Transition Updates: Senate Approves Stopgap Funding Bill Just After Shutdown Deadline
President Biden is expected to sign it later Saturday. The new legislation will keep the government open but did not include the debt ceiling increase that President-elect Donald J. Trump had demanded.
Published Dec. 20, 2024Updated Dec. 21, 2024
The Senate approved legislation to avert a federal government shutdown just after a midnight deadline.Eric Lee/The New York Times Pinned
Carl HulseMaya C. Miller and
Reporting from the Capitol
Here are the latest developments.
The Senate approved legislation to avert a federal government shutdown just after a midnight deadline, capping a chaotic week in which President-elect Donald J. Trump blew up a bipartisan spending deal, only to see his own preferred plan collapse as Republicans defied him.
President Biden is expected to sign the measure, which would extend funding into mid-March and approve disaster relief for parts of the nation still recovering from storms. The White House said early Saturday that it was not instituting a government shutdown, even though funding to run the government technically ran out at midnight.
Earlier Friday, House Republicans stripped out a provision sought by Mr. Trump to suspend the federal debt limit and spare him the usually politically difficult task of doing so when he takes office. The debt measure incited a revolt by Republicans on Thursday and led to the defeat of Speaker Mike Johnson’s first attempt to extend government funding.
Here is what else to know:
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Speaker’s bind: Mr. Johnson abandoned the bipartisan funding deal he had reached with Democrats this week under a barrage of criticism from both Mr. Trump and the billionaire Mr. Musk, whom the president-elect has designated to lead his push to rein in government. That sent Mr. Johnson toiling to cut a deal that would not only avert a shutdown but also salvage his chances of keeping his job. Many Republicans were angry about the initial spending compromise he forged with Democrats.
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Musk on German politics: Mr. Musk, who helped sink the bipartisan spending compromise this week by inveighing against it on social media, weighed in on German politics in the same forum on Friday. In post on X, Mr. Musk endorsed the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party ahead of federal elections in February.
A correction was made on Dec. 20, 2024:
An earlier version of this article misstated which Democratic House member voted present. Jasmine Crockett of Texas voted present, not Marcy Kaptur of Ohio.
When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more
Reporting from the Capitol
A late-night attempt to revive a measure to increase funding for juvenile cancer research failed when Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, objected to the bill. The measure, known as the Give Kids a Chance Act, had been dropped from the larger government funding bill earlier this week. Because senators were trying to pass the bill using a method known as unanimous consent, Paul’s objection was the only one necessary to kill it.
Reporting from the Capitol
The Senate has voted 85 to 11 to pass the stopgap spending bill approved in the House earlier today and keep the government open. The bill now goes to President Biden’s desk.
How Each House Member Voted on the Bills to Avoid a Government Shutdown
The House passed a measure to fund the federal government for a few months, extend the farm bill and provide new disaster aid.
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Reporting from Washington
The White House announced in a statement that no agencies will shut down despite the passage of the midnight deadline “because there is a high degree of confidence that Congress will imminently pass the relevant appropriations.” President Biden will sign the bill on Saturday, the statement said.
Reporting from the Capitol
The Senate is now moving to a final vote on the stopgap spending package to keep the government open through March 14. That measure will also deliver disaster aid to the Southeast and direct economic assistance to farmers.
Reporting from Washington
What occurs now that the midnight deadline has passed and the Senate hasn’t approved the spending bill but appears to be on track to do so? A similar episode earlier this year may hold the answer. In March, the Senate didn’t pass a funding bill until about two hours after the shutdown deadline, and President Biden didn’t sign it until later in the day. But the Biden administration never shut down the government since the bill had appeared on track to pass.
Reporting from the Capitol
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, has announced that the Senate has reached an agreement that would allow lawmakers to pass the stopgap spending bill before the midnight government shutdown deadline.
