AFP – United States (US) lawmakers raced yesterday to prevent a government shutdown due to bite within hours, after Donald Trump and Elon Musk sabotaged a bipartisan agreement that would have kept the lights on well beyond the festive period.
With government funding running out at midnight, the Republican-led House of Representatives needs to come up with a short-term fix to replace a funding package that looked like a done deal before the president-elect’s intervention.
If no agreement is struck in the coming hours, federal agencies, national parks and an assortment of other services will begin shuttering today as the government prepares to send up to 875,000 workers home for the holidays without pay. The race against the clock comes after a week of high drama on Capitol Hill that began with Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson releasing a mammoth funding bill stuffed with unrelated measures that ballooned its cost.
Conservatives immediately voiced frustration over the add-ons in the 1,547-page text and Musk – Trump’s incoming point man on government spending cuts – spent on Wednesday bashing the deal.
Trump dealt the fatal blow with a statement demanding the deal be renegotiated to strip away much of the extraneous spending and to attach text suspending the country’s self-imposed borrowing cap for two years. The new demand – aimed at freeing up Trump from debt negotiations – caught Republicans off-guard and they spent Thursday scrambling to write a new, pared-back package that could keep fiscal conservatives, Trump, Musk and Democrats happy.
It proved an impossible task, with Democrats feeling betrayed over the collapse of the bipartisan agreement and unwilling to pitch in votes as dozens of debt hawks in the Republican ranks rebelled against their own leadership to sink the latest package.
“For decades, the Republican Party has lectured America about fiscal responsibility, about the debt and the deficit. It’s always been phony,” Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said.
