Washington When many Republicans, both inside and outside of Capitol Hill, voiced their displeasure with the several unnecessary provisions included in a short-term funding agreement on Wednesday, efforts to stop a partial government shutdown from beginning this weekend collapsed.
To make matters worse, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and President-elect Donald Trump shared on social media that they think Republicans should use the two days before a shutdown to pressure Democrats to increase or suspend the debt ceiling.
In addition to providing government funding through March 14, the year-end budget bill that was unveiled Tuesday would extend the farm bill’s nutrition and agriculture programs through September 30. Tens of billions of dollars in emergency relief for towns recovering from natural catastrophes is also included in the 1,547-page package.
However, it contains a number of passages that have infuriated Trump and his supporters as well as far-right Republicans. They contend that extraneous clauses unrelated to core services ought to be removed, disrupting weeks of talks between the Democratic Senate and Republican House.
Before the current stopgap budget law expires at midnight on Friday, Congress must adopt a short-term spending bill; otherwise, all federal departments and agencies would have to close.
This would include furloughing non-exempt government employees and forcing exempt federal employees to work without compensation.
This closure would impact more portions of the federal government than the 35-day partial government shutdown that occurred under Trump’s first administration.
A number of full-year appropriations measures that protected the departments of Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Labor, and Veterans Affairs were adopted by Congress before to the 2018–2019 shutdown.
Members of Congress and their staff were paid throughout the shutdown thanks to lawmakers’ approval of the Legislative Branch funding package.
This time, if a stopgap financing package is not passed by Friday midnight, U.S. troops, along with dozens of other national security agencies, including Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, would be denied pay.
Additionally, it might have a devastating effect on the many federal departments and agencies that help towns respond to and recover from natural disasters, such as hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Anybody who receives funds from the Department of Agriculture, the Small Business Administration, or the Federal Emergency Management Agency would be impacted by a budget lapse.
Until Wednesday, when Vance demanded that the debt limit be incorporated into any kind of stopgap spending agreement, it was not a part of the budget negotiations.
Although the current debt ceiling suspension is scheduled to end on January 1, Congress will probably have a few months before the nation defaults for the Treasury Department to employ accounting tricks known as extraordinary measures.
However, Vance appears uninterested in interacting with the nation’s borrowing authority in the upcoming year.
In his social media post, Vance claimed that Congressional Republicans’ decision to let our nation reach the debt ceiling in 2025 was their most stupid and incompetent move ever. Because it was an error, it now needs to be fixed.
Addressing the debt ceiling is not ideal, but we would prefer to do it under Biden’s leadership, Vance wrote.
What makes anyone believe that Democrats will collaborate on the debt ceiling during our administration in June if they won’t do so now? Vance wrote. Now let’s debate this. Additionally, we want to enact a simplified funding package that denies Chuck Schumer and the Democrats their demands.
Elon Musk, a billionaire whom Trump has tasked with trying to make the federal government more efficient through steep spending cuts,wrote on social mediathat no legislation should move through Congress until Jan. 20, after Trump s inauguration.
That would create havoc for hundreds of government programs, including the agriculture and nutrition assistance programs within the farm bill.
Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!, Musk penned.
While every member of the House who chooses to run for reelection will campaign during the 2026 midterm elections, just one-third of the Senate will be up for reelection since they are elected to six-year terms.
North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis posted on social media that any short-term spending bill, sometimes called a continuing resolution or CR, must carry disaster aid to help his home state recover from a devastating hurricane.
If Congressional leaders intend to leave DC before the holidays without passing disaster recovery, they should be prepared to spend Christmas in the Capitol, Tillis wrote. I ll use every tool available to block a CR that fails Western North Carolina communities in need of long-term certainty.
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