WASHINGTON — The post-election honeymoon period is officially over.
Democrats and Republicans were back to trading barbs this week as both parties tried to evade blame for a near government shut down.
Lawmakers were on the verge Wednesday of passing a bipartisan spending agreement when Donald Trump ally and billionaire Elon Musk intervened and pushed Republicans to walk away from the deal. The president-elect soon joined in the cajoling.
“If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration, not after January 20th, under ‘TRUMP.’ This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!” the incoming president wrote on Friday morning in a social media post.
House Republican leadership scrambled to come up with a bill that met the stipulations while relying on GOP votes. Ultimately, lawmakers reached a bipartisan agreement on a spending package that funds the government through March 14.
The last-minute gambit paid off, and 30 minutes past the Friday midnight deadline, Congress managed to dodge a shutdown. The bill passed by a vote of 366 to 34 in the House and 85 to 11 in the Senate.
But the reprieve is only temporary, kicking decisions down the road and likely setting up additional conflict when the next Congress, under slim Republican majorities, takes office.
“In January we will make a sea-change in Washington,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters Friday evening, noting the incoming red trifecta as Republicans are also about to control the White House. “Things are going to be very different around here.”
“We are excited about this outcome tonight,” Johnson added. “We’re grateful that everyone stood together to do the right thing and having gotten this done now as the last order of business for the year, we are set up for a big and important new start in January.”
His comments cap what had been a conflict-laden few days in Washington and where the politics of the 2026 and 2028 election cycles are lurking just beneath the surface.
At a White House briefing Friday afternoon, the sitting president’s press spokeswoman said Republicans “blew up” the original bipartisan deal earlier in the week and needed to “get out of their own way” to fix the situation.
“This is a mess that Speaker [Mike] Johnson created. This is his mess to fix,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.
She blamed Trump and Musk for collapsing the previous deal in her comments.
Over at the Capitol, the GOP said Democrats should bear the blame.
GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna laced into Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who she said had boasted to members of his caucus that he had “Republicans by the balls.”
“So, that’s not cute Schumer,” she said. “It’s not cute to mess around with the future, and frankly with people that are relying on us to do our jobs.”
The political gamesmanship ended a period of post-election calm following Trump’s unprecedented victory in November. Lawmakers found themselves in the middle of a Trump-induced storm that could have left millions of federal employees without paychecks during the holidays if a compromise had not been reached by midnight.
Until this week Trump had mostly refrained from attacking his predecessor, sitting President Joe Biden, since the election, as both men emphasized that a peaceful transition of power would soon take place. For the most part, Biden had also declined to criticize Trump.
The détente was teetering on Friday as Trump needled lawmakers to raise the debt ceiling under Biden and nudged them to shut down the government until he gets what he wants.
Lawmakers in Congress had originally worked together to craft a bipartisan spending deal that included the Biden administration’s request for robust disaster assistance following the devastating Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Yet the deal blew up on Wednesday when Musk and Trump publicly pressured lawmakers through a series of posts on his social media platform, X, to craft a bill on their own that cut out compromise elements. Trump said the spending bill should lift the debt ceiling so that deficit spending limits, which lawmakers do not need to address until next year, is attached to Biden.
Fiscal conservatives in the House banded with Democrats to sink the revised legislation.
Biden stayed out of the negotiations, as he has throughout his presidency, and publicly remained silent.
On the floor of the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader, stood on Thursday next to an easel affixed with a deep red and black poster board that declared it the #REPUBLICAN SHUTDOWN in block white lettering.
The initial deal, he said, would have provided disaster assistance to struggling communities and helped farmers, families, children, seniors, workers, veterans and members of the military. Jeffries said Democrats negotiated the Republican-drafted bill in good faith.
“And then, one or two puppet masters weigh in, and the extreme MAGA Republicans decide to do the bidding of the wealthy, the well-off, the well-connected millionaires and billionaires,” he argued.
Jeffries said a GOP bill, which later failed, was “part of an effort to shut down the government,” unless Congress bent a knee to wealthy Americans and agreed to suspend the debt ceiling for two years, which he said was tantamount to an unpaid tax cut that would only benefit the rich.
“For decades, the Republican Party has lectured America about fiscal responsibility, about the debt and the deficit. It’s always been phony, this bill proves it,” he said.
Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz told Republicans in a searing floor speech on Thursday evening to “put on their big boy pants” and pass a bill with their majority. “We’re only here because you guys can’t agree amongst yourselves.”
“Democrats will keep government open for the American people, we will mediate the disagreements between that side of the room and that side of the room, we will do that for you, but you’ve got to at least invite us to that meeting. So, if you want us to solve your problem, because you can’t agree amongst yourselves, reach out,” Moskowitz, who recently joined the newly formed, GOP-led DOGE caucus that aims to shrink the size of the federal government, said.
Luna said Friday that the agreement Democrats initially made with Johnson’s team came about in a closed-door meeting that did not include rank and file Republicans. “We’re not playing with them anymore,” she told reporters. “We’re not going to be held hostage.”
The White House accused Republicans on Friday of sabotaging the original compromise deal at Musk and Trump’s behest and trying to saddle Biden and the outgoing administration with the blame for government dysfunction.
“They need to fix it. It is their mess to fix,” Jean-Pierre said of Republicans.
Biden did not speak publicly about the potential shutdown. He had calls with Jeffries and Schumer, his spokeswoman said.
She noted that Biden has taken a hands-off approach to Capitol Hill negotiations in the past but said Friday he stood ready to help get a bipartisan deal through Congress. “This is something that Republicans should own here,” Jean-Pierre said.
“Congressional Republicans did what they did because of what the president-elect said and what Elon Musk said,” she said.
Federal employees who would have had their paychecks withheld in the event of a shutdown were informed Friday about the imminent possibility, while the White House assured there was still time to make a deal.
Had Congress failed to find an eleventh-hour solution, federal employees who are deemed nonessential would have been barred from working and not receive paychecks for the duration of a shutdown. Members of the military and essential employees are required to work without pay in the event of a shutdown; both groups of workers would have eventually received backpay.
The now-averted shutdown would have also been the first to occur under Biden’s presidency. The longest shutdown in U.S. history, 35 days, took place during Trump’s first term in office and also stretched across the holidays and New Year’s Day.
Nebraska Republican Rep. Don Bacon told reporters earlier in the week, when the prospect of a shutdown still loomed, that both parties were likely to be blamed by the public.
“I think it’s going to blow back on all of us to a degree,” he said.
Bacon added, when pressed: “There’s enough blame to go around right now, I’ll just say it that way.”
Contributing: Riley Beggin, Zac Anderson
