President-elect Donald Trump blamed President Biden on Friday for the impending fiscal cliff-dive and suggested the government should shut down “now” — even as congressional Republicans are preparing an eleventh-hour push to approve short-term funding before midnight.
“If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration, not after January 20th, under ‘TRUMP,’” the incoming president declared around 8 a.m. Friday on Truth Social. “This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!”
A few hours later, just after 10 a.m., Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) told reporters that the House GOP was preparing a package for a vote in the Rules Committee — which, if approved, would only need a simple majority in a full floor vote to pass the lower chamber and head to the Senate.
Congress has been careening toward a partial government shutdown after House Republicans blew up two earlier stopgap measures this week.
Under heavy lobbying from Elon Musk, House GOP leadership killed a more than 1,500-page bill on Wednesday after the electric car mogul, his Department of Government Efficiency co-chair Vivek Ramaswamy and other fiscal hawks in Congress balked at the high price tag.
It included around $100 billion in disaster relief funding for hurricane-hit states and other damaged areas, billions in farm aid and the extension of federal spending at current levels until March 14, 2025.
Plan B, a 116-page, slimmed-down bill, was put on the House floor for a vote Thursday but was immediately batted down by all but two Democrats and 38 Republicans — many of whom opposed the even higher spending levels.
That replacement agreement would’ve kept the government’s lights on for three months too, handed out $110 billion in disaster relief, had the same levels of farm aid — and added a two-year suspension of the debt limit until Jan. 30, 2027, which was requested by Trump.
In the early hours of Friday, the president-elect went further and said: “Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling. Without this, we should never make a deal. Remember, the pressure is on whoever is President.”
The slimmed-down bill cut out a pay hike for lawmakers, as much as $2 billion in funding for the rebuilding of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, and the renovation and relinquishment of Robert F. Kennedy Stadium to city officials in Washington, DC.
Since it was considered under a suspension of the lower chamber’s rules, the so-called American Relief Act had required a two-thirds supermajority to pass — and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) helped spur his caucus to vote it down.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and fiscal conservatives in the Freedom Caucus met Friday morning with incoming Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and Vice President-elect JD Vance to craft a third deal.
It’s unclear, though, whether that could pass the Democrat-controlled Senate.
If a short-term funding bill doesn’t pass both chambers of Congress before 12 a.m. Saturday, the government will go into a partial shutdown.
Only so-called “essential” agencies — such as law enforcement, national security, Border Patrol and disaster response — operate during a shutdown, as well as critical benefit programs like Social Security.
When leaving the US Capitol on Thursday night, Vance blamed Democrats for the debacle, saying their party had “asked for a shutdown and I think that’s exactly what they’re going to get.”
“Either the government should pass sensible bills that actually serve the people or shut it down!” Musk agreed in a Friday morning X post.
Jeffries had decried the plan B bill as a handout for Republican lawmakers’ “billionaire donors.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also rebuked Republicans on Thursday night for torpedoing the initial deal and “breaking their word to support a bipartisan agreement that would lower prescription drug costs and make it harder to offshore jobs to China.”
“President Biden supports the bipartisan agreement to keep the government open, help communities recovering from disasters, and lower costs — not this giveaway for billionaires that Republicans are proposing at the 11th hour,” she said in a statement.
