Government shutdown looms after House rejects alternative funding plan

The House of Representatives on Thursday evening rejected an alternative agreement, backed by Donald Trump, to avoid a government shutdown at midnight on Friday. Unlike the original package, which was the result of bipartisan negotiations but was torpedoed by conservatives led by billionaire tycoon Elon Musk, this plan B was only endorsed by Republicans — a fact that did not guarantee its success, as demonstrated by the result of the vote (235 to 174), which reflected the staunch opposition of 38 hardline Republicans and 197 Democrats. The text required the support of two-thirds of the House to be approved. The rejection brought the effort to avert a shutdown back to square one just one day before government funding lapses.

In less than 24 hours, and at the urging of the president-elect — who told his party to present an alternative to the spending deal rejected on Wednesday following an offensive led by Elon Musk — Republicans cobbled together a document just 116 pages long (the original was more than 1,500), which includes an extension of government funding until March and a two-year suspension of the debt ceiling, the maximum amount of money the government can borrow, with Congressional authorization, to finance its obligations. The last point was the condition Trump had set on Wednesday for giving his approval.

Plan B was presented after 48 chaotic hours since the presentation of the original proposal on Tuesday night by House Speaker Mike Johnson. This was followed by a barrage of social media posts by Musk on X (formerly Twitter). The tech magnate, who is also one of the men closest to Trump, was not the only person who opposed the original spending deal, but he was the one who led the operation to demolish it. The president-elect and his VP, J. D. Vance, seconded his criticisms and together they blew up a bill that, according to the most radical Republican faction, including members of the Freedom Caucus, made concessions to the Democrats.

The new bill, which represented only the Republicans’ view, kept some of the bipartisan provisions of the initial package but eliminated others, such as a pay raise for members of Congress that would have been the first since 2009. The bill allocated roughly $100 billion in disaster relief and about $10 billion in direct payments to farmers, as did the bipartisan agreement. But the alternative bill introduced a one-year extension of the 2018 farm bill, as well as extensions for some healthcare programs, though not all of those included in the initial agreement. The reform of the pharmaceutical benefits management system had been removed from the package, a bipartisan deal that significantly increased the length of the initial text.

Controversial clauses

The cuts to the initial bill went further. A clause authorizing a pandemic risk prevention law, which had drawn criticism from Musk and the party’s right-wing, was removed. A bipartisan agreement to address the opioid crisis was also eliminated. The new document also did not include the transfer of administrative jurisdiction over RFK Stadium to the District of Columbia, Washington. It did, however, include federal funding to rebuild the Baltimore bridge that collapsed in March.

But despite the cutbacks in targets, lawmakers and observers had largely given up on the deal even before it was voted on. “Bad deal,” said Rep. Chip Roy of Texas. “I’m for lifting the debt ceiling, but I’m not going to lift it without getting something conservative back,” said Rep. Rich McCormick of Georgia. Democrats, for their part, continue to control the Senate and the White House, which foreshadowed their rejection, as Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, made clear (“The Musk-Johnson proposal is not serious, it’s laughable”). The White House also criticized the Republicans for “doing the bidding of their billionaire benefactors at the expense of hard-working Americans.”

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