Dec. 18 (UPI) — The federal government could shut down Friday due to a lack of funding after Republican lawmakers on Wednesday aborted a bipartisan stopgap funding measure announced on Tuesday.
President-elect Donald Trump and others criticized Tuesday’s proposed short-term funding measure by saying it would give Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democrats “everything they want.”
“Republicans must get smart and tough. If Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, then call their bluff,” Trump said Wednesday in a joint statement with Vice President-elect JD Vance.
“It is Schumer and Biden who are holding up aid to our farmers and disaster relief,” they said.
Trump and Vance are asking Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate to come up with a new spending measure that would pair short-term funding with an increase in the nation’s debt ceiling.
“Republicans want to support our farmers, pay for disaster relief and set our country up for success in 2025,” they said.
“The only way to do that is with a temporary funding bill without Democrat giveaways combined with an increase in the debt ceiling,” Trump and Vance added. “Anything else is a betrayal of our country.”
Trump later called the stopgap funding measure announced Tuesday a “nasty trap set in place by the radical left Democrats.”
He said Democrats “are looking to embarrass us in June when it comes up for a vote.”
Trump ally and future Department of Government Efficiency co-leader Elon Musk in a post on X said the spending bill should be defeated and any lawmakers who vote to pass it should be “voted out in two years.”
The sudden rejection of the 1,547-page bipartisan spending measure means House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., will have to find a way to get a more streamlined measure through by Friday or face the likelihood of the federal government mostly shutting down due to a lack of funding.
The GOP has pledged a 72-hour waiting period between announcing a spending measure and voting on it, but the rejection of the proposed stopgap bill makes it impossible for the GOP to avert a shutdown without holding a vote on a new spending bill before Friday.
Johnson is considering eliminating a $100 billion allocation for disaster aid, $30 billion for farmers and other spending measures in favor of simply going with a continuing resolution that would extend the current budget unchanged into the new year.
