US House rejects shutdown averting bill

AFP | Washington

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The US House of Representatives on Thursday overwhelmingly rejected a Republican-led funding bill aimed at averting a government shutdown, with federal agencies due to run out of cash yesterday night and cease operations starting this weekend.

The contentious legislation would have kept the government open through mid-March and suspended the country’s borrowing limit for President-elect Donald Trump’s first two years in office.

But dozens of debt hawks in the Republican ranks -- unhappy about allowing the national debt to rise unchecked for half of Trump’s term -- rebelled against their own leadership to sink the package.

It marked a defeat for the Republican leader, who with tech billionaire Elon Musk -- his incoming “efficiency czar” -- had thrown his weight behind the plan.

And with party leaders announcing no further votes in the House on Thursday, the race to keep the lights on and prevent 875,000 non-essential workers being sent home over Christmas without pay is set to go down to the wire.

“We will regroup and we will come up with another solution, so stay tuned,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson -- who led the negotiations -- told reporters. The bill was supposed to fix a mammoth bipartisan package that Trump and Musk sabotaged on Wednesday amid conservatives’ complaints about unrelated items in the text ballooning its overall cost.

The retooled version was considered under a fast-track method that required two-thirds support but Democrats refused to help Republicans overcome their rank-and-file rebels and it failed to win even a straightforward majority.

“The... proposal is not serious, it’s laughable. Extreme MAGA Republicans are driving us to a government shutdown,” Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said ahead of the vote. The White House described it as a “giveaway for billionaires.”

Republicans will likely try again with a more pared-down bill, although the party leadership offered no clear path forward, telling reporters they would have to meet to discuss a Plan C.

Funding the government is always fraught and lawmakers are under pressure this time around because they failed to agree on full-year budgets for 2025 despite months of negotiations.

Party leaders had landed on a stopgap bill -- known as a “continuing resolution” (CR) -- to keep operations functioning through mid-March.

Major Trump donor and ally Musk spent much of Wednesday bombarding his 208 million followers on X with posts trashing the deal, and amplifying complaints from debt hawks in the House who balked at numerous expensive add-ons shoehorned into the package.

Twelve hours later, Trump, who appeared to be playing catch-up, began threatening the reelection prospects of Republicans thinking of supporting it and demanding out of the blue that the bill increase or even scrap the country’s debt limit.