House Republicans reach agreement on government spending deal
House Republicans have reached a short-term government funding agreement that will prevent a shutdown from happening after Friday, Reuters reports.
According to Punchbowl News, the deal would fund the government for the next three months, and suspend the debt limit until 2027, as Donald Trump had demanded.
It also includes $110bn in aid for disasters, including the hurricanes that recently struck North Carolina and elsewhere in the south-east.
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Republicans’ decision to abandon a congressional spending plan will cost troops their paychecks over the holidays unless some agreement is reached before Friday’s deadline to prevent a government shutdown, the Pentagon warned.
Even if they don’t get paid, those troops will be required to report for duty both overseas and at home, Pentagon press secretary Major Gen. Pat Ryder said Thursday.
Without an agreement to fund the government, troops will not receive their end-of-month paychecks, reservists drilling after Friday will not be paid, and federal civilians who are required to work during a shutdown also will not be paid, he said.
The military payroll is just one of thousands of federal accounts that would be affected, but one of the most visible.
Republican version of spending bills fails House vote
Voting is ongoing, but there are now enough no votes against the last-minute Trump-backed spending bill to make a two-thirds majority impossible.
Lawmakers have one more day to avert a total government shutdown. House speaker Mike Johnson, who introduced a new, stripped-back bill after Donald Trump torpedoed an earlier, bipartisan spending bill, told reporters that Republicans will remain committed to cutting down the size of the federal government even as he and other Trump allies acquiesced to the president-elect’s request to suspend the US borrowing limit.
The House is now voting on the new funding bill.
Because the House speaker Mike Johnson expedited it to the floor, it requires the support of two-thirds of the House to pass.
DeLauro, a Democratic member from Connecticut, also yielded her time on the House floor to Texas Republican Chip Roy – who chided his fellow Republicans for agreeing to raise the debt ceiling.
“To take this bill and congratulate yourself because it’s shorter in pages, but increases the debt by $5tn, is asinine. That’s precisely what Republicans are doing,” Roy said.
“It’s embarrassing, it’s shameful,” he said.
In an impassioned address, Rosa DeLauro, the Democrats’ top appropriator, mocked Republicans as being “scared” to pass the bipartisan measure.
“Because President Musk said, ‘Don’t’?” she chided. “Imagine. What does he know about what people go through when the government shuts down? Are his employees furloughed? Hell no! Is he furloughed? No!”
Debate over the spending bill has grown so heated that representative Marc Molinaro, who was presiding, broke his gavel trying to quiet jeers from the Democrats.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden has been largely absent.
If lawmakers fail to pass a spending bill by Friday night, the government will shut down this weekend. Though Donald Trump has not yet been sworn into office, he has been throwing his weight around and pushed Republicans to abandon their hard-negotiated bipartisan bill.
Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers told Politico they’ve hardly heard from Biden.
Politico reports:
More than a half-dozen House Democratic lawmakers said Thursday that the conference had yet to hear from the president, even as Congress scrambled to salvage a funding deal and avoid shutting down the government.
As Republicans now try to sell a revamped bill before funding runs out Friday night, the eleventh-hour debacle threatens to swamp the last days of Biden’s term, while costing the administration some final policy priorities that it had hoped to cement as part of the year-end agreement.
But as lawmakers searched for a way forward, no one seemed to be looking to Biden for answers – and the lame-duck president gave no indication he had any desire to provide them.
“I haven’t spoken to him,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the Democrats’ top appropriator, said of Biden, adding that she didn’t expect to in the near future. “I’ve spoken to the White House. I think their view is, ‘we had a deal.’”
Meanwhile, Mark Alford of Missouri tried to reframe the impending shutdown as a “Democratic shutdown” and implicate Democrats for failing to provide support for US farmers and disaster relief if they vote against the bill.
But the previously bipartisan spending bill that Donald Trump and Elon Musk tore down also contained disaster aid and it extended the “farm bill”, – a package of farm subsidies, food benefits and other programs – and provided $10bn in economic aid for farmers.
Jeffries also pointed out the hypocrisy of Republicans pushing a bill to suspend the debt limit for two years.
“It’s been interesting to me that for decades the Republican party has lectured America about fiscal responsibility, about the debt and the deficit. It’s always been phony. This bill proves it,” he said.
Speaking on the House floor, while stood beside a sign that reads “#RepublicanShutdown”, Hakeem Jeffries is pointing out all the policies and programs that have been cut out of the this new Republican-led government spending bill, including funding for a program for childhood cancer and disease research. “Cruelty is the point,” he said.
