Hakeem Jeffries says ‘GOP extremists want House Democrats to raise the debt ceiling so that House Republicans can lower the amount of your Social Security check’
Chances are, any government funding bill will need at least some Democratic votes to pass the House, since the GOP has a tiny majority in the chamber and it appears unlikely the speaker, Mike Johnson, will get all of his lawmakers to support the legislation.
So what do Democrats think of Donald Trump’s demand that the funding deal be paired with an increase in the debt ceiling? The Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, answered that question, in a post on Bluesky:
GOP extremists want House Democrats to raise the debt ceiling so that House Republicans can lower the amount of your Social Security check.
Hard pass.
The top House Democrat has not yet responded to Trump’s demand that the debt limit be abolished entirely. In the past, some of the party’s lawmakers have proposed legislation to do that, but the idea has never gone far.
Bernie Sanders has criticized “President Elon Musk” over the billionaire’s efforts to derail a bipartisan spending deal that would keep the government running for another three months.
“Democrats and Republicans spent months negotiating a bipartisan agreement to fund our government,” said Sanders, the independent senator for Vermont who votes with Democrats, in a statement.
“The richest man on Earth, President Elon Musk, doesn’t like it. Will Republicans kiss the ring?”
Norm Eisen, Brookings Institute senior fellow, says there is still hope for Donald Trump to be brought to justice despite the disqualification of prosecutor Fani Willis from her case against him and others for trying to overthrow Georgia’s 2020 election results.
Eisen said: “The disqualification of Fani Willis is entirely unfounded, but there is a silver lining: the indictment against Trump still stands. It should be pursued vigorously. As we’ve seen in the New York case, Trump is not immune, and prosecutors must continue to hold him accountable.”
Eisen has admitted in the past Willis’s decision to hire her romantic partner Nathan Wade as a special prosecutor for the case “represents poor judgment” but distracts from the real issue of election conspiracy.
More lawmakers react to Trump’s calls for abolishing the debt ceiling, which has sent legislators into chaos as a government shutdown nears.
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren in a rare show of support for Trump, said on X: “I agree with President-elect Trump that Congress should terminate the debt limit and never again govern by hostage taking.”
Senator John Thune of South Dakota, who is the incoming majority leader, just reacted to Donald Trump’s calls to eliminate the debt ceiling:
“I think that at some point we’re going to have to deal with that. It’s coming. How we deal with it, I’m open to suggestions.”
He told reporters shortly after Trump’s announcement: “I do know there are different theories about how to deal with the debt limit going forward. If it was effective, we wouldn’t have a $35tn debt. So the debt limit for all intents and purposes has limited meaning in the modern world but it is something that markets obviously pay attention to.
“In terms of how we’re going to address it, I’m not sure exactly what that looks like at the moment.”
Donald Trump’s disruption of the government funding negotiations could put the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, in a perilous position.
Johnson may have to work with Democrats to keep the government open beyond Friday, since his majority is very small, and many of his lawmakers have strident demands when it comes to government spending and the debt ceiling. If Johnson does that, rightwing hardliners in the House Republican conference may attempt to oust him from the speaker’s post when the new Congress begins next year.
Democrats could theoretically intervene to vote for Johnson and keep him in the speaker’s role. At a press conference earlier today, the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, was asked if his party would do that, assuming Johnson works with them on a short-term government funding bill.
Jeffries replied:
No.
When it comes to Donald Trump’s demands to raise or abolish the debt ceiling, there is one group of lawmakers to pay particular attention to: the House Freedom Caucus.
The group represents far-right Republicans in Congress’s lower chamber, who more are aligned with the president-elect than most. But these same lawmakers have a long history of opposing any increase to the borrowing limit, despite warnings from economists that the government defaulting on its debt would do grievous harm to its global standing.
The caucus does not appear to have yet commented on Trump’s latest demands, but here’s a look at how they have talked about the debt ceiling in the past:
Chances are, any government funding bill will need at least some Democratic votes to pass the House, since the GOP has a tiny majority in the chamber and it appears unlikely the speaker, Mike Johnson, will get all of his lawmakers to support the legislation.
So what do Democrats think of Donald Trump’s demand that the funding deal be paired with an increase in the debt ceiling? The Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, answered that question, in a post on Bluesky:
GOP extremists want House Democrats to raise the debt ceiling so that House Republicans can lower the amount of your Social Security check.
Hard pass.
The top House Democrat has not yet responded to Trump’s demand that the debt limit be abolished entirely. In the past, some of the party’s lawmakers have proposed legislation to do that, but the idea has never gone far.
Rightwing lawmakers have backed Donald Trump’s calls to renegotiate the government spending bill, even if it causes a shutdown.
Writing on X, Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene said:
The Uniparty is aiming their fire at Elon Musk and blaming him for killing their incestuous porkfest gov funding bill.
However, it was the American people engaging and posting their outrage on X that killed the bill.
But they hate Elon because he bought X and protected free speech, which allowed the people to fight back and stop another Uniparty shit sandwich.
The truth is they hate you, the people, for standing up to them.
They are angry they got caught in such a big way.
These losers waited for months knowing the government funding deadline was Friday, Dec 20th and refused to show any of us members of Congress the bill text until they dumped 1,500+ pages on us Tuesday night.
Tim Burchett of Tennessee was a bit more succinct, writing this morning:
Shut it down.
While the joint Trump-Vance statement played a major role in upending the government funding talks, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy spent much of yesterday attacking the potential compromise.
The billionaire entrepreneurs gained heightened prominence after Donald Trump said they would co-chair a quasi-governmental “department of government efficiency” that is tasked with downsizing the federal government.
