The Guardian
A day before potential shutdown, House rejects package hastily assembled after Trump and Musk scuttled prior deal
David Smith in Washington
Fri 20 Dec 2024 02.09 CET
Donald Trump suffered a humiliating setback on Thursday when Republicans in Congress failed to pass a pared-down spending bill – just one day before a potential government shutdown that could disrupt Christmas travel.
By a vote of 174-235, the House of Representatives rejected the Trump-backed package, hastily assembled by Republican leaders after the president-elect and his billionaire ally Elon Musk scuttled a prior bipartisan deal.
Critics described the breakdown as an early glimpse of the chaos to come when Trump returns to the White House on 20 January. Musk’s intervention via a volley of tweets on his social media platform X was mocked by Democrats as the work of “President Musk”.
“The Musk-Johnson proposal is not serious,” Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, told reporters. “It’s laughable. Extreme Maga Republicans are driving us to a government shutdown.”
Despite Trump’s support, 38 Republicans voted against the new package along with nearly every Democrat, ensuring that it failed to reach the two-thirds threshold needed for passage and leaving the next steps uncertain.
The defiance from within Trump’s own party caught many by surprise.
The latest bill would have extended government funding into March, when Trump will be in the White House and Republicans will control both chambers of Congress. It also would have provided $100bn in disaster relief and suspended the debt. Republicans dropped other elements that had been included in the original package, such as a pay raise for members of Congress and new rules for pharmacy benefit managers.
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