Democrats have seized on this moment to point out Elon Musk’s outsized influence on Donald Trump and on the Republican party.
“Elon Musk ordered his puppet President-elect and House Republicans to break the bipartisan agreement reached to keep government open,” former House speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote on X. “House Republicans are abdicating their responsibility to the American people and siding with billionaires and special interests.”
Meanwhile, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland asked, rhetorically: “Is Elon Musk the new dictator of the Republican party?”
Analysis: Elon Musk showcases grip on Washington
Rachel Leingang
Using the power of the social media platform he owns and the threat of spending millions against Republicans in primaries, Elon Musk effectively tanked a bipartisan congressional spending bill that would have kept the government running.
After their initial failure at Musk’s hands, House Republicans on Thursday scrambled to put together another deal, which they say will provide a few months of spending and, according to reports, will suspend the debt limit at Donald Trump’s request.
The world’s richest man again flexed the muscle he gained during the 2024 election, in which he spent big to help elect Trump and spread rightwing rumors on X. Since the spending bill was introduced, Musk has fired off tweet after tweet attacking it, amplifying false claims about what it includes and dooming its fate.
“‘Shutting down’ the government (which doesn’t actually shut down critical functions btw) is infinitely better than passing a horrible bill,” Musk wrote in one post.
He and the account for the “department of government efficiency” or Doge, a government body that Trump says he’ll create, claimed the bill would significantly raise pay for members of Congress – it wouldn’t. He claimed it includes funding for bioweapons – it does not. He erroneously shared that it would direct billions for a stadium in DC. He offensively used the word “retard” to joke about language changes in the bill, then joked further about his use of the word.
The ordeal is a sign of what’s to come for Musk in his influential role, with a social media platform he can use to go after those he disagrees with. His tweets receive millions of impressions and signal to the rightwing online ecosystem what the lines of attack will be.
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Democrats, emerging from their closed-door meeting, told reporters they were “united” in their opposition to the new government spending deal, members told reporters.
The deal “is not serious, it’s laughable”, said Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic representative of New York and the House minority leader. “Extreme Maga Republicans are driving us to a government shutdown.”
Given that some Republicans, such as Chip Roy, have also indicated that they’re opposed to a deal, it’s unclear what future this version of the spending bill will have. Still, Republicans are on track to call a vote on the measure shortly.
Hakeem Jeffries told House Democrats in a closed-door meeting, “I’m not just a no, I’m a hell no,” according to multiple reports.
Among the many provisions stripped from the new spending measure:
- $190m for a a child cancer research program and funding for other medical research
- A bill criminalize the publication deepfake porn
- Restrictions on US outbound investment in China
And likely many of the other provisions in the bipartisan deal, which are detailed by Reuters here.
House Democrats will be meeting at 4.30pm eastern time, to discuss the Republicans’ deal.
Democrats weren’t part of the discussions that led to the spending bill deal put forth by the Republican speaker, Mike Johnson. But Johnson will need lots of Democratic votes in order to push the deal through.
Democrats, meanwhile, are still reeling from the breakdown of a bipartisan deal that Donald Trump tanked. The bipartisan measure would have extended government funding through mid-March, but it also contained other policy measures including a pay raise for Congress members, expansions and changes to Medicare and Medicaid policy, and restrictions on hotel “junk fees”.
Egged on by Elon Musk, who is to head a new agency to reduce government inefficiency called Doge, Trump urged Republicans to kill the measure and instead pass a stripped-back spending bill without policies that he characterized as “DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS”.
Musk piled on, posting on social media that “any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!”
But even as Musk railed against excess spending, Trump called on Congress to raise the debt ceiling, pushing Republicans to increase the country’s borrowing limit while Joe Biden was still in the White House to avoid the political complications of doing once he is sworn in.
Mike Pence, Trump’s first vice-president, has meanwhile sided with the Chip Roy and conservatives who are ideologically opposed to expanding government spending.
In a post on X, Pence wrote: “Congressman Chip Roy is one of the most principled conservatives in Washington DC and people across this country are grateful for his stand against runaway federal spending. We just can’t keep piling trillions in debt on our children and grandchildren.”
Trump’s insistence on suspending or eliminating the debt ceiling puts him at odds with his party’s fiscally conservative stalwarts. And it’s unclear how much support this latest deal will garner among Republicans, let alone among Democrats who did not have any input on the deal.
Donald Trump has put his support behind the spending deal, writing on his Truth Social platform, “all Republicans, and even the Democrats, should do what is best for our country and vote ‘YES’”.
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