Hours before government shutdown deadline, House readies vote on latest GOP plan
Washington — House Speaker Mike Johnson emerged from a meeting with his fellow Republicans on Friday and said he believed lawmakers will manage to avoid a government shutdown ahead of the midnight deadline.
"There is a unanimous agreement in the room that we need to move forward. I will not telegraph to you the specific details of that yet, because I've got a couple of things I got to wrap up in a few moments upstairs, but I expect that we will be proceeding forward," the speaker said. "We will not have a government shutdown, and we will meet our obligations."
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said there would "very likely" be a vote Friday afternoon.
On Thursday, the GOP majority tried to fast-track a measure that would keep the government funded and raise the debt ceiling, a demand issued at the 11th hour by President-elect Donald Trump that upended negotiations. Dozens of Republicans voted against the measure, and only two Democrats supported it.
Johnson presented his latest plan at Friday's meeting, according to lawmakers who spoke to reporters. Two members said Republicans planned to resurrect the bill that failed on Thursday, minus the debt ceiling suspension. That legislation included three major parts: a clean short-term extension of government funding, billions of dollars in disaster relief and billions more in aid to farmers.
But the situation remained fluid as the afternoon unfolded and there was no immediate public reaction from Trump, who has pushed hard for a vote to abolish or suspend the debt ceiling before he takes office. Addressing the debt limit would not happen under the plan that Johnson presented to members — instead, Republicans would commit to tackling it in a tax bill next year.
Government funding will technically lapse at midnight Friday night absent a funding extension. But most of the effects of a shutdown wouldn't begin to be felt until Monday morning, potentially giving lawmakers some breathing room if an impasse stretches past the deadline.
Any bill to keep the government funded will still need approval from the Democratic-controlled Senate and President Biden. Democrats began the day Friday by pushing Republicans to bring up the original deal they supported, but they haven't ruled out supporting a version of the bill without the debt ceiling.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said shortly before noon that the "lines of communication have been reopened" but he had not yet seen a plan. He reiterated that addressing the debt limit now would be "premature." Democrats are reluctant to take the debt ceiling off the table now, when it could be used as leverage during Trump's upcoming presidency.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president spoke Friday with both Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and placed responsibility squarely on Republicans.
"This is a mess that Speaker Johnson created, that is his mess to fix," she said. "There was a deal on the table."
Chaos on Capitol Hill
The House descended into chaos Wednesday when a GOP revolt spurred by Trump and Elon Musk sank the original deal that Johnson had spent weeks negotiating with Democrats.
Johnson then brought up the new version the next day. The legislation would have extended government funding for three months, suspended the debt limit until January 2027 and provided $110 billion in disaster aid. It also included health care policy extenders, funding for rebuilding Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge and a renewal of the farm bill for one year.
Those proposals were all in the original deal, but billions of dollars that Democrats had demanded were cut out. Johnson defended the bill Thursday night before the vote, saying some bipartisan measures were still included.
"The only change in this legislation is that we are going to push the debt limit to Jan. 30 of 2027," Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said. The second version was considerably slimmer, at 116 pages compared to the 1,547 pages of the original continuing resolution. Trump immediately backed it, calling it a "SUCCESS" and "a very good deal."
But 38 House Republicans and nearly all Democrats rejected it. Jeffries said the proposal was "laughable." After the failed vote, Schumer said that "now it's time to go back to the bipartisan agreement."
Trump continued to insist on the debt ceiling being included in any stopgap government funding measure, posting on Truth Social overnight that there should not be a deal unless Congress eliminates the debt ceiling — or extends it beyond his presidency to 2029.
"Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling. Without this, we should never make a deal. Remember, the pressure is on whoever is President," he wrote.
The debt ceiling, which limits how much the government can borrow to pay its bills, is suspended until the first quarter of next year, and Trump has said that he'd prefer to force Mr. Biden to approve raising the debt ceiling so he doesn't have to.
