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The US government could shut down within days after Donald Trump appeared to kill a bipartisan funding bill’s chance of passing through Congress.
The president-elect on Wednesday lashed out at an agreement struck between House Republicans and Democrats to keep the federal government funded beyond Friday, urging his allies on Capitol Hill to reject the “foolish” and “inept” compromise.
Hours later, leading Republicans ditched the legislation, with House Speaker Mike Johnson opting not to risk Trump’s anger by calling a vote on the measure in the chamber.
Steve Scalise, another senior House Republican, said late on Wednesday that the bill was dead. “There’s still a lot of negotiations and conversations going on, but there’s no new agreement,” he told reporters in Washington.
The dramatic collapse of the bipartisan deal just two days before the Friday deadline followed Trump’s criticism on social media, where he said the “only way” to secure a deal would be stop-gap funding “WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS combined with an increase in the debt ceiling”.
He added: “Anything else is a betrayal of our country.”
The death of the compromise means the government could run out of funding before the weekend, halting some federal programmes. Some federal workers would be sent home, and pay for federal employees, including those serving in the military, would be suspended.
The White House called on Republicans “to stop playing politics” or risk hurting Americans and causing instability. “President-elect Trump and vice president-elect [JD] Vance ordered Republicans to shut down the government . . . A deal is a deal. Republicans should keep their word,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
The latest funding crisis caps a turbulent few years for Congress, where right-wing Republicans have repeatedly threatened their own leadership in the House, including a revolt that unseated then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2023.
With a narrow Republican majority in the House, Johnson will need Democrats to pass any so-called continuing resolution to provide temporary funding to the federal government.
A stop-gap bill would have kept the $6.75tn federal budget running at current levels until March 14, when Republicans will control Congress following last month’s victory in the general election. The money keeps a wide range of federal programmes afloat, including defence, regulators, national parks and air travel safety.
But Trump and other allied Republicans, including billionaire Elon Musk, criticised what they said were spending “giveaways” to Democrats in the measure.
Trump and vice president-elect JD Vance said a statement that Republicans needed to “GET SMART and TOUGH”, and “if Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, then CALL THEIR BLUFF”.
Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — who have been tasked by Trump with slashing government spending when he regains the White House next year — raged against the bill on social media on Wednesday, and threatening what Musk called “pork-barrel politicians” who might back it.
“Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years,” Musk said in one post on his social media platform X.
Musk also took exception to pay increase for politicians that was included in the bill.
Trump also called for any funding deal to include an increase in the US debt ceiling, a rule governing how much money the federal government can borrow.
Any Republican who “bring[s] the mess of the Debt Limit into the Trump Administration, rather than allowing it to take place in the Biden Administration . . . should, and will, be Primaried”, Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform. Trump’s comment suggests he would back rival candidates in primary races against Republicans who defied him.
“We’ve been having some conversations about the debt limit as it relates to the [continuing resolution],” Scalise said on Wednesday.
