The Latest: Jeffries says GOP ‘will now own any harm’ from shutdown
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump has rejected a bipartisan plan to avoid a government shutdown over the Christmas season. Instead, he has ordered House Speaker Mike Johnson and Republicans to essentially renegotiate two days before a deadline when federal funding runs out.
The sudden new demands have sent Congress into overdrive as lawmakers try to wrap up their work and head home for the holidays. House Speaker Mike Johnson must rush to meet a Friday deadline to keep the government open.
Here’s the latest:
The top Democrat in the House of Representatives blames Republicans for a government shutdown if it occurs.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in remarks from the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday evening that “Republicans in the House of Representatives will now accept the harm inflicted on the American people as a result of a government shutdown, or worse.”
“An agreement is an agreement,” Jeffries concluded. “It was a bipartisan party, and there’s nothing more to say.”
Democrats have condemned the Republican insurgency over the Republican Party emergency measurewhich would also have provided about $100 billion in disaster assistance to states hit by hurricanes Helene And Milton and other natural disasters.
Musk’s position in the incoming Trump administration is not technically part of a government department or agency, but he continues to use his massive megaphone on the social platform X to condemn the spending measure.
On Wednesday evening, Musk reposted several messages from others criticizing the proposal to his more than 207 million followers.
Musk dismissed the plan almost as soon as it was released late Tuesday night, posting in the early hours of the next morning: “This must not pass.”
Musk, who heads the government’s new Department of Efficiency with Vivek Ramaswamy, is leading the charge against the measure, warning: “Every member of the House or Senate who votes for this excessive spending bill deserves to be expelled within two weeks.” to be voted out. years!”
It is not an idle threat coming from the richest man in the world, who helped finance Trump’s victory and can easily use his America PAC to make or break political careers.
Donald Trump’s rejection of a bill that would prevent a government shutdown over the holidays was a show of dominance from a president-elect who is still a month away from his inauguration and hundreds of miles away at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. It brought back a sense of chaos and political mismanagement reminiscent of his first term in office.
The episode also showed the influence of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who spent the day attacking the budget legislation for being full of excessive spending. They caused a social media firestorm — Musk even threatened to support primary challenges against anyone who voted for the measure — before Trump decided to insert himself.
“Kill the Bill!” Musk wrote on his social media platform X as he gleefully reposted messages from Republican House members vowing not to support the bill.
If Congress does not pass a continuing resolution or a more permanent spending measure by Friday, the federal government could shut down.
This is all happening in part because when the budget year ended on September 30, Congress simply addressed the problem by passing a temporary funding bill to keep the government running.
That measure expires on Friday.
When Congress is in the process of passing measures to fund the federal government, the term “CR” often comes up. What does it mean?
“CR” stands for “Continuing Resolution,” and it is a temporary spending bill that allows the federal government to remain open and operational before Congress and the President approve a more permanent appropriation.
According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, CRs typically maintain the same funding level of the prior year’s appropriations, or a previously approved current year CR.
The decision came as Republicans deadlocked over a package to fund the government before Friday’s midnight deadline.
The term is widely used during discussions about congressional spending measures. But what exactly is it?
The omnibus bill is a massive, sweeping measure that lawmakers generally had little time to digest — or understand — before voting on it.
There are a lot of spending measures all in one, and sometimes that’s what happens when the dozens of individual funding measures don’t make it through Congress’ spending process in time to be passed to fund the federal government.
Democrats in Congress were quick to condemn Trump’s rejection of the spending measure, saying that not funding the federal government would cause hardship for many people, but not for wealthy Americans like the president-elect.
“Why do the billionaires – Musk, Ramaswamy, Trump – want to shut down the government before Christmas?” Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said in a post on the social platform
Murphy also said a shutdown would spell trouble for “troops, TSA agents and other federal employees who aren’t getting paid,” adding, “It’s their children who will suffer this Christmas.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has added his voice to Republicans opposing the spending bill, which he called “grotesque” and “an insult to U.S. intelligence.”
In a post on the social platform X, DeSantis wrote that his former colleagues in Congress were “hiding behind disaster relief funding.”
He noted that his state has invested more than $3.5 billion in its own preparedness and disaster funds since 2022, while still weathering “several catastrophic hurricanes.”
president-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday abruptly rejected a bipartisan plan to avoid a government shutdown over the Christmas season, instead telling the Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson and Republicans to essentially renegotiate — days before a deadline for federal funding to run out.
Trump’s sudden entry into the debate and the new demands sent Congress into a spiral as lawmakers tried to wrap up their work and go home for the holidays. It leaves Johnson struggling to come up with a new plan to keep the government open before Friday’s deadline.
“Republicans must GET SMART and TOUGH,” Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance said in a statement.
The president-elect made a virtually unrealistic proposal that combined continued government funding with a much more controversial provision to raise the country’s debt limit — something his own party consistently rejects. “Anything else is a betrayal of our country,” they wrote.
Democrats have denounced the Republican insurgency over the Republican Party emergency measurewhich would also have provided some $100 billion in disaster assistance to states hit by hurricanes Helene And Milton and other natural disasters.
“House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said.