Congress has until midnight Friday to come up with a way to fund the government or federal agencies will shut down, meaning hundreds of thousands of federal employees could be sent home β or stay on the job without pay β just ahead of the holidays.
Republicans abandoned a bipartisan plan Wednesday to prevent a shutdown after President-elect Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk came out against it. Trump told House Speaker Mike Johnson to essentially renegotiate the deal days before a deadline when federal funding runs out.
On Thursday, Republicans did just that, putting together a revamped government funding proposal that would keep the government running for three more months and suspend the debt ceiling for two years, until Jan. 30, 2027. But the bill failed overwhelmingly in a House vote hours later, leaving next steps uncertain.
Update:
Just In: House Republican leadership is proposing a plan forΒ raising the debt limitΒ that is separate from the government funding bill, according to three sources in a closed-door GOP meeting Friday.
The proposal would be an agreement to raise the debt limit by $1.5 trillion next year in the βfirst reconciliation packageβ alongside $2.5 trillion cuts in βnet mandatory spending in the reconciliation process,β according to three sources.
This plan of separating the debt limit increase from the government funding plan, as CNN has been reporting, is being discussed in a House GOP conference meeting that is still underway. The debt limit proposal would satisfy most of the Republicans who are against raising the debt ceiling without extensive cuts accompanying it.
House GOP leadership is shopping this idea to the conference to see if they have enough consensus to go to the floor and avoid another failure like Thursday night, when 38 Republicans voted against a plan that linked government funding and the debt limit together β a plan that President-elect Donald Trump had supported.
The House has failed to pass a Trump-backed spending bill as a government shutdown looms https://t.co/hj7u05YLMj
— CNN (@CNN) December 20, 2024
