Chaos Consumes Drive to Avoid Government Shutdown, With 2 Days to Go
The New York Times
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s denunciation of a bipartisan spending bill all but buried that deal while leaving unclear what form a new agreement could take.
President-elect Donald J. Trump denounced a bipartisan spending deal that would fund the government until mid-March, telling Republican lawmakers that it would be “suicidal” to vote for it. His intervention all but buried the agreement with government funding scheduled to lapse in less than two days.
Mr. Trump’s criticism of the legislation, delivered in a series of social media posts on Wednesday, fueled a conservative revolt that had already been underway against the spending measure. His broadside left the measure on life support in the House, as he demanded major changes to the deal that threw negotiations to avoid a government shutdown into chaos.
Here’s what to know:
Congress has until Friday night to come up with and pass a bill that can clear the Republican-led House and the Democratic-controlled Senate and be signed by President Biden before government funding lapses at 12:01 a.m. Saturday. It is unclear what form a new agreement would take.
Speaker Mike Johnson had planned to bring up the compromise bill under a fast-track process that requires a two-thirds majority for passage, relying on Democrats and a smaller group of Republicans to push it through. Now he must cobble together a majority some other way.
Some Republicans said Mr. Johnson was mulling shearing the legislation of a variety of unrelated measures that had been included and putting just the spending extension to a vote. But Democrats would be unlikely to support such a bill. They said Wednesday night that they were in no mood to negotiate a second deal after Mr. Trump directed Republicans to tank the one Mr. Johnson agreed to.
