns of Republican fiscal hawks. “New bill: $110 billion in unpaid deficit spending, over $4 trillion in debt ceiling increases, $0 in structural reforms to reduce it.”
The debt ceiling has been a perennial issue for lawmakers, who reached an agreement last year that suspended the borrowing limit until January 1st. If the Treasury borrows more than this limit, it can use so-called “extraordinary measures” to cover new spending without violating the cap.
This buys the government time before worrying about a potential default, a dire outcome for the world’s largest economy and most important financial system.
