A day before a potential government shutdown, the House resoundingly rejected President-elect Donald Trump’s new plan Thursday to fund operations and suspend the debt ceiling.
Democrats and dozens of Republicans refused to accommodate his sudden demands. In a hastily convened evening vote punctuated by angry outbursts over the self-made crisis, the lawmakers failed to reach the two-thirds threshold needed for passage — but House Speaker Mike Johnson appeared determined to reassess before Friday’s midnight deadline.
“We’re going to regroup and we will come up with another solution, so stay tuned,” Johnson said after the vote. The cobbled-together plan didn’t even get a majority, with the bill failing 174-235.
The outcome proved a massive setback for Trump and his billionaire ally, Elon Musk, who rampaged against Johnson’s bipartisan compromise, which Republicans and Democrats had reached earlier to prevent a Christmastime government shutdown.
Rep. Mike Levin, a Democrat whose district falls in both San Diego and Orange counties, voted against the bill. In a statement, he aimed his ire at Musk.
“A deal is a deal,” he said. “We had a bipartisan agreement and House Republicans reneged on that because of temper tantrums on social media by Billionaire-in-Chief Elon Musk.”
The conflict provides a preview of the turbulence ahead when Trump returns to the White House with Republican control of the House and Senate. During his first term, Trump led Republicans into the longest government shutdown in history during the 2018 Christmas season, and interrupted the holidays in 2020 by tanking a bipartisan COVID-relief bill and forcing a do-over.
Hours earlier Thursday, Trump announced “SUCCESS in Washington!” in coming up with the new package which would keep government running for three more months, add $100.4 billion in disaster assistance, including for hurricane-hit states, and allow more borrowing through Jan. 30, 2027.
But Republicans, who had spent 24 hours largely negotiating with themselves to cut out the extras conservatives opposed and come up with the new plan, ran into a wall of resistance from Democrats, who were in no hurry to appease Trump — or Musk.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Democrats were sticking with the original deal with Johnson and called the new one “laughable.”
“It’s not a serious proposal,” Jeffries said as he walked to Democrats’ own closed-door caucus meeting. Inside, Democrats were chanting, “Hell, no!”
All day, Johnson had been fighting to figure out how to meet Trump’s almost impossible demands — and keep his own job — while federal offices are being told to prepare to shutter operations.
The new proposal whittled the 1,500-page bill to 116 pages and dropped a number of add-ons — notably the first pay raise for lawmakers in more than a decade, which could have allowed as much as a 3.8% bump. That drew particular scorn as Musk turned his social media army against the bill.
Trump said early Thursday that Johnson will “easily remain speaker” for the next Congress if he “acts decisively and tough” in coming up with a new plan to also raise the debt limit, a stunning request just before the Christmas holidays that has put the beleaguered speaker in a bind.
And if not, the president-elect warned of trouble ahead for Johnson and Republicans in Congress.
“Anybody that supports a bill that doesn’t take care of the Democrat quicksand known as the debt ceiling should be primaried and disposed of as quickly as possible,” Trump told Fox News Digital.
The tumultuous turn of events, coming as lawmakers were preparing to head home for the holidays, sparks a familiar reminder of what it’s like in Trump-run Washington.
Musk and Vice President-elect JD Vance tried to blame Democrats, though rank-and-file Republicans helped sink Trump’s plan.
“They’ve asked for a shutdown,” Vance said of Democrats. “That’s exactly what they’re going to get.”
Democrats were beside themselves, seeing this as a fitting coda after one of the most unproductive congressional sessions in modern times.
“Here we are once again in chaos,” said House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark, who detailed the harm a government shutdown would cause Americans. “And what for? Because Elon Musk, an unelected man, said, ‘We’re not doing this deal, and Donald Trump followed along.’”
Levin, D-Dana Point, also accused Trump of using the debt-ceiling issue to set the stage for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
“Tonight’s Republican bill was drafted last minute and removed several key provisions to protect working families and healthcare for kids,” he said. “It raises the debt ceiling to allow Trump to pass a massive tax cut in 2025 for billionaires like Musk without having to worry about the impact on the national debt.”
As he left the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “Now it’s time to go back to the bipartisan agreement.”
The current debt limit expires Jan. 1, 2025, and Trump wants the problem off the table before he joins the White House.
Musk, in his new foray into politics, led the charge. The wealthiest man in the world used his social media platform X to amplify the unrest, and GOP lawmakers were besieged with phone calls to their offices telling them to oppose the plan.
Times of San Diego news editor Jennifer Vigil contributed to this report.
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