Eric Lee/The New York Times
Reporting from the Capitol
“I have very good news for my colleagues and the country,” Schumer said on the floor. “Democrats and Republicans have just reached an agreement that will allow us to pass the CR tonight before the midnight deadline,” referring to the continuing resolution.
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Reporting from the Capitol
Senators are discussing a range of policies, including a measure that would give full Social Security benefits to public servants who currently receive them at reduced levels and the spending bill that passed the House earlier. Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, has said that he expected the Senate to pass the stopgap measure in an effort to avert a shutdown.
Reporting on politics
The Senate is preparing its own vote on the spending bill with just three and a half hours before the government runs out of funding, creating the possibility that the government still shuts down — however briefly. Even if the Senate ultimately approves it, it will take time to get the legislation signed by President Biden.
Eric Lee/The New York Times
Reporting on politics
A similar situation played out earlier this year when the Senate approved another spending bill about two hours after missing a midnight funding deadline, sending the legislation to Biden’s desk after the government had already technically run out of money, but before any of the effects of a shutdown could be felt.
Reporting on politics
Shortly before the spending bill passed in the House, the White House issued a statement urging lawmakers to support it, noting that the latest version had removed some provisions that were priorities for Democrats, but that the alternative was a damaging government shutdown.
Reporting on politics
“A government shutdown heading into the holidays would mean service members and air traffic controllers go to work without pay, essential government services for hardworking Americans would be paused, and economic disruption would occur,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. She added, “President Biden supports moving this legislation forward.”
Reporting from the Capitol
We are now waiting for the Senate to take up the stopgap spending bill. It is expected to later tonight, but it has a few other measures to process first, in classic Senate fashion.
In late push, Senate Democrats narrowly top Trump on judicial confirmations.
Democrats wrapped up an effort to fill as many vacancies as possible on the bench before turning the majority over to Senate Republicans on Jan. 3.Kenny Holston/The New York Times
The Senate confirmed on Friday the 235th lifetime federal judge nominated by President Biden, topping the four-year record set during the first Trump administration by a single judge in a drive that significantly reshaped the federal courts to be more ethnically and professionally diverse.
The approval of Serena Raquel Murillo of California to be a judge in the state’s central district wrapped up a push by Democrats to fill as many vacancies as possible on the bench before turning the majority over to Senate Republicans on Jan. 3.
Democrats celebrated not only the number of judges confirmed but also their varying ethnicities and legal experience compared with the longstanding practice by past presidents of both parties of installing mostly white former prosecutors and corporate lawyers.
“A quarter of all the judges are now on the federal bench from the four years we were here,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, who called the judicial drive one of his most significant acts as leader. “It’s going to have a profound effect on people’s lives. This was an accomplishment that will last generations.”
The intense year-end effort means that President-elect Donald J. Trump will enter the White House with far fewer vacancies than in 2017, when he took office with more than 100 judgeships open after Republicans blocked the Obama administration from filling court seats, including one on the Supreme Court.
Mr. Trump could get more if Mr. Biden signs congressionally approved legislation that would create about two dozen new federal court slots for him to fill, but the White House has said he would veto that bill.
Democrats noted that they succeeded despite having to navigate an evenly split 50-50 Senate the first two years of the Biden administration and a 51-49 divide for most of the second two.
“The rules of the Judiciary Committee make it absolutely essential for every member to be present,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who managed the judicial confirmation effort as chairman of the panel and praised fellow Democrats for their commitment. “If one member was absent, we had to postpone consideration of the nominees.”
Of the 235 judges, about two-thirds are women and about two-thirds are people of color. Mr. Biden named more Black women to judgeships than his predecessors, including more Black women to appellate court slots than all previous presidents combined. The group also includes the most former public defenders ever named — including Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — as well as a number of notable firsts such as the first Muslim American man and woman seated on the federal bench.
