As a government shutdown looms, it has become crystal clear that the richest man in the world is holding America hostage over his stalling of a House agreement on a spending plan. President Elon Musk now appears to be running the government, somebody who’s never been elected to anything in America.
The US is hours away from a government shutdown unless Congress agrees on such a . The House failed Thursday to pass a new Donald Trump-backed GOP proposal to fund the government into March, ratcheting up the threat of a shutdown ahead of the midnight deadline.
In a last-minute bid to avert a shutdown, House GOP leaders are now eyeing a strategy that would allow lawmakers to take separate votes on funding the government and raising the debt limit. GOP members are expected to meet this afternoon to discuss the latest proposal, according to lawmakers and aides.
Trump said Friday morning that if there has to be a government shutdown, he wants it to occur while Joe Biden is president. Trump tanked an original bipartisan deal unveiled Wednesday.
From Vox
What the Hell Is Going On?
President-elect Donald Trump didn’t even wait to start his second term before throwing Congress into chaos, sinking a bipartisan spending deal and making his own demands as a government shutdown looms at midnight.
In one sense, this is just the latest installment of a very familiar story involving House Republican dysfunction over spending battles, and Trump’s willingness to embrace chaos and throw things into disarray.
The surprising aspect to the current showdown, though, is just what, exactly, Trump has chosen to pick this fight over: He wants to suspend, or even eliminate, the debt ceiling.
“Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling,” Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social early Friday morning. “Without this, we should never make a deal.”
The debt ceiling is the limit — set in law — of how much new debt the US government can issue. If it is not raised or suspended in time, the country would default on its debt; it is widely believed economic turmoil would then ensue. Republicans have used the threat of a debt default to try to force Democratic presidents into policy concessions, and Trump fears Democrats will try something similar against him in 2025. So he wants the debt ceiling suspended right now — or even abolished entirely.
This was an unexpected turn of events because the initial bipartisan deal just didn’t address the debt ceiling at all: It merely funded the government for three more months, as well as included several other provisions that had won bipartisan backing.
When, on Wednesday, billionaire Elon Musk started publicly attacking the deal, he complained about the bill’s “overspending” and also made sometimes-inaccurate claims about those add-on provisions. But he said nothing about the debt ceiling — which would, if suspended, allow Trump and Republicans to spend more freely.
Then, in a Wednesday afternoon statement denouncing the deal, Trump suddenly put the debt ceiling on the agenda. “Increasing the debt ceiling is not great but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch,” he posted on Truth Social, calling Republicans “foolish and inept” for not dealing with this issue earlier and complaining that “the Debt Ceiling guillotine was coming up in June.”
On Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson scrapped the bipartisan deal, dropping several of the add-on provisions and, in accordance with Trump’s wishes, adding a debt ceiling increase. Some conservatives who had cheered on Musk’s criticism of the initial deal’s big spending are now horrified at this turn of events, believing the debt ceiling is a crucial tool to help restrain spending. More than three dozen House Republicans broke with Trump to vote against the new bill Thursday evening, and since nearly every House Democrat also opposed it, it failed.
But Democrats are still weighing how they should handle this unexpected turn of events. Democratic wonks have long hated the debt ceiling, believing irresponsible Republicans used it to take the economy “hostage” to extort Presidents Obama and Biden, and many would happily see it abolished. However, the party’s congressional leaders may hope to preserve it as leverage against Trump and are ill-inclined to give in to Trumpian demands issued from on high — if there’s a deal, they want to be part of that deal.
The House has passed a stopgap funding bill just hours before a midnight deadline to avert a federal government shutdown. It now heads to the Senate for approval.
• What’s in the deal: The latest plan would extend government funding into March and includes disaster relief and farming provisions, but does not include a suspension of the debt limit, which President-elect Donald Trump has been demanding that Republicans address.