UPDATE, 3:06 PM: If all goes to plan, the federal government will not be shutting down at midnight.
In a quickly cobbled together package with no mention of Donald Trump’s pet project of raising the debt ceiling, the House of Representatives just passed a funding bill that will keep the government running until March 2025.
Making it over the two thirds requirement with bipartisan support even with dozens of Republicans voting against Speaker Mike Johnson’s last-ditch efforts, the revised continuing resolution now moves to the Senate. The upper chamber is expected to move pretty fast to seal the deal, and then get it to still sitting President Joe Biden to sign.
Covered live by all the cable newsers, with the GOP taking a drubbing on some outlets, the final House vote was 366 in favor of the bill, 34 against — the latter all being Republicans.
Renewing money already on the table, the interim spending bill had billions for farmers and for disaster relief but cut millions in pediatric cancer research, among other measures. A raising of the debt ceiling by over a trillion dollars is now anticipated to be dealt with in the early spring and within the first 100 days of Trump 2.0.
Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries brought his party to the GOP Speaker’s rescue, even as the job insecure Johnson was kneecapped on a long negotiated previous funding deal earlier this week by the so-called President Elon Musk and then President-elect Donald Trump. After days of sniping at Johnson and the bipartisan efforts and a flood of tweets, some informed, some clearly not, Musk flipped his own script.
So, Merry Christmas. Travel safe.
PREVIOUSLY, 10:18 AM: CNN and MSNBC have introduced countdown clocks as the U.S. government heads for a shutdown at midnight tonight, as congressional Republicans try to come up with a funding plan that will pass muster with its members following Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s moves to scuttle a previous bipartisan agreement.
House Republicans were meeting behind closed doors this afternoon to chart a path forward, after one plan — to accompany government and disaster relief funding with a raising of the debut limit — was resoundingly defeated on Thursday. There were reports that the GOP leaders in the House now plan to take separate votes on various funding proposals.
But any legislation still would have to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate, while Democratic leaders on both sides of the aisle are fuming. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had reached a bipartisan agreement with other leaders on legislation to fund the government through the spring along with a host of other end-of-the-year proposals, but backed off after Elon Musk relentlessly trashed the plan on his social media platform X. Trump later came out against it too and demanded that any end-of-the-year funding bill include one that would raise the debt limit — or do away with it entirely.
Trump posted earlier today, “If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration, not after January 20th, under “TRUMP.” This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!”
Asked why President Joe Biden has said relatively little about the standoff, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters this afternoon, “We have to be really clear here. This is a mess that Speaker Johnson created. It is his mess to fix.”
A number of Democrats have taken to refer to Musk as “President Musk,” an effort to try to troll Trump and perhaps divide the partnership between the world’s richest man and the soon-to-be most powerful one.
If the government shuts down, the impact probably would not be fully felt until next week. In past shutdowns all but essential workers, such as law enforcement and TSA agents, have remained on the job, although they go without pay. National parks and most federal offices have closed, while work is halted at federal agencies. The past shutdown also halted the review of M&A activity. Skydance’s proposed merger with Paramount Global is currently pending before federal regulators.
Jean-Pierre said that if there is a shutdown, “transition activities would be restricted with limited exceptions.”
The last shutdown started on Dec. 22, 2018 and lasted until Jan. 25, 2019, a 35-day closure that was the longest in history.
