What’s New
Republicans on Thursday blamed Democrats after a GOP-backed spending plan to avert a government shutdown tanked on the floor of the House of Representatives.
The bill failed by a vote of 174-235, with one member voting present. Thirty-eight Republicans voted against it, bucking President-elect Donald Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson and billionaire Elon Musk, all of whom threw their support behind the amended continuing resolution (CR).
Why It Matters
Thursday’s vote was a huge legislative setback for Trump, as well as a major test of just how far the Republican Party is willing to go to capitulate to Trump and Musk’s demands.
Congress now has less than 30 hours to pass a stopgap bill to avert a government shutdown.
Stephanie Scarbrough/AP
What To Know
“A super fair & simple bill was put to a vote and only 2 Democrats in Congress were in favor,” Musk wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Therefore, responsibility for the shutdown rests squarely on the shoulders of @RepJeffries,” he added, referring to Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
“Shame on @RepJeffries for rejecting a fair & simple spending bill that is desperately needed by states suffering from hurricane damage!” he wrote in another post.
Johnson was forced to put Thursday’s measure forward after Musk and Trump jumped into the fray on Wednesday and torpedoed an initial bipartisan stopgap agreement that was poised to pass the House of Representatives.
The House speaker echoed Musk in blaming Democrats after Thursday’s failed vote, even though 38 of his own members voted against the amended proposal.
“It’s very disappointing to us that all but two Democrats voted against aid to farmers and ranchers, against disaster relief, against all these bipartisan measures that had already been negotiated and decided upon,” he told reporters.
Johnson added that Republicans would “regroup,” but it’s unclear what that means.
Vice President-elect JD Vance also laid the blame at Democrats’ feet—despite the fact that he, Trump and Musk ordered Republicans to renege on the initial bipartisan deal that had broad Democratic and Republican support.
“The Democrats just voted to shut down the government, even though we had a clean CR, because they didn’t want to give the president negotiating leverage … during the first year of his new term,” Vance told reporters. “And number two, because they would rather shut down the government and fight for global censorship … they’ve asked for a shutdown and I think that’s exactly what they’re going to get.”
Republican Representative Kevin Bacon voiced his frustration with the series of events in a CNN interview Thursday after the CR failed.
“We had a reasonably good deal,” he said of the initial bipartisan agreement. “So we have about 30 Republicans that will not ever support that … that means you’ve got to have some Democrat support, which means you’ve got to have a bipartisan bill.”
“I thought it was a reasonably good compromise,” he added. “The problem was one or two people in our conference, instead of just opposing it, had to go out and demonize and distort things, provisions in the bill.”
He then appeared to allude to Musk and other high-profile Republicans on social media who lobbied against the bipartisan deal.
“This stuff was put out by members of our own party, then you have these social media influencers with a million followers, they pick up on it and they throw gasoline on the fire, and that’s what we had yesterday,” Bacon, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, said on CNN.
What People Are Saying
Republican Representative Mike Lawler, who voted for the bill, told CNN: “The fact is that we have a number of Republicans that have never voted for a continuing resolution, have never voted to lift the debt ceiling. This bill requires two-thirds of the House, not an absolute majority. It requires two-thirds. So the fact that you have Democrats, who normally would vote for this, refusing to do so … because they’re upset that the debt ceiling increase has been taken off the table as leverage for them in future negotiations.”
What Comes Next
Johnson will now have to go back to the drawing board to try to come up with another plan to keep the government open, but it’s unclear if that will happen before Friday’s deadline.
Trump had not commented on the bill’s failure as of 8:45 p.m. ET Thursday.
