US Congress debates last-minute spending bill to avert government shutdown. donald trump news

The United States is bracing for a government shutdown, as members of Congress race to negotiate a last-minute budget deal that will keep federal services funded into the new year.

Early Friday, US media reported that the Office of Management and Budget under outgoing President Joe Biden had already indicated that federal agencies should prepare for closures.

The government funding is set to expire at midnight Saturday at 12:01 a.m. East Coast time (05:01 GMT).

But at an afternoon press briefing on Friday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre struck a note of optimism, saying a government shutdown might not happen if a bipartisan agreement can be passed.

“There’s still time. We believe there’s still time for that not to happen,” Jean-Pierre said. “Our focus is on keeping the government open. That’s what we want to see.”

One final Trump-Biden confrontation

However, as congressional talks continued throughout the day, with Democrats and Republicans exchanging accusations, the budget was shaping up to be a final battle between Bill Biden and his successor, President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump, a former Republican president who is set to take office again on January 20, was a key figure in defeating a bipartisan bill on Wednesday to keep the government running until March.

He repeatedly indicated that, if there should be a shutdown, it should happen under Biden, his Democratic rival.

“If there’s going to be a government shutdown, let it start now, under the Biden administration, not after January 20, under ‘Trump,'” the president-elect said in a social media post on Friday.

Biden, meanwhile, has not spoken directly to the public about the budget performance, but at Friday’s news conference Jean-Pierre emphasized that his voice represents the president.

He blamed Trump and his allies like tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, who was among the high-profile Republicans who spoke out against the bipartisan bill.

The press secretary also asked House Speaker Mike Johnson, another Republican leader, to “clean up the mess” after the collapse of the bipartisan deal.

“There was a bipartisan agreement on the table. They were moving forward. The Speaker agreed to do so in order to move forward on a bipartisan agreement. And because of what the president-elect said and what Elon Musk said, they stopped it,” Jean-Pierre told the news conference.

“They wanted to clear the way for their billionaire friends.”

struggling with bills

Wednesday’s bipartisan legislation totaled 1,547 pages. This included $10 billion in agricultural aid and $100 billion for disaster relief, following another catastrophic hurricane season in the US.

Other provisions set aside money for child care programs, gave members of Congress a 3.8 percent cost-of-living pay raise, and allowed the District of Columbia to develop a stadium for the Washington Commanders football team on federal land.

Nevertheless, Republicans objected to the bill’s length and Trump accused it of being filled with “Democratic freebies.”

On Thursday, the party unveiled its own Trump-approved version of a budget stopgap bill, designed to keep the government temporarily open. The bill, clocking in at 116 pages, kept the disaster relief supplement and earmarked money for farmers — but omitted several other provisions.

Crucially, it also proposed raising the national debt ceiling by January 2027, in the middle of Trump’s upcoming presidency. This was a major demand that Trump included in the discussion.

What is the loan limit?

The debt ceiling controls how much money the federal government can borrow to pay its bills, but it was not originally part of the budget negotiations. The budget bill deals with government spending, not borrowing.

Still, as the January 1 deadline to lift the debt ceiling approaches, Trump has expressed fear that it will fall on his administration to handle it.

In recent days, the president-elect has advocated for Republicans to raise the debt ceiling — or eliminate it entirely — under Biden’s watch.

“If Republicans attempt to pass a clean continuing resolution without all the Democrat ‘bells and whistles’ that would be so devastating to our country, after January 20th, all it will bring is a debt ceiling mess in the Trump administration,” Trump said. Wrote on social media on Wednesday.

“Everything must be done and fully negotiated before I take office on January 20, 2025.”

However, left-wing critics warned that eliminating the debt ceiling would make it easier for Trump to enact massive tax cuts during his administration. Others opposed it, calling it a path to unlimited government borrowing.

Ultimately, in Thursday night’s vote, the Trump-backed bill failed to pass in the House of Representatives, with 235 members voting against it and 174 members voting in favor. Joining the opposition were 38 Republicans.

“Musk-Johnson’s proposal is not serious. This is ridiculous. Extreme MAGA Republicans are leading us to a government shutdown,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said earlier this week, taking a dig at Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.

Another Democrat, Representative Pramila Jayapal, told reporters that she believed the debt ceiling should not be a “bargaining tactic” in the current spending bill.

“You want to negotiate the debt ceiling? Good. “This is going to be a discussion that will happen in the spring, not an already agreed upon, negotiated settlement at the 11th hour,” she said Thursday.

As of Friday, negotiators in both the House and Senate had largely moved away from a bill that would include changes to the debt ceiling.

What is a government shutdown?

If a bipartisan agreement is not reached and passed by Friday night, the government may be forced to close all non-essential services in the early hours of Saturday.

The threat of a government shutdown has become a regular occurrence in American politics in recent years — and that risk could be big, especially for federal employees, contractors, and Americans who rely on federal programs.

If the government comes to a halt, hundreds of thousands of non-essential government employees are furloughed until the budget is passed.

Typically, they get back pay when funding resumes, but in the meantime, members of the military and other federal agencies have reported struggling to make ends meet.

Some government services considered non-essential may also be closed. The shutdown could mean a temporary halt to food and safety inspections, civil proceedings in federal court and access to national parks and monuments.

Prolonged closures may also affect the ability of low-income families to access the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps.

Jean-Pierre emphasized the dangers of the impending shutdown in his comments to reporters on Friday.

“Its impact will harm our veterans and harm vulnerable Americans across the country,” he said. “This is what we are talking about. Republicans need to do their job, and they need to hold up their side of the compromise here.

The last government shutdown occurred in late 2018 and early 2019 during the first Trump administration.

It lasted 34 days – the longest of any shutdown in modern US history. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the funding gap at that time caused approximately $18 billion in government spending delays.

Due to slowed economic activity, the shutdown reduced inflation-adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) by approximately $3 billion during the last quarter of 2018 and $8 billion during the first quarter of 2019.

Although most of those economic losses were eventually recovered, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that $3 billion would remain unrecovered.

republican vs trump

Political careers are also likely to hang in the balance due to this week’s tense budget negotiations.

Exactly a year earlier, in October 2023, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, another Republican, was removed from his leadership post in the first vote of its kind.

After McCarthy introduced a continuing resolution to keep the government funded and avoid a shutdown, members of his own party filed a motion to vacate his position.

McCarthy’s departure plunged the Republican caucus into chaos for several weeks, and Johnson eventually emerged as his successor and assumed the speakership.

But some political insiders predict Johnson could meet the same fate, especially when the new Congress convenes in January.

Other Republican officials are also under similar scrutiny. Texas Representative Chip Roy was among the most vocal Republicans opposing the Trump-backed budget bill on Thursday.

He accused his fellow Republicans of being “extremely serious” about reducing the federal deficit, drawing comparisons to Democrats.

“I’m absolutely troubled by a party that campaigns on fiscal responsibility and has the courage to step up to the American people and say you think this is fiscally responsible,” Roy said.

But his vigorous opposition to the Trump-backed resolution drew a rebuke from the president-elect himself, who criticized Roy in a social media post.

“The deeply unpopular ‘Congressman’ from Texas, Chip Roy, is, as usual, getting in the way of another great Republican victory – all for some cheap publicity for himself,” Trump wrote. “Republican obstructionists must end.”

Trump has previously called for Republicans who oppose his debt-ceiling plan to be “primed” — in other words, to be voted on during primaries in the next federal elections in 2026.