The United States Congress on early Saturday morning voted to prevent a government shutdown, after House GOP leaders dropped a demand from Donald Trump regarding the debt limit.
This move highlighted the limitations of Trump’s influence on Capitol Hill, despite his leadership position within the Republican Party.
On Friday evening, the House voted and the Senate followed shortly after midnight to pass a bill that extends government funding until March, while providing disaster relief and farm aid.
However, the bill did not include a suspension of the debt limit, a demand Trump had made for Republicans to address. President Joe Biden still needs to sign the stopgap bill into law.
Earlier in the week, Trump had upended efforts to prevent a shutdown by opposing an initial bipartisan agreement, leaving Republicans scrambling for an alternative path. In response to Trump’s opposition, House Republicans rejected the bipartisan deal, which angered Democrats.
The GOP-led House then attempted, and failed, to pass a funding plan backed by Trump, which included a two-year suspension of the debt limit.
Trump had pushed Republicans to take up the debt issue, but Democrats opposed the plan, arguing it would help Trump pass his tax proposal. Interestingly, it wasn’t just Democrats who opposed the Trump-backed bill—many Republicans joined Democrats in voting it down, leading to a chaotic 24 hours where Congress seemed headed toward a shutdown.
In a move that ultimately broke the deadlock, House Speaker Mike Johnson introduced a stopgap funding bill without the debt limit suspension on Friday.
The bill passed with a vote of 366 to 34, with one Democrat voting present and all opposition coming from Republicans. The Senate vote was 85 to 11.
The funding package, which will keep the federal government operational until March 14, 2025, includes approximately $100 billion in disaster relief and a farm bill extension.
This outcome provides a glimpse into the challenges Republicans may face in pushing Trump’s agenda forward, despite a Republican-controlled Congress next year.
The GOP will control the House, Senate, and White House, but a slim majority in the House means internal divisions within the party could derail significant efforts. Johnson has faced this dynamic repeatedly in the current Congress, and the GOP majority in the House is expected to shrink further.
After the House vote, Johnson told reporters he had spoken with Trump earlier in the evening and believed the president-elect was “happy” with the outcome.
“I was in constant contact with President Trump throughout this process. Spoke with him, most recently about 45 minutes ago. He knew exactly what we were doing and why, and this is a good outcome for the country. I think he certainly is happy about this outcome as well,” Johnson stated.
Johnson also mentioned his conversation with Elon Musk about the challenges of being Speaker of the House with such a narrow majority.
“We talked about the extraordinary challenges of this job. And I said, ‘Hey, you want to be speaker of the House? I don’t know.’ He said, ‘This may be the hardest job in the world.’ I think it is. But we’re going to get through this,” Johnson added.
Musk, who had been opposed to the original bipartisan deal, praised Johnson’s efforts on X, writing, “The Speaker did a good job here, given the circumstances. It went from a bill that weighed pounds to a bill that weighed ounces. Ball should now be in the Dem court.”
In a separate move, the Senate unanimously passed the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0 on Friday evening, which reauthorizes a pediatric cancer research initiative through the National Institutes of Health until 2028.
This provision had originally been part of the funding deal but was dropped after Trump pushed for a “clean” short-term spending package without additional measures.
Republicans in the House pushed back against the outrage over the research funding being excluded, blaming Senate Democrats for delaying the bill for months. The House had approved the reauthorization of the research funding in March.
