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A guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world.
Congress will have a short-term deadline by the end of Friday after Donald Trump, Elon Musk and J.D. Vance persuaded Republicans to repeal a bipartisan bill to avoid a government shutdown. We are rushing to pass a spending bill.
President Trump on Thursday reiterated his call for lawmakers to raise the government debt ceiling instead of passing “unacceptable” legislation.
His 11th-hour intervention, which came after Musk, his billionaire adviser, criticized the bill in a series of social media posts on Wednesday, saw thousands of federal workers have their pay suspended. The possibility of getting caught has increased.
The bill’s failure also calls into question the leadership of Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, with far-right lawmakers such as Marjorie Taylor Greene saying Musk could replace Johnson as speaker. I’m thinking.
This irony highlights Mr. Johnson’s weakness. “We’ll see,” Trump told NBC News on Thursday when asked if he still had confidence in the chairman.
“What we saw yesterday was unacceptable. In many ways, it was unacceptable. It was… It’s a trap for the Democratic Party.”
The bill, if passed, would have prevented a government shutdown by maintaining current spending levels until March 14, when Republicans take control of Congress after winning the November election.
The bill also included unrelated provisions, such as raising salaries for members of Congress and easing the path for the Washington Commanders football team to move its stadium from Maryland to Washington, D.C.
Although Congress could pass a short-term bill to maintain current levels of government funding, President Trump has warned Republicans that if they vote to support the bill without raising the debt ceiling, they will be able to vote in the primaries in the next election. He is threatening to field a rival.
“Nothing will be approved until the debt ceiling ends,” Trump told ABC News. “If we don’t figure it out, there’s going to be a government shutdown, but it’s going to be a (Joe) Biden shutdown, because a shutdown only affects the person who is the president.”
The debt ceiling has been a perennial issue for lawmakers, who reached an agreement last year that suspended the borrowing limit until January 1st. If the Treasury borrows more than this limit, it can use so-called “extraordinary measures” to cover new spending without violating the cap.
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This buys the government time before worrying about a potential default, a dire outcome for the world’s largest economy and most important financial system.
President Trump and Vice President-elect Vance allege, among other things, that it will “make it easier to hide the records of the corrupt January 6th Commission, which investigated the former president’s role in inciting the corrupt January 6th attack.” It then repealed the 1,500-page bill. Capitol Building in 2021.
Musk argued that it would be better to shut down the government than pass Johnson’s bill.
When it collapsed, the billionaire posted on X: “Your elected officials heard you, and now this horrible bill is repealed.”
“The voice of the people has won!”