On Wednesday, Musk and Ramaswamy trained their fire on the compromise bill that would have kept the government open for the next three months, and are now crying victory after Trump torpedoed the legislation.
Musk tweeted:
Your elected representatives have heard you and now the terrible bill is dead. The voice of the people has triumphed! VOX POPULI VOX DEI
And Ramaswamy wrote:
We the People won. That’s how America is supposed to work.
Here’s the joint statement from Donald Trump and JD Vance yesterday afternoon in which they demanded Congress renegotiate the tentative deal to fund the government, and also raise the debt ceiling.
Like much of the president-elect’s communications, it was posted on Truth Social:
The most foolish and inept thing ever done by Congressional Republicans was allowing our country to hit the debt ceiling in 2025. It was a mistake and is now something that must be addressed.
Meanwhile, Congress is considering a spending bill that would give sweetheart provisions for government censors and for Liz Cheney. The bill would make it easier to hide the records of the corrupt January 6 committee—which accomplished nothing for the American people and hid security failures that happened that day. This bill would also give Congress a pay increase while many Americans are struggling this Christmas.
Increasing the debt ceiling is not great but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch. If Democrats won’t cooperate on the debt ceiling now, what makes anyone think they would do it in June during our administration? Let’s have this debate now. And we should pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t give Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want.
Republicans want to support our farmers, pay for disaster relief, and set our country up for success in 2025. The only way to do that is with a temporary funding bill WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS combined with an increase in the debt ceiling. Anything else is a betrayal of our country…
Trump now says he wants the limit on how much debt the federal government can accumulate abolished entirely.
After demanding Republicans reject a three-month government funding bill, Donald Trump yesterday evening warned that any lawmaker from his party who defies him can expect to face a primary challenge.
Writing on Truth Social, Trump said:
If Republicans try to pass a clean Continuing Resolution without all of the Democrat ‘bells and whistles’ that will be so destructive to our Country, all it will do, after January 20th, is bring the mess of the Debt Limit into the Trump Administration, rather than allowing it to take place in the Biden Administration. Any Republican that would be so stupid as to do this should, and will, be Primaried. Everything should be done, and fully negotiated, prior to my taking Office on January 20th, 2025.
This morning, the president-elect wrote:
EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!
The context for the latter comment is unclear.
A Georgia appeals court has ordered that the prosecutor Fani Willis is disqualified from the case she brought against Donald Trump and 18 other defendants for allegedly plotting to overturn the state’s election result in 2020, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
Attorneys for the defendants accused Willis, the district attorney of the Atlanta-area Fulton county, of having a conflict of interest due to her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor she hired for the case. Wade resigned from the prosecution earlier this year, and in a 2-1 ruling, the appeals court said Willis should be disqualified as well.
Here’s more, from the Journal-Constitution:
In a 2-1 decision, a panel of judges, all GOP appointees, concluded that Willis’ onetime romantic relationship with former special prosecutor Nathan Wade constituted a conflict of interest that merited her dismissal from the case.
‘After carefully considering the trial court’s findings in its order, we conclude that it erred by failing to disqualify DA Willis and her office,’ wrote judges Todd Markle and Trenton Brown for the majority. A third judge, Benjamin Land, issued a strongly-worded dissent.
The majority opinion also rejected a push from several defendants in the case to dismiss the indictment.
The decision is a massive blow to Willis, one of the most recognizable prosecutors in the country who cruised to a second term earlier this month against a relatively inexperienced Republican opponent. It also could be the death knell for the fourth and final case that resulted in criminal charges against Trump after he left office in January 2021.
Willis is expected to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court of Georgia. A spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Just a few hours ago, Donald Trump rejected a tentative deal in Congress to keep the government funded through the first few months of his term, and demanded lawmakers increase the country’s borrowing limit in any new compromise.
Now, the president-elect has modified his demands, by telling NBC News in an interview that he wants the debt ceiling eliminated outright. “The Democrats have said they want to get rid of it. If they want to get rid of it, I would lead the charge,” Trump told the broadcaster.
The United States is one of a small number of countries with a statutory limit on how much debt the federal government can accumulate, and over the past decade and a half, Republicans have repeatedly demanded concessions from Democrats in exchange for voting to increase it.
Eliminating it entirely would be a huge ask at any time, but even more so now, with the government’s funding authorizations set to expire in less than 48 hours. Here’s more about what the debt ceiling is, and how it works:
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Just yesterday, it seemed like Congress was on the verge of enacting legislation to keep the government running for the next three months and prevent a shutdown that would begin after midnight on Friday. But on X, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and other conservatives whose influence grew after Donald Trump won re-election were busy condemning the deal. It was an effort that culminated yesterday afternoon, when the president-elect and JD Vance blew up the negotiations entirely by declaring that the bill should be scrapped and replaced with a new one that also increases country’s debt ceiling – a surprise demand that hadn’t been raised previously. The incoming administration’s opposition blew up the funding compromise, and now it is up to the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, to pick up the pieces, with less than 48 hours remaining until the government shuts down. Needless to say, few in Congress wanted this to happen with the Christmas holiday right around the corner. We’ll find out today if the GOP has it in them to turn the situation around.
Here’s what else we are watching today:
Democrats appear content to let Republicans own the government funding fiasco, with the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, tweeting that the GOP has “been ordered to shut down the government”.
The Wall Street Journal has published a lengthy look into how the White House managed Joe Biden’s public ageing during his presidency and before – which was a major factor in his decision to end his re-election bid earlier this year.
Biden and Kamala Harris have no public events on their schedule. The president is returning to Washington DC today from Delaware, while the vice-president flies this evening to Los Angeles.
