Capitol Hill gripped by uncertainty after House rejects temporary funding deal that was hastily assembled after Trump and Musk tanked bipartisan agreement
The latest chaos was sparked when Donald Trump abruptly rejected a bipartisan plan to prevent a government shutdown before the Friday deadline and called for the outright elimination of the debt ceiling.
The US is one of the few countries with a statutory limit on how much debt the federal government can accumulate.
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Before the vote, Democrats and Republicans warned that the other party would be at fault if Congress allowed the government to shut down.
Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, told reporters that the package would avoid disruption, tie up loose ends and make it easier for Congress to cut spending by hundreds of billions of dollars when Trump takes office next year. “Government is too big, it does too many things, and it does few things well,” he said.
But Democrats dismissed the bill as a cover for a budget-busting tax cut that would largely benefit wealthy backers such as Musk, the world’s richest man, while saddling the country with trillions of dollars in additional debt.
effries said during the floor debate: “How dare you lecture America about fiscal responsibility, ever?”
Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman, told reporters: “So who is our leader Hakeem Jeffries supposed to negotiate with? Is it Mike Johnson? Is he the speaker of the House. Or is it Donald Trump? Or is it Elon Musk? Or is it somebody else?”
Some Republicans objected that the bill would clear the way for more debt while failing to reduce spending. Congressman Chip Roy said: “I am absolutely sickened by the party that campaigns on fiscal responsibility.”
Critics if the incoming Trump administration described the breakdown as an early glimpse of the chaos to come when Trump returns to the White House on 20 January. Musk’s intervention via a volley of tweets on his social media platform X was mocked by Democrats as the work of “President Musk”.
“The Musk-Johnson proposal is not serious,” Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, told reporters. “It’s laughable. Extreme Maga Republicans are driving us to a government shutdown.”
Despite Trump’s support, 38 Republicans voted against the new package along with nearly every Democrat, ensuring that it failed to reach the two-thirds threshold needed for passage and leaving the next steps uncertain.
The defiance from within Trump’s own party caught many by surprise.
The latest bill would have extended government funding into March, when Trump will be in the White House and Republicans will control both chambers of Congress. It also would have provided $100bn in disaster relief and suspended the debt. Republicans dropped other elements that had been included in the original package, such as a pay raise for members of Congress and new rules for pharmacy benefit managers.
At Trump’s urging, the new version also would have suspended limits on the national debt for two years – a move that would make it easier to pass the dramatic tax cuts he has promised and set the stage for the federal government’s $36tn in debt to continue to climb.
Good morning US politics readers. The US government faces a looming shutdown after the House rejected a bill late on Thursday that would have agreed a temporary funding deal just before a crucial deadline.
By a vote of 174-235, the House of Representatives rejected a Trump-backed package, hastily assembled by Republican leaders after the president-elect and his billionaire ally Elon Musk scuttled a prior bipartisan deal.
Now lawmakers face a last-minute scramble to secure a new deal before the Friday night deadline – or all nonessential government functions will pause.
Thousands of federal government employees would be put on furlough, meaning that they are told not to report for work and go unpaid for the period of the shutdown, although their salaries are paid retroactively when it ends.
Other government workers who perform what are judged essential services, such as air traffic controllers and law enforcement officials, continue to work but do not get paid until Congress acts to end the shutdown.
A shutdown just before the holiday season hits its peak, could be disastrous for millions of Americans.