Democrats did come up short of Mr. Trump in some categories. Mr. Trump was presented with three Supreme Court vacancies to fill, while Mr. Biden had only one, to which he named Justice Jackson. Mr. Trump also filled more seats on the influential appellate courts, 54 to 45, than Mr. Biden, allowing Mr. Trump to have more impact in determining the ideological breakdown on those crucial courts.
Progressive activists and some Democrats say Mr. Biden missed an opportunity to have more influence at the appellate level. They criticized a post-election deal by Mr. Schumer that took four appeals court seats off the table in exchange for Republicans smoothing the way for confirmation of the 15 lower-court nominees who have been approved over the last several weeks.
Mr. Schumer and other Democrats said that the four were unlikely to be confirmed, and that the trade-off allowed them to move multiple other nominees through without Republicans throwing up time-consuming procedural roadblocks.
“It was a no-brainer,” Mr. Schumer said of the agreement. “Anyone sitting in my chair would have made the same decision.” He said Democrats were disappointed that they could not get more circuit court confirmations, but “these didn’t have the votes.”
Republicans took issue with most of the Biden nominees, criticizing them as too liberal. But they gave grudging credit to Democrats, noting that they followed the Republican model emphasized by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, of making judicial confirmations a priority during Mr. Trump’s first term and devoting significant time to them.
The federal courts have increasingly become an arena for resolving political disputes, and Mr. McConnell saw the first Trump term as an opportunity to tilt them as far to the right as possible. Democrats saw their judicial project as a way to rebalance the courts.
“They took a page out of our playbook,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas and a senior member of the Judiciary Committee. “Because that’s what Senator McConnell and President Trump did during his first term in office. And I think Democrats saw that was pretty darn effective and decided to copy it.”
Mr. Cornyn said Republicans were ready to pick up where they left off in 2020.
“I think President Trump will have a chance to nominate one or maybe two Supreme Court justices, which would be unprecedented,” Mr. Cornyn said, noting that could mean a majority of the court would be named by Mr. Trump.
Reporting from the Capitol
Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, said he expected the Senate to quickly take up the bill and pass it. “Though this bill does not include everything Democrats fought for, there are major victories in this bill for American families — provide emergency aid for communities battered by natural disasters, no debt ceiling, and it will keep the government open with no draconian cuts,” he said.
Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
Reporting from the Capitol
Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, says of House Democrats’ decision to bail out Republicans: “House Democrats have successfully stopped extreme MAGA Republicans from shutting down the government, crashing the economy and hurting working class Americans all across the land. House Democrats have successfully stopped the billionaire boys club, which wanted a $4 trillion blank check by suspending the debt ceiling.”
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Reporting from the Capitol
Representative Gerry Connolly of Virginia admitted that the bill that passed tonight did not include all the priorities that they had fought for in the original deal they negotiated with Republicans. But since the debt ceiling suspension was removed, there was nothing left to oppose besides the omissions.
“Was that a compelling reason to shut down the government?” Connolly said. “At the end of the day, no.”
Reporting from the Capitol
Representative Gerry Connolly of Virginia, the incoming top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said he was leaving the Capitol feeling “very unsettled” after the vote and the chaos that led up to it.
“I think we’re in for a lot of turbulence on the Republican side of the House because of the instability and chaos and disruption that Trump embraces,” Connolly said.
Reporting from the Capitol
Just two days ago, President-elect Trump and Elon Musk threatened to ensure a primary challenge for any House Republican who voted for a bill that didn’t include a debt limit increase. Tonight, 170 of them did just that.
Reporting from the Capitol
Speaker Mike Johnson, talking with reporters at the Capitol, said he spoke with Trump and Elon Musk about the legislation within the last hour.
Reporting from the Capitol
“He knew exactly what we were doing and why, and this is a good outcome for the country,” Johnson said, referring to Trump.
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Reporting from the Capitol
The bill passes 366 to 34. The only lawmakers voting to oppose this bill — all 34 of them — are Republicans. All Democrats voted for this legislation except Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas, who voted present. An earlier version of this update misstated which Democratic House member voted present. Jasmine Crockett of Texas voted present, not Marcy Kaptur of Ohio.
