President-elect Donald Trump took credit for killing the government funding bill proposed by House Republicans on Thursday, telling ABC News government shutdown If Congress expands the government’s borrowing limit or fails to eliminate the debt ceiling entirely.
“We’re not going to hit the debt ceiling,” Trump said in an exclusive phone interview. “Nothing will be accepted unless the debt ceiling is done.”
Trump has said he is concerned that if government borrowing reaches the limit set by the debt ceiling, it could lead to an economic depression. Under current law, the federal government would hit the debt ceiling sometime in the spring of 2025, the first months of Trump’s second presidency. Trump said he wants to take care of it now, in the meantime Joe Biden he is the president
President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with the House GOP conference, Nov. 13, 2024, in Washington.
Allison Robert/AP
“By doing what I’m doing, I’ve brought Biden into the administration,” Trump said. “In this administration, not in my administration.”
“The interesting thing is that (the debt ceiling) might mean nothing or it might mean the depression of 1929,” Trump added. “No one really knows. It doesn’t mean anything, but it means a lot psychologically, doesn’t it? In other words, it has no real meaning except that you’ve broken something. And that may be, one day, only half the story, or it could lead to the Depression of 1929 and nobody wants to take the risk, except the Democrats.”
Congress must pass a funding bill by Friday night to avoid a shutdown of major federal services.
Trump said he is more concerned about the debt ceiling, which was not part of the spending bill the House rejected Wednesday after Trump and Elon Musk squarely opposed it, than the level of government spending.
“I don’t care about the spending for farmers and North Carolina disaster relief and so on, but that’s about it,” he said, referring to $100 billion in disaster relief and $10 billion in aid for farmers.
House Speaker Mike Johnson takes questions from reporters after introducing the final version of a pending interim bill to his caucus, at the Capitol in Washington, Dec. 17, 2024.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Asked about concerns about a potential shutdown, the president-elect reiterated that there will be a shutdown if the debt ceiling is not fixed, and said it would be Biden’s fault.
“The shutdown only affects the person who is the president,” Trump said. “That’s what I’ve tried to teach Kevin McCarthy (former Speaker of the House), but obviously I didn’t do a very good job (with the shutdown) because he kept extending it in my territory, the shutdown only hurts or harms the person who will be the president.”
As for the fate of House Speaker Mike Johnson, Trump said: “If he’s strong, he’ll survive. If he’s strong, he’ll survive.”
