WASHINGTON—Ahead of a deadline that would compel millions of federal employees, including air traffic controllers, border patrol agents, and U.S. troops, to work without pay for the Christmas, House Republican leaders were frantically trying to devise a solution to prevent government shutdown hours on Friday.
Bipartisan House and Senate leaders reached a deal just three days ago to keep the government running, but President-elect Donald Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk sabotaged the agreement at the last minute, demanding that the debt limit be extended or eliminated to accommodate Trump’s agenda for the following year.
Stay tuned for real-time updates.
On the House floor, a backup plan that Trump and Musk had supported was thwarted by Democrats and 38 Republicans who opposed the debt extension.
Beleaguered Now, in an effort to maintain his leadership position, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is pursuing Plan C. According to two Republican sources familiar with the plan, it calls for members to vote on each of the three components separately on the floor: government funding until March 14, disaster help, and a farm bill extension.
According to the sources, there will be no vote on extending the debt limit. Conservative lawmakers, including Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who has criticized Johnson, said earlier this week they had personally presented the speaker with the multi-pronged strategy.
However, there is no assurance that important provisions of the proposal will be approved by the Senate or the House or signed into law by President Joe Biden.
As he departed a meeting with House Democrats, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told reporters that the lines of communication have been restored, but he did not pledge his support.
The federal government will most certainly shut down into the weekend, if not during the Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year’s holidays, as the Senate, which is known for its glacial pace, may take days to debate and vote on any House funding bill.
However, Johnson faces a significant obstacle: Democrats, who still own the Senate and the White House and are adamant about refusing to budge on Trump’s last-minute demands, will not allow him to pass a law. Johnson’s chances of winning a slim House majority and getting re-elected as speaker in two weeks, on January 3, may be in jeopardy if he is unable to meet Trump’s demands.
“This is a defining moment for his career as speaker,” Johnson critic Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., stated. “What he does and how he handles this, how he handles our conference … will define who he is, if he is a serious leader, and if he’s going to survive this leadership vote.”
Jeffries claimed on Friday that Trump was hurrying to put the debt ceiling aside so that Republicans could enact a tax reduction for the rich the next year.
“A painful government shutdown that will crash the economy and hurt working class Americans, because they would rather enact massive tax cuts for their billionaire donors than fund cancer research for children,” Jeffries said, alluding to a clause that GOP leaders had removed from the original agreement.
Johnson has been urged by Senate Democrats to rejoin the bipartisan agreement that Trump and Musk ripped up.
We need to return to our first agreement from a few days ago. Time for it. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, stated on the House floor Friday that it was time for the House to vote on our bipartisan CR [continuing resolution]. It’s the quickest, easiest, and most straightforward approach to ensure that the government remains open while providing the American people with vital emergency relief.
By portraying Musk as an oligarch who is manipulating Trump, Democrats think they have discovered a populist economic message to win over voters in the middle of the conflict.
We’re not going to let Elon Musk run the country, so I’m willing to remain here till Christmas, Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., said in a statement. In other words, we shouldn’t allow an unelected billionaire to undermine pediatric cancer research in order to receive a tax break.
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