Republican spending bill to avert government shutdown fails in House – liveNEWS | 20 December 2024From 53m ago 19.07 EST Final vote count: bill rejected 174-235 The Republican spending bill backed by Donald Trump has failed in the House, leaving Congress with no clear plan to avert a fast-approaching government shutdown that could disrupt Christmas travel. By a vote of 174-235, the House rejected the spending package. Share Updated at 19.09 EST
14m ago 19.45 EST Meanwhile US President Joe Biden will travel to Italy next month to meet separately with prime minister Giorgia Meloni and Pope Francis, the White House said Thursday, in what will probably be his last overseas trip before leaving office. The 9-12 January visit is aimed at strengthening US-Italy relations and thanking Meloni for her “strong leadership of the G7 over the past year,” spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement. Biden, a devout Catholic, will have an audience with Pope Francis and “discuss efforts to advance peace around the world,” Jean-Pierre said. The president spoke to the pontiff by phone on Thursday and thanked him for his “continued advocacy to alleviate global suffering,” according to the White House. Biden’s Italy trip will come days before he hands over the keys to the White House to Trump. Share
26m ago 19.33 EST We’re waiting to see if the Republicans will try to reintroduce their spending bill via a different congressional procedure that requires fewer votes to pass. But so far, it doesn’t seem they will tonight. The last government shutdown took place in December 2018 and January 2019 during Trump’s first White House term. Share
43m ago 19.17 EST Summary The Republican spending bill backed by president-elect Donald Trump has failed in the US House of Representatives, leaving Congress with no clear plan to avert a fast-approaching government shutdown that could disrupt Christmas travel. By a vote of 174-235, the House rejected the spending package.
Government funding is due to expire at midnight on Friday. If lawmakers fail to extend that deadline, the U.S. government will begin a partial shutdown that would interrupt funding for everything from border enforcement to national parks and cut off paychecks for more than two million federal workers.
The US Transportation Security Administration warned that travellers during the busy holiday season could face long lines at airports.
The bill largely resembled the earlier version that Musk and Trump had blasted as a wasteful giveaway to Democrats. It would have extended government funding into March, when Trump will be in the White House and Republicans will control both chambers of Congress, and provided $100bn in disaster relief and suspended the debt. Republicans dropped other elements that had been included in the original package, such as a pay raise for lawmakers and new rules for pharmacy benefit managers.
At Trump’s urging, the new version also would have suspended limits on the national debt for two years – a manoeuvre that would make it easier to pass the dramatic tax cuts he has promised and set the stage for the federal government’s $36 trillion in debt to continue to climb.
Ahead of the vote, Democrats and Republicans warned that the other party would be at fault if Congress allowed the government to shut down. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that the package would avoid disruption, tie up loose ends and make it easier for lawmakers to cut spending by hundreds of billions of dollars when Trump takes office next year. “Government is too big, it does too many things, and it does few things well,” he said.
Democrats blasted the bill as a cover for a budget-busting tax cut that would largely benefit wealthy backers such as Musk, the world’s richest person, while saddling the country with trillions of dollars in additional debt. “How dare you lecture America about fiscal responsibility, ever?” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said during floor debate. Share
52m ago 19.08 EST Government funding is due to expire at midnight on Friday. If lawmakers fail to extend that deadline, the US government will begin a partial shutdown that would interrupt funding for everything from border enforcement to national parks and cut off paychecks for more than 2 million federal workers. Share Updated at 19.16 EST
53m ago 19.07 EST Final vote count: bill rejected 174-235 The Republican spending bill backed by Donald Trump has failed in the House, leaving Congress with no clear plan to avert a fast-approaching government shutdown that could disrupt Christmas travel. By a vote of 174-235, the House rejected the spending package. Share Updated at 19.09 EST
1h ago 19.03 EST Republicans’ decision to abandon a congressional spending plan will cost troops their paychecks over the holidays unless some agreement is reached before Friday’s deadline to prevent a government shutdown, the Pentagon warned. Even if they don’t get paid, those troops will be required to report for duty both overseas and at home, Pentagon press secretary Major Gen. Pat Ryder said Thursday. Without an agreement to fund the government, troops will not receive their end-of-month paychecks, reservists drilling after Friday will not be paid, and federal civilians who are required to work during a shutdown also will not be paid, he said. The military payroll is just one of thousands of federal accounts that would be affected, but one of the most visible. Share Updated at 19.08 EST
1h ago 18.54 EST Republican version of spending bills fails House vote Voting is ongoing, but there are now enough no votes against the last-minute Donald Trump-backed spending bill to make a two-thirds majority impossible. Lawmakers have one more day to avert a total government shutdown. House speaker Mike Johnson, who introduced a new, stripped-back bill after Trump torpedoed an earlier, bipartisan spending bill, told reporters that Republicans will remain committed to cutting down the size of the federal government even as he and other Trump allies acquiesced to the president-elect’s request to suspend the US borrowing limit. Share Updated at 19.06 EST
1h ago 18.45 EST The House is now voting on the new funding bill. Because the House speaker Mike Johnson expedited it to the floor, it requires the support of two-thirds of the House to pass. Share
1h ago 18.43 EST DeLauro, a Democratic member from Connecticut, also yielded her time on the House floor to Texas Republican Chip Roy – who chided his fellow Republicans for agreeing to raise the debt ceiling. “To take this bill and congratulate yourself because it’s shorter in pages, but increases the debt by $5tn, is asinine. That’s precisely what Republicans are doing,” Roy said. “It’s embarrassing, it’s shameful,” he said. Share Updated at 18.44 EST
1h ago 18.34 EST In an impassioned address, Rosa DeLauro, the Democrats’ top appropriator, mocked Republicans as being “scared” to pass the bipartisan measure. “Because President Musk said, ‘Don’t’?” she chided. “Imagine. What does he know about what people go through when the government shuts down? Are his employees furloughed? Hell no! Is he furloughed? No!” Share Updated at 18.39 EST
2h ago 18.22 EST Debate over the spending bill has grown so heated that representative Marc Molinaro, who was presiding, broke his gavel trying to quiet jeers from the Democrats. Share Updated at 18.31 EST
2h ago 18.13 EST Meanwhile, Joe Biden has been largely absent. If lawmakers fail to pass a spending bill by Friday night, the government will shut down this weekend. Though Donald Trump has not yet been sworn into office, he has been throwing his weight around and pushed Republicans to abandon their hard-negotiated bipartisan bill. Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers told Politico they’ve hardly heard from Biden. Politico reports: More than a half-dozen House Democratic lawmakers said Thursday that the conference had yet to hear from the president, even as Congress scrambled to salvage a funding deal and avoid shutting down the government. As Republicans now try to sell a revamped bill before funding runs out Friday night, the eleventh-hour debacle threatens to swamp the last days of Biden’s term, while costing the administration some final policy priorities that it had hoped to cement as part of the year-end agreement. But as lawmakers searched for a way forward, no one seemed to be looking to Biden for answers – and the lame-duck president gave no indication he had any desire to provide them. “I haven’t spoken to him,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the Democrats’ top appropriator, said of Biden, adding that she didn’t expect to in the near future. “I’ve spoken to the White House. I think their view is, ‘we had a deal.’” Share Updated at 18.29 ESTAuthor: Erum Salam. Helen Sullivan. Maanvi Singh. Chris Stein. Source
