Trump Rejects Plan to Prevent Government Shutdown

President-elect Trump abruptly rejected a bipartisan plan Wednesday to prevent a Christmastime government shutdown, instead telling House Speaker Mike Johnson and Republicans to essentially renegotiate—days before a deadline when federal funding runs out.

• Trump's sudden decision to make new demands sent Congress spiraling as lawmakers are trying to wrap up work and head home for the holidays, the AP reports. It leaves House Speaker Mike Johnson scrambling to salvage a new plan, days before Friday's deadline to keep the government open. "Republicans must GET SMART and TOUGH," Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance said in a statement.

• The president-elect offered a proposal for a continuation of government funding along with a much more controversial provision to raise the nation's debt limit—something his own party routinely rejects.
• Democrats decried the GOP revolt over the stopgap measure to keep federal offices running. "House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government," said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries. "And hurt the working-class Americans they claim to support. You break the bipartisan agreement, you own the consequences that follow."
• Already, the bill was on the verge of collapse, as hard-right conservatives and Trump's billionaire ally Elon Musk rejected the plan. Rank-and-file lawmakers decried the massive 1,500-page bill over its increased spending—which includes their first pay raises in more than a decade. A number of Republicans were waiting for Trump to signal whether they should vote yes or no.

• "This should not pass," Musk posted on X in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. He warned that "Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!"
• Sources tell the Hill that Johnson is looking at a "Plan B" involving a "clean" resolution that would continue funding the government while dropping provisions including $10 billion in aid for farmers and $100 billion in disaster relief.
• The stopgap measure is needed because Congress has failed to pass its annual appropriations bills to fund all the various agencies in the federal government, from the Pentagon and national security apparatus, to the health, welfare, transportation, and other routine domestic services. When the fiscal year ended on Sept. 30, Congress simply punted the problem by passing a temporary funding bill that expires Friday.

(More government spending stories.)