WASHINGTON – President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday that he would rather House Republicans refuse to fund the federal government than get behind a funding bill that doesn’t include raising the debt ceiling.
“Republican obstructionists must be eliminated,” Trump said posted, refers to members of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives who refuse to support a debt ceiling increase sought by Trump. He singled out Texas Rep. Chip Roy, accusing him of “standing in the way of another big Republican victory, as usual.”
“It is far better for our country to shut down for a while than to agree to the things Democrats want to force on us,” the president-elect wrote on Truth Social.
House Republican leaders ran out of time Thursday to prevent a partial government shutdown that begins late Friday evening Trump and his allies passed a compromise bill to fund the government through March.
Senior members of the party spent much of Thursday going in and out of Speaker Mike Johnson’s offices at the Capitol, where talks focused on finding a way to keep the federal government open while meeting Trump’s last-minute demand to comply that there could be no deal to finance the government. The government is also increasing the debt ceiling.
But even if House Republicans could agree on a funding arrangement that would appease both Trump and the warring factions in the GOP caucus, any bill they pass would still have to be approved by the Democratic-controlled Senate before President Joe Biden allows it to come into force.
Meanwhile, outside leadership talks, members of the House and Senate grew increasingly nervous that Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, would not find a way to avoid the potential furlough of tens of thousands of federal workers across the country in time. whose salaries could be delayed less than a week before Christmas.
“A shutdown doesn’t solve anything. He doesn’t save us any money. It just creates unnecessary chaos,” Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York said on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports.”
“It takes bipartisan support to pass something,” he said. “You will need Democrats at least in the Senate, but most likely in the House as well, to support a continuing resolution,” he said.
Thursday’s tensions followed the very public collapse of a massive, negotiated funding bill that would have needed Democratic votes to pass the narrowly divided House of Representatives.
Trumps formal opposition The bill passed late Wednesday only after billionaire GOP mega-donors Elon Musk spent the day railing against the bill, gradually making it politically impossible for much of the House Republican conference to support it.
“Raising the debt ceiling isn’t great, but we’d rather do it under Biden’s watch,” Trump said Wednesday in a statement announcing his opposition to Johnson’s original bill.
“If Democrats won’t cooperate on the debt ceiling now, what makes anyone think they will in June during our term? Let’s have this debate now. And we should pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t have Chuck Schumer and them.” “We’ll give the Democrats everything they want,” Trump said.
The debt ceiling has become a recurring, bitter debate in Washington every few years, which Trump is keen to avoid as he enters his second term.
But his demands and Thursday’s standoff may prove too much for Johnson, who now faces a potential threat to his position as speaker, which is due to be voted on early next year.
