President-elect Donald Trump has nearly killed a bipartisan spending deal that would help avert a government shutdown after slamming Republicans who are supporting the bill, the New York Times reports.
On Wednesday (December 18), Trump issued a statement ordering Republicans to not support the spending bill, leaving lawmakers without a path to fund the government past a Friday (December 20) deadline. Trump's criticism followed Elon Musk, who the president-elect has tapped to scale back the scope of the federal government, attacking the bill, which also includes unrelated policy measures and directing tens of billions of dollars to disaster and agricultural aid.
“Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” Musk wrote in one of several social media posts about the matter.
“We should pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t give Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want,” Trump piled on in a joint statement with Senator JD Vance, the vice president-elect.
Prior to the high-profile criticism, anti-spending conservatives had already expressed opposition to the funding extension. The measure began as a simple spending bill to keep government funds flowing past the deadline, but Democratic negotiations led to the addition of disaster aid and other unrelated policies.
“The American people wanted change,” Representative Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina, said in a statement. “They didn’t say go out and spend more money, put us more into debt. It’s the opposite of what the American people voted for.”
With GOP resistance, Speaker Mike Johnson was going to have to rely on Democratic votes to pass the bill through a special procedure that would require the support of two-thirds of those voting. However, growing criticism among Republicans on Wednesday left a bleak path for garnering enough support to push the bill across the finish line, even with Democratic backing.
On Wednesday, Trump ordered lawmakers to pass a “temporary funding bill WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS" along with an increase in the debt ceiling. The president-elect said Republicans should raise the ceiling so the borrowing limit, which is expected to be reached in January, could go up while President Joe Biden is still in office.
Amid the chaos, Democrats appeared uninterested in starting new negotiations.
“House Republicans have now unilaterally decided to break a bipartisan agreement that they made,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, said in a statement. “House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government and hurt everyday Americans all across this country. House Republicans will now own any harm that is visited upon the American people that results from a government shutdown.”
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