(Bloomberg) — President-elect Donald Trump and House Republicans have struck a deal to avert a US government shutdown and suspend the federal debt limit for two years.
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It isn’t clear whether congressional Democrats or the White House have agreed to the latest package. House Republicans plan to vote on it Thursday.
Trump, who had pressured GOP lawmakers to abandon an earlier bipartisan agreement, lauded the package as a “very good Deal for the American People” on Truth Social. He said it includes aid for disaster victims and US farmers.
Trump late Wednesday afternoon demanded House Speaker Mike Johnson abandon a deal he previously worked out with Democratic congressional leaders to avoid a government shutdown before the holidays. The incoming president insisted GOP lawmakers suspend or raise the debt limit before he takes office.
Government funding will lapse Friday night without congressional action.
At least one Republican lawmaker signaled opposition to the plan’s provisions.
“My position is simple – I am not going to raise or suspend the debt ceiling (racking up more debt) without significant & real spending cuts attached to it,” Representative Chip Roy, a hardline conservative from Texas, said in a social media post.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries earlier in the day also expressed opposition, denouncing the debt limit maneuver as a ploy by Trump to advance his tax agenda next year to the benefit of corporations and wealthy Americans.
“GOP extremists want House Democrats to raise the debt ceiling so that House Republicans can lower the amount of your Social Security check,” Jeffries posted on Bluesky. “Hard pass.”
Jeffries didn’t immediately make a public comment on the Republican plan.
Republican Representative Mike Lawler of New York said he expects Johnson to use a special procedure to expedite the bill to the floor that requires a two-thirds majority. He would need significant Democratic support for the maneuver.
The speaker huddled with other House Republicans in his office much of Wednesday evening and during the day Thursday trying to work out a temporary funding plan that Trump would accept, as they closed in on the shutdown deadline.
Trump insisted Johnson secure an increase in or elimination of the national debt limit, a politically fraught step that the incoming president would otherwise have to address by summer.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a key adviser to Trump, had savaged Johnson’s earlier deal in a daylong series of social media posts Wednesday, rousing his followers against the bill and declaring that any lawmaker who supported it should be defeated in the next election.
The spending vote this week had been expected to be relatively free of drama, as neither the incoming unified Republican majority nor the Democrats currently in control of the Senate and White House wanted a showdown as the holidays loomed. But the bill included more than $100 billion in disaster aid and had other sweeteners, such as a pay raise for lawmakers, drawing the ire of Musk, who Trump has named to lead an advisory Department of Government Efficiency to bring major expenditure cuts.
The House speaker’s perilous standing was underscored Thursday morning, when Trump told Fox News that the Louisiana Republican could “easily remain speaker” — if he “acts decisively and tough” to eliminate “traps” being set by Democrats. Some Republicans, including Senator Mike Lee of Utah, floated the notion of Musk himself taking the speaker’s gavel in the new Congress. Rules do not require the leader of the lower chamber to be elected to the House, though the speaker has been a lawmaker throughout all of US history.
The debt ceiling had been an issue legislators didn’t expect to have to confront until next year, and certainly wasn’t on their pre-holiday agenda. On Thursday, Trump told NBC News that abolishing the debt ceiling entirely would be the “smartest thing” lawmakers could do.
“I support that entirely,” he said.
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