Reporting from the Capitol
With more than 350 lawmakers now voting in favor of this stopgap bill, it is set to easily pass the House, absent a drove of members suddenly changing their votes.
Reporting from the Capitol
In a full-circle moment, Elon Musk, who barraged the first spending deal with a torrent of criticism on X, just posted on the platform that Johnson “did a good job here, given the circumstances.”
“It went from a bill that weighed pounds to a bill that weighed ounces,” Musk says.
Democrats highlight a casualty of the spending fight: funding to combat pediatric cancer.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York argued Republicans were focusing on tax cuts over cancer treatment for children.Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
When Speaker Mike Johnson walked away from a bipartisan deal to avert a government shutdown this week, Democrats cried foul, saying Republicans had put the demands of Elon Musk and President-elect Donald J. Trump over the interests of ordinary people.
Democrats singled out one particularly sympathetic cause to reinforce their argument: childhood cancer provisions that were dropped from the compromise as Republicans struggled to find a way to keep federal funding flowing.
“Republicans would rather cut taxes for billionaire donors than fund research for children with cancer,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, posted on social media on Friday.
Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, wrote, “These people want to punish these precious little kids to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest corporations in human history.”
And Senator Patty Murray, the Washington Democrat who leads the Appropriations Committee, added a jab at Mr. Musk, who helped explode the bipartisan agreement.
“We should not let an unelected billionaire rip away research for pediatric cancer so he can get a tax cut,” she wrote on Instagram.
In abandoning the original spending deal and stripping it of an array of policy changes that had been included, Republicans dropped at least four bills related to pediatric cancer research and treatments. That drew sharp criticism from even right-leaning pundits and disappointment from cancer advocates.
“What’s your problem with a bipartisan cancer research program?” asked Jessica Tarlov, a Fox News host.
Among the dropped provisions was the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act, named after a 10-year-old girl who died from an inoperable brain tumor in 2013. Since 2014, it has allocated $12.6 million to the National Institutes for Health every year to study the biology of childhood cancer and structural birth defects. The spending deal would have extended funding for that research through 2031. The Senate approved the bill late Friday on an unanimous vote.
Republicans also scrapped a new policy that would have made it easier for low-income children on Medicaid to cross state lines for specialized cancer treatment. Currently, out-of-state providers must undergo a lengthy enrollment process — which sometimes delays critical cancer treatment — before Medicaid will agree to cover the care.
Two bills aimed at incentivizing pediatric cancer drug development also fell out of the spending measure. One would have allowed the Food and Drug Administration to fast-track consideration of drug applications for companies that successfully develop a drug for a rare pediatric disease. The other would have let drug developers get rare disease drugs approved for children — and reap the financial incentives of doing so — even if a drug targeting the same disease had already been recently approved for adults.
Mark Fleury, a policy expert from the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, said he was still hopeful that the provisions would be added back into the final measure, noting that the situation in Washington was still “very dynamic.”
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Reporting from the Capitol
Democrats emerging from the closed-door meeting say they intend to vote “yes” on the bill. Jeffries told them that “on balance, it’s a win for the American people,” said Bill Foster of Illinois.
“It was a compromise,” Foster added. “We definitely did not give Elon Musk and Donald Trump what they wanted, and we got most of what we wanted, what we’ve been negotiating.”
Reporting from the Capitol
The House is voting now on the third stopgap bill House Republicans have put forward this week to avert a government shutdown. It needs the support of two-thirds of the lawmakers present and voting to pass. If it fails, we are all but certainly headed for a shutdown.
Reporting from the Capitol
In a last-ditch pitch to lawmakers about six hours ahead of the shutdown deadline, Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, makes the case on the House floor for the legislation. “If you vote no on this bill,” Cole says, “you are effectively voting to shut down the government.”
