The United States is facing a government shutdown on Saturday following Thursday’s rejection by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives of a Republican plan to avert it.
That plan, endorsed by President-elect Donald Trump and his tech billionaire advisor Elon Musk, failed in a 235-174 vote, with 38 Republicans joining nearly all Democrats in rejecting the proposal, which had tied government funding to a suspension of the debt limit.
It also put House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, in a very tenuous position, evoking recent memories of House Republican fights over the speakership and their lack of control of their caucus.
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“It was an epic meltdown,” wrote the New York Times.
The new plan came about after Musk, writing voluminously on X on Wednesday, urged Republicans to reject the initial GOP proposal. The key difference between the two plans was that the second one tied the spending to a suspension of the government’s borrowing limit for two years. It would have extended government operations until mid-March.
But it provoked some Republicans, who remain fiscally conservative and warned colleagues of the dangers of removing the debt limit.
“You never have any ounce of self-respect,” Texas Republican Chip Roy told his colleagues on the House floor.
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Democrats were in no mood to help their Republican colleagues, as many complained that needed social program funding had been stripped from the bill, with some deriding what they called blind support for Trump.
“One or two puppet masters weigh in and the extreme MAGA Republicans decide to do the bidding of the wealthy, the well-off, the well-connected millionaires and billionaires, not working-class people all across America,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said.
The scene on the House floor on Thursday was reminiscent of many of the difficulties Trump had in governing in his first term – and the former and soon-to-be president won’t take office until January 20.
Trump was president the last time there was a government shutdown – in 2018 – which kept some 800,000 federal workers home for 34 days.
What remains to be seen is if or how often Republicans – especially in the House – will defy Trump. That chamber is considered to have more hard-right and diehard Trump loyalists than the Senate, but observers will be watching to see if Thursday’s Trump rejection is an outlier – or the first of more to come.
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