President-elect Donald Trump’s comments over House Speaker Mike Johnson’s short-term government funding bill left House Republicans scrambling Wednesday night as Senate Republicans tried to make sense of the remaining parts.
Congress must act to fund the government by midnight Friday or risk a shutdown. With the house back on the drawing board, the clock is ticking.
The nature of government funding bills means the Senate tends to wait and see until the House acts. That’s especially true this time, where Johnson must negotiate his slim House majority to pass legislation Trump will find acceptable before deciding whether the Senate can pass it.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson attends a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on December 17, 2024.
Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
The looming funding deadline means the Senate will likely be forced to put up with whatever Johnson manages to get through the House, unless it’s so unacceptable that Senators are ready to shut down the government. Democrats still control the Senate for a few more days, and the 60-vote threshold in the Senate is critical to compromise.
In Wednesday night’s vote, Senate Republicans weighed in on the current government funding situation with just over 48 hours until the shutdown.
Many say they were unhappy with Johnson’s original proposal
While Congress faces challenges in finishing its work on government funding, there are some Senate Republicans who admit they are not happy with the House proposal Johnson introduced on Tuesday. Some are happy that Trump was involved in pushing for change.
“This is supposed to be a CR that expands the status quo. And it has to be thin and mean,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-LA. “Well, I mean, he might have been mean, but he wasn’t thin. And I think what we’re going to have to do to overcome that is to go back to a real CR, which is, this is the situation.”
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-SD, said all the “nonsense” attached to the House CR was “very disappointing to me.”
Senator Mike Rounds is seen at the US Capitol on December 4, 2024.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
A clean CR expressed willingness to help with disaster relief.
There seems to be a desire to reopen the debate on a way forward, but time is running out, and there are now a number of very thorny issues that will require a lot of negotiation in a very short time.
Southern state Republicans draw on disaster relief
As House Republicans return to the table to try to meet Trump’s demands, it’s clear they’ll have to balance the claim of many Senate Republicans that billions in disaster relief are still attached to this bill.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, whose state of South Carolina was hit hard by Hurricane Helene, said he will vote against a funding bill that does not include relief for his and other affected states.
“Introducing money into the system is a moral necessity,” he said.
“We have to have disaster relief. I can’t go home and act like it didn’t happen,” Graham said. “To anyone who thinks disaster relief is a pig, come to where I live and see what happened in my state of North Carolina and Georgia.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-NC, whose home state was hit by Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, said he would do everything in his power to slow passage of a government funding bill that does not include relief funding.
“I feel very strongly. (If) we don’t get a disaster in the bill, I’m going to do everything to keep us there,” Tillis said.
Tillis said he spoke with VP-Elect Vance on Wednesday and said Vance “gets” the importance of disaster relief.
“JD gets it. I talked to him this afternoon. He understands the need for disaster tracking,” Tillis said. “Most people, at least JD and some others, think we should supplement the disaster.”
Republicans are open to raising the debt limit, but are skeptical of getting it done on this timeline
Trump significantly complicated government funding issues in this package with an eleventh-hour push to raise the federal debt limit. Some Republicans have made clear the way forward.
“I don’t think he’s wrong,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-LA, said when asked if Trump’s debt limit proposal was helpful. “But it complicates the matter.”
That’s an understatement.
Debt limit negotiations in previous years have taken months upon months to carefully assemble. Some Senate Republicans acknowledged tonight that even if they support raising the debt limit in this bill, getting it to pass in the small window of time that remains will be a real challenge.
“I don’t know how we do that,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-SD. “I mean, I’m open to ideas, but I don’t know how we do it.”
Graham said he would leave decisions on the debt limit up to Trump, but acknowledged that Democratic buy-in would be necessary to do so.
“I don’t know how this plays into things. I do know this, we don’t want to default. There are a lot of Republicans who will never vote to raise the debt ceiling for ideological reasons,” Graham said.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-TX, acknowledged that getting all Republicans to raise the debt limit would be a challenge.
“I don’t know if the Republicans will vote for it, especially the Freedom Caucus, so I think we’ll take it one step at a time,” Cornyn said.
Tillis also agreed that Democrats should buy into a plan to raise the debt ceiling. And with that deadline still a month away, he said he wasn’t sure what would motivate Democrats to engage in eleventh-hour negotiations on the issue.
“I think there’s got to be something more than a demand to get in, because again there’s no smoking platform,” Tillis said.
Calls with Trump
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-MO, said he spoke with Trump before his original statement today, which recommended that the Republican accept Johnson’s short-term government bill.
Hawley said Trump thought Speaker Johnson’s CR was an “absolute disaster.”
Hawley criticized what Johnson said was “clearly” not reading Trump during the bill negotiation process.
“I said this, to the president, which is about House Leadership. I mean, is this going to be the norm? Is this how we’re going to operate? They’re going to — is this going to be. the standard that we’re setting?”
ABC News asked Hawley if Trump had specifically expressed his frustration with Johnson, and Hawley said, “Yes.”
But that was refuted by Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-OK.
“I’ve talked to the president several times today. I wouldn’t classify it, I wouldn’t classify it as being frustrated with the speaker,” Mullin said.
Mullin said it had been expressed to Johnson “for some time” that Trump wanted to raise the debt limit.
Senator Markwayne Mullin speaks in Washington, DC on March 22, 2023.
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images, FILE
“He wants to be included in the package that puts the debt limit, but he’s angry, I totally disagree with that.
The musk factor
Senators seem to have downplayed Elon Musk’s influence on the current situation. Musk took to his social media platform X on Wednesday to repeatedly bash the Johnson-backed bill.
“I think there are people who give too much weight to Musk or anyone else. I think there were structural challenges to begin with,” Tillis said. “These outside influences do have an effect, but I think that came from the inside, not the outside. I’ve seen some reports of Elon essentially vetoing it. I’m sure his voice carried weight, but he clearly had a structural problem. before giving an opinion.”
Hawley, when asked about Musk’s weight, seemed to brush aside concerns.
“As someone who doesn’t like CR, I welcome the criticism,” Hawley said.
