Facing a Government shutdown deadline, the Senate earlier in the week passed final approval of a bipartisan plan that would temporarily fund federal operations and disaster relief, excluding the president-elect. Donald Trump's Call for increase in loan limit in new year.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson What was the insistence? Congress “will meet our obligations” and will not allow federal operations to close before the Christmas holiday season. But the outcome of the day was uncertain after Trump doubled down on his insistence that a Loan limit The increase should be included in any deal — if not, he said in an early morning post, let the shutdowns “start now.”
The House overwhelmingly approved Johnson's new bill 366-34. The Senate worked through the night to pass it, 85-11, just after the deadline. At midnight, the White House said it had stopped preparations for the shutdown.
“This is a good result for the country,” Johnson said after the House vote, adding that he had spoken with Trump and the president-elect was “certainly happy with the result.”
President Joe Bidenwho has played a less public role in the process during a tumultuous week, was expected to sign the measure into law on Saturday. will do
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said there would be no government shutdown.
The end product was the third attempt by a beleaguered House Speaker Johnson to achieve one of the basic needs of the federal government – to keep it open. And it raised tough questions about whether Johnson would be able to keep his job in the face of angry GOP colleagues and work with Trump and a billionaire ally. Elon Muskwho called the legislative plays from afar.
Trump's last-minute demand was an almost impossible ask, and Johnson had no choice but to act on his push to raise the debt ceiling. The speaker knew there wouldn't be enough support within the GOP majority to pass a funding package, since many Republican deficit hawks prefer to shrink the federal government and certainly won't authorize more debt.
Instead, Republicans, who will have full control of the White House, the House and the Senate next year, are showing that they need to continue business as usual, with big plans for tax cuts and other priorities. Democrats must routinely rely on the necessary votes. To govern
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“So is this a Republican bill or a Democrat bill?” Musk was mocked on social media before the vote.
The 118-page package would fund the government at current levels through March 14 and include $100 billion in disaster relief and $10 billion in agricultural aid to farmers. will add a billion dollars.
Trump's call to repeal the debt ceiling, which GOP leaders told lawmakers would be discussed as part of their tax and border packages in the new year, has fallen away. Republicans then struck a so-called handshake agreement to raise the debt ceiling while also cutting spending by $2.5 trillion over 10 years.
It's essentially the same deal that flopped the night before in a spectacular blow — opposed by most Democrats and some ultra-conservative Republicans — minus Trump's demand for a debt ceiling.
But it's far smaller than the original bipartisan deal Johnson struck with Democratic and Republican leaders — a 1,500-page bill that Trump and Musk rejected, forcing him to start over. It was packed with a long list of other bills — including a much-maligned pay raise for lawmakers — but also other measures with broad bipartisan support that now have a difficult path to becoming law. .
House Democrats were cool to the latest effort after Johnson pulled out of a hard-fought bipartisan compromise.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said it appears Musk, the world's richest man, is calling the shots for Trump and Republicans.
“Who's in charge?” he asked during the debate.
Still, House Democrats voted more than Republicans to pass the bill. About three dozen conservative House Republicans voted against it.
“House Democrats have successfully stopped extreme MAGA Republicans from shutting down the government, destroying the economy and hurting working-class Americans across the country,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries referring to Trump's “Make America Great Again” slogan.
In the Senate, almost all of the opposition came from Republicans — except for independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who said Musk's intervention was “not a democracy, it's an oligarchy.”
Trump, who has not yet been sworn into office, is showing strength but also the limits of his influence with Congress, as he intervenes as well as mar-a-lago. arrange matters from Muskwho is heading the new Department of Government Performance.
The incoming Trump administration pledged. Federal budget cuts and thousands of layoffs And counting on Republicans for a bigger tax package. And Trump isn't as afraid of a shutdown as the lawmakers who created it. The longest government shutdown in history In his first term in the White House.
“If there's going to be a government shutdown, let it start now,” Trump posted on social media early in the morning.
More important to the president-elect was his demand. The thorny debt ceiling debate off the table before he returned to the White House. The federal debt ceiling expires on Jan. 1, and Trump doesn't want to face tough negotiations in Congress to raise the nation's borrowing capacity in the first months of his new administration. Now Johnson will be ready to deliver.
“Congress should get rid of the ridiculous debt ceiling, or maybe extend it to 2029,” Trump posted — adding to calls for a new five-year increase in the debt ceiling. “Without that, we should never have made the deal.”
Government workers had already been told to prepare for a federal shutdown that would send hundreds of thousands of employees out of work. Members of the military – Without pay during the holiday season.
Biden has been in talks with Jeffries and Schumer, but White House press secretary Karen Jean-Pierre said: “Republicans blew up the deal. They did, and they need to fix it.
As the day dragged on, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell stepped in to remind colleagues “how damaging it is to shut down the government, and how foolish it is to bet your own party is to blame.” Won't take it.”
At one point, Johnson asked House Republicans for a show of hands in a lunchtime meeting as they tried to choose a path forward.
It wasn't just a shutdown, but the speaker on the line worked. The speaker selection is the first vote of the new Congress, which convenes on Jan. 3, and some Trump allies have lined up Musk for speaker.
Johnson said he spoke with Musk before Friday's vote and talked about the “extraordinary challenges of this job.”