The pressure campaign trumped.
The bloated Congressional funding bill that faced a mass Republican revolt aided by President-elect Donald Trump has been scrapped, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise confirmed Wednesday night.
Scalise affirmed to reporters that the spending package — which would have funded the government until mid-March — is dead, leaving Congress scrambling to come up with a new agreement ahead of a looming government shutdown Saturday.
“There’s still a lot of negotiations and conversations going on,” Scalise said, noting there’s no agreement on how to proceed.
A large contingent of House Republicans guffawed at the 1,547-page continuing resolution that Speaker Mike Johnson drafted in a negotiation with Democrats, who would likely try to hold up the bill in the Senate if they didn’t get their measures in.
The revolt was spearheaded by Elon Musk, one of Trump’s closest advisers and co-chair of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), as he went on a tirade on X Wednesday against Republicans who supported the stopgap measure.
Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance then weighed in on the GOP battle in a lengthy statement issued from the Ohio Senator’s X account, in which they called on Republicans to be “tough” and “smart” and not give into Democratic requests.
The leaders also issued a new directive that had not been discussed previously: pass a debt limit increase before Trump comes into office so the deliberations are held now under President Biden’s term.
Trump then went to Truth Social and directly threatened Republicans who wouldn’t vote for a debt limit increase now with a primary.
A reporter asked Scalise if the new stopgap being deliberated on will include a debt limit increase.
“There’s no new agreement right now, we’re obviously looking at a lot of options,” the Louisiana rep. responded.
Vance was also seen having a late night meeting with Johnson on the hill, discussing how to go forward.
“What the president believes is that we should support a clean CR so long as it contains a debt limit increase,” the VP-elect told reporters in the halls of Congress.
After the meeting, Vance said, “We had a productive conversation I’m not going to say anything else about it tonight but I think we’ll be able to solve some problems here and we’ll keep working on it.”
