WASHINGTON, Dec 21 (APP): A shutdown of US government looms after Republicans in Congress failed to pass a watered-down spending bill that could potentially deliver a blow to the American economy just a month before President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House.
Lawmakers face a last-minute scramble to secure a new deal before the Friday midnight (10 am PST Saturday) deadline – or all nonessential government functions will pause.
The Republican Party’s leadership in the House vowed to find a solution to the impasse over government funding ahead of the deadline.
Unlike in much of the rest of the world, government shutdowns in the US happen relatively often due to a 1980 act which basically ruled that without a budget there can be no spending.
This means that if the US Congress – made up of the House of Representatives and the Senate – does not approve a budget, there is no money for the federal government and non-essential services soon begin shutting down and many public employees stop getting paid.
Services classed as essential – mostly related to public safety – continue to operate, and those workers are required to show up without pay.
That usually includes border protection, hospital care, air traffic control, law enforcement, and power grid maintenance.
Services deemed to be non-essential, such as the food assistance programme, federally funded pre-school, the issuing of student loans and food inspections, and the opening of national parks, will all be hit.
The latest spending plan was the second in as many days which failed to reach the two-thirds majority needed to pass the lower chamber of Congress, with 38 Republicans voting against the bill on Thursday night.
This was in defiance of Trump who the day before had thwarted a previous cross-party funding deal that the Republican House leadership had struck with Democrats, after heavy criticism of the measure by tech billionaire Elon Musk.
Musk, the Tesla founder, who Trump has tasked with identifying spending cuts by co-leading the Department of Government Efficiency (which is not an official government department), lobbied heavily against the existing deal with dozens of posts on X – the social media platform he owns.
He called it “criminal” and often referenced false statements about the bill in his posts
Musk wrote on X that any lawmaker “who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years”.
After Musk drummed up opposition for the spending bill, Trump and the incoming vice-president J.D. Vance dealt the final blow to Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson’s deal on Wednesday evening.
They said in a joint statement they wanted streamlined legislation without the Democratic-backed provisions that Johnson had included.
They also called for Congress to raise or eliminate the debt ceiling, which determines how much the government can borrow to pay its bills, and limit the funding legislation to temporary spending and disaster relief.
They called anything else “a betrayal of our country”.