Trump Criticizes Spending Deal, Pushing Congress Toward a Shutdown

 

Trump Criticizes Spending Deal, Pushing Congress Toward a Shutdown

 

The president-elect weighed in against the huge spending package after Elon Musk had spent the day warning Republicans not to support it. The blowup left the compromise on life support.

 

Catie EdmondsonCarl Hulse

By Catie Edmondson and Carl Hulse

Reporting from the Capitol

Dec. 18, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/18/us/politics/trump-musk-spending-bill.html

 

A bipartisan spending deal to avert a shutdown was on life support on Wednesday after President-elect Donald J. Trump condemned it, leaving lawmakers without a strategy to fund the government past a Friday night deadline.

 

Mr. Trump issued a scathing statement ordering Republicans not to support the sprawling bill, piling on to a barrage of criticism from Elon Musk, who spent Wednesday trashing the measure on social media and threatening any Republican who supported it with political ruin.

 

It was not yet clear how Speaker Mike Johnson planned to proceed as the package, which was stuffed full of unrelated policy measures as well as tens of billions of dollars in disaster and agricultural aid, appeared to be hemorrhaging support. Some Republicans suggested he was mulling stripping the bill of everything but the spending extension and putting it to a vote, but the fate of such a measure was also very much in doubt.

 

The blowback from Republicans to the agreement underscored the complications top G.O.P. leaders will have to manage next year when they control all of Congress and face a president with a penchant for blowing up political compromises. It also showed the power of a circle of influential outside players in Mr. Trump’s orbit who appeared willing to punish Republicans if they failed to accede to his wishes.

 

Even before Mr. Musk began making noise, a swell of Republican lawmakers — both ultraconservatives and some mainstream members — had been furious about the funding measure, which was rolled out on Tuesday night. It began as a simple spending bill to keep government funds flowing past a midnight deadline and into mid-March, but it emerged from bipartisan negotiations laden with $100 billion in disaster aid and dozens of other unrelated policies.

 

The G.O.P. resistance meant that in order to pass the bill, Mr. Johnson was going to have to rely, yet again, on Democratic votes to pass it, using a special procedure that requires the support of two-thirds of those voting. But by Wednesday afternoon, the backlash to the legislation had spread so far and wide in G.O.P. ranks that it was unclear whether he would even be able to muster a bare minimum of Republicans to partner with Democrats and push it across the finish line.

 

The bill appeared doomed when Mr. Trump weighed in late Wednesday afternoon, saying lawmakers needed to pass a “temporary funding bill WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS,” and said it should be combined with an increase in the debt ceiling, the cap on how much money the United States is authorized to borrow to meet its financial obligations.

 

“We should pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t give Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want,” Mr. Trump wrote in a lengthy statement on social media that he issued jointly with Senator JD Vance, the vice president-elect.

 

They spoke up after Mr. Musk, who Mr. Trump has tapped to scale back the scope of federal government, had gone on a daylong rampage against the bill, posting nearly nonstop on his social media platform X about how lawmakers needed to kill it. He was joined by Vivek Ramaswamy, another billionaire who is partnering with Mr. Musk on the effort to streamline the government and slash spending.

 

Republicans gauging support for the legislation said they were bleeding votes as a result of Mr. Musk’s barrage.

 

“Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” Mr. Musk wrote in one post.

 

Mr. Johnson appeared on “Fox and Friends” on Wednesday morning to make a case for the bill, and said he had spoken to Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy earlier in the day.

 

“They said, ‘It’s not directed to you, Mr. Speaker, but we don’t like the spending,’” Mr. Johnson recounted. “I said, ‘Guess what, fellas, I don’t either. We’ve got to get this done because here’s the key: By doing this, we are clearing the decks, and we are setting up for Trump to come in roaring back with the America First agenda.’”

 

Even before Mr. Trump got involved, typically reliable Republican votes for stopgap funding measures had begun to balk. Senator John Cornyn of Texas called the bill a “monstrosity.”

 

And anti-spending conservatives were livid.

 

“The American people wanted change,” said Representative Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina. “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.”

 

But just as conservative Republicans and Mr. Musk were railing against the bipartisan deal for adding too much spending to the national debt, Mr. Trump called for raising the debt ceiling, insisting that Republicans must increase it as part of the spending package so the borrowing limit would go up while President Biden was still in the White House.

 

It reflected a recognition by the president-elect that his party would have a difficult time raising the limit next year when they have full control of Congress, and that he would not want to sign such a measure. Many Republicans refuse to back debt ceiling increases, viewing them as politically toxic.

 

The borrowing limit is expected to be reached sometime in January, and a failure to increase it would cause a default on the nation’s debt. Mr. Trump acknowledged that he did not want to shoulder the responsibility for doing so.

 

“Increasing the debt ceiling is not great,” Mr. Trump said in his statement, “but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch.”

 

Later, in a separate social media post, he said that any Republican who “would be so stupid” as to vote for a funding extension without raising the debt ceiling “should and will” face a primary challenge.

 

Democrats, for their part, appeared in no mood to start any 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 on Wednesday evening. “House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government and hurt every day 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.”

 

Catie Edmondson covers Congress for The Times. More about Catie Edmondson

 

Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent, primarily writing about Congress and national political races and issues. He has nearly four decades of experience reporting in the nation’s capital. More about Carl Hulse