Trump-backed deal to avert government shutdown fails in first House vote

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The US Congress has just 24 hours to find a deal to keep the government open after the House of Representatives voted down a funding bill on Thursday night despite support from Donald Trump.

The 174-235 vote tees up a race by House Republicans to approve a new bill. The failed deal would have extended government spending to March 14, sent billions of dollars to communities devastated by natural disasters and suspended limits on federal borrowing for two years — a crucial priority for the president-elect.

Earlier on Thursday, as Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled the latest version of the bill, Trump urged Republicans and Democrats to vote for it. “SUCCESS in Washington!” he posted on his Truth Social platform.

Democrats, however, immediately attacked the proposal.

“The Musk-Johnson proposal is not serious,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters ahead of the vote, referring to Trump’s billionaire adviser Elon Musk. “It’s laughable. Extreme Maga Republicans are driving us to a government shutdown.”

The bill fell far short of the two-thirds of House members needed to pass, in a sign of the huge challenge that Johnson and Republican leaders have ahead of them. A significant number of Republicans, 38, voted against the measure.

The House and Senate will need to work quickly to approve the bill in order to get it to President Joe Biden for his signature before a Friday night deadline, after which the government will start to shut down.

“We will regroup and we will come up with another solution,” Johnson told reporters after the vote on Thursday. “So stay tuned.”

Musk first piled pressure on Johnson and Republicans in a series of social media posts on his X platform on Wednesday, criticising the initial 1,500-page bill as “terrible” and bloated with unnecessary spending and other measures.

Trump then sent House Republicans scrambling when he came out against the bill, in large part because it did not also raise the government’s debt ceiling.

“At the behest of the world’s richest man, who no one voted for, the United States Congress has been thrown into pandemonium,” said Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House appropriations committee, on Thursday, in a reference to Musk.

The legislative crisis has put Johnson’s leadership in doubt, with far-right members such as Marjorie Taylor Greene musing that Musk could replace him as Speaker.

The quip underscored Johnson’s vulnerability. Asked by NBC News on Thursday morning whether he still had confidence in the Speaker, Trump said: “We’ll see.”

The first three-month stop-gap bill had been negotiated between Republican and Democratic congressional leaders. It would have averted a government shutdown by maintaining current levels of spending until March 14, and spent billions of dollars on farmers and disaster relief aid. By then, Republicans will have control of both Congress and the White House.

It also contained unrelated provisions, including a pay increase for members of Congress, restrictions on technology investment in China and an easier path for the Washington Commanders American football team to move its stadium from the state of Maryland to the city of Washington.

But the initial bill did not touch the debt limit, which was expected to expire in the first several months of Trump’s second term. Trump called it a “Democrat trap” and threatened Republican members that he would field primary challengers against them in the next election if they voted to support a short-term spending measure without raising the debt ceiling.

“There won’t be anything approved unless the debt ceiling is done with,” Trump told ABC News. “If we don’t get it, then we’re going to have a shutdown, but it’ll be a Biden shutdown, because shutdowns only inure to the person who’s president.”

In a sign of the targeted attacks that Trump and Musk have promised against Republicans who disobey their directives, Trump on Thursday singled out conservative House representative Chip Roy, who has consistently sought to cut spending, for criticism.

“Chip Roy is just another ambitious guy, with no talent,” posted Trump on Truth Social. “I hope some talented challengers are getting ready in the Great State of Texas to go after Chip in the Primary. He won’t have a chance!”

Roy responded on X that he would oppose the legislation anyway, nodding to concerns among Republican fiscal hawks. “New bill: $110BB in deficit spending (unpaid for), $4 TRILLION+ debt ceiling increase with $0 in structural reforms for cuts.”

The debt ceiling is a perennial problem for lawmakers, who suspended the cap on borrowing until January 1 in a deal reached last year. To borrow beyond that limit, the Treasury department can use what it calls “extraordinary measures” to cover new expenditures without breaching the cap.

This can buy the government time before having to worry about a potential default — a disastrous outcome for the world’s largest economy and most important financial system.