House defeats Trump-backed spending plan as shutdown looms
Published in News & Features
A revamped stopgap spending plan put forward by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson failed in the House late Thursday, one day after President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk torpedoed a deal needed to avert a government shutdown.
The new proposal, which would have required two-thirds of the majority to pass, failed in a vote of 174-235, due to opposition from most House Democrats and conservative Republicans.
In a debate before the House vote, Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy acknowledged the new agreement was “better” than the initial proposal, but said the “asinine” bill would still “increase the debt by $5 trillion.”
Several Democratic leaders previously said they would not vote for the deal exclusively agreed upon by Republicans, and would only support the initial stopgap spending plan that both sides meticulously negotiated over several weeks.
With the bill’s failure Thursday, Congress is back to square one as it stares down Friday’s funding deadline. Unless it enacts a new spending plan, big chunks of the government could shut down as soon as this weekend and non-essential workers could be furloughed. Given the calendar, it’s unlikely anything would reopen until after New Year’s.
Trump had backed the new proposal crafted by Johnson and fellow GOP leaders that reportedly cut out a pay raise for lawmakers and tweaked some other provisions of the previous bill that he and Musk bitterly trashed. It would have also suspended the debt ceiling for more than two years but not permanently repeal it.
“The newly agreed to American Relief Act of 2024 will keep the government open, fund our great farmers and others, and provide relief for those severely impacted by the devastating hurricanes,” Trump wrote on his social media site earlier Thursday. “All Republicans, and even the Democrats, should do what is best for our country, and vote yes for this bill.”
The new proposal came less than 36 hours before the government would start to shut down Friday night unless Congress takes action.
Trump had declared he wanted Johnson to force a new deal through Congress without making any concessions, a virtually impossible mission since any deal would need Democratic support to pass.
Trump also demanded Congress eliminate the debt ceiling, a complicated and divisive issue that most Republicans have opposed, and pass a stopgap spending bill including only Republican priorities such as aid to farmers.
He sought to blame Democrats and President Joe Biden for a potential shutdown, even though it’s Republicans who are refusing to pass a spending bill.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said GOP dysfunction would be to blame for any government shutdown. He opposed repealing the debt ceiling as part of any last-minute deal.
“This reckless Republican-driven shutdown can be avoided if House Republicans will simply do what is right for the American people and stick with the bipartisan agreement they negotiated,” Jeffries told reporters.
The president-elect and billionaire Musk effectively sunk a deal Johnson had struck with Democrats to fund the government through mid-March.
Musk, who has been tapped by Trump to lead a new budget-cutting organization called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, took the first step in trashing Johnson’s deal Wednesday, saying any Republican that supports it should be ousted from Congress.
He later said Congress should not pass any legislation until Trump returns to the White House, an edict that would result in a monthlong government shutdown.
Along with funding the government, the sprawling so-called continuing resolution initially included $100 billion in aid for those impacted by hurricanes Helene and Milton, aid to struggling farmers and a grab bag of other priorities designed to attract votes from lawmakers in both parties.
Johnson pitched the plan as the best way to delay important decisions until the next Congress. After Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, the Republican-majority House will hold a trifecta of power with the White House and Senate.
Many Republican lawmakers opposed the bill because it included what they consider to be unnecessary spending. But it was considered likely to pass anyway with wide Democratic backing.
But Musk, and later Trump, blew up that plan with their eleventh-hour attacks.
Republicans hold a narrow majority of a couple seats in the House, but are unable to pass spending bills without Democratic support because some conservatives oppose all government funding measures without major cuts that most others oppose.
Any spending bill also needs to pass the Senate, which is still held by Democrats, and win the support of Biden to sign it into law.
The ugly internal GOP feud could endanger Johnson’s hold on the speaker’s gavel, with a handful of right-wing lawmakers vowing to topple him in the next Congress.
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