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The spending deal Musk helped kill included an X-backed bill to help victims of deepfake porn
Elon Musk called on lawmakers to oppose a bipartisan spending deal in more than 150 posts on X.Eric Lee/The New York Times
Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, had recently been pushing for Congress to pass the Take It Down Act, an online safety measure. But this week, Mr. Musk jeopardized its passage as he railed against the passage of a bipartisan spending deal that included the act — actions that eventually led to its defeat in a House vote on Thursday night.
X registered to lobby in favor of the Take It Down Act and several other pieces of legislation related to child safety, according to a disclosure form filed in October. Take It Down — cosponsored by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, and Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota — is designed to enable victims of deepfake pornography to have the images removed from tech platforms. Linda Yaccarino, X’s chief executive, has publicly campaigned for several bills focused on online safety, including the Kids Online Safety Act, which the Senate passed earlier this year but the House declined to take up this week.
But Mr. Musk’s posting spree on X on Wednesday urging rejection of the spending deal doomed the Take It Down Act — it was stricken from the budget deal that was voted down on Thursday. Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment. It was not immediately clear on Friday whether the act would resurface in any last-minute Republican efforts to avert a shutdown.
Mr. Musk did not weigh in on the Take It Down Act in his posts on X, but suggested that other measures attached to the spending deal should be passed as stand-alone bills instead.
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A shutdown’s economic toll: less spending, more uncertainty.
A federal government shutdown probably wouldn’t be enough to derail the solid U.S. economy, but it could inject more uncertainty into the economic outlook.Pete Kiehart for The New York Times
A federal government shutdown probably wouldn’t be enough to derail the solid U.S. economy. But it could inject more uncertainty into an already murky economic outlook.
Funding for the federal government will lapse at the end of Friday if Congress doesn’t reach a deal to extend it. It is still possible that legislators will act in time to prevent a shutdown, or will restore funding quickly enough to avoid significant disruptions and minimize any economic impact.
But if the standoff lasts beyond the weekend, most federal offices will not open Monday, and hundreds of thousands of government employees will be told not to work. Others will be required to work without pay until the government reopens.
For those workers and their families, the consequences could be serious, especially if the impasse drags on. Federal law guarantees that government workers will eventually receive back pay, but that may not come in time for those living paycheck to paycheck. And the back-pay provisions don’t apply to consultants or contractors. During the last government shutdown — a partial lapse in funding in late 2018 and early 2019 — federal workers lined up at food pantries after going weeks without pay.
For the economy as a whole, the effects of a shutdown are likely to be more modest. Many of the most important government programs, like Social Security and Medicare, would not be affected, and government services that are deemed “essential,” such as air traffic control and aviation security, can continue at least temporarily. Federal workers who put off purchases are likely to make them once their paychecks restart.
Forecasters at Goldman Sachs estimate that a shutdown would exert a small but measurable drag on the economy, reducing quarterly economic growth by about 0.15 percentage points for every week the lapse in funding continues. Most of that toll, though not all, would reverse in the next quarter. Other forecasters have released similar estimates.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2019 that the last shutdown, which ended after 35 days, had only a modest and short-lived impact on economic output. That was only a partial shutdown, however — large parts of the government, including the Departments of Defense, Labor, and Health and Human Services, remained open.
A funding lapse now would affect a much larger part of the government, and therefore could cause more severe damage if it lasted a while. But that makes a long shutdown less likely, said Bobby Kogan, a former budget official in the Biden administration who now works at the Center for American Progress. He noted that the last shutdown had ended when it appeared that Transportation Security Administration screeners were about to stop showing up for work.
“Part of the reason these things don’t end up being catastrophic is because we stop it before it gets catastrophic,” Mr. Kogan said.
But economists warn that even if the direct effects of a shutdown are limited, the dysfunction it represents could have consequences in the long run. Government contractors may be more reluctant to hire workers and make investments if they think they can’t count on the federal government to be a reliable customer. Bond investors may demand a higher return to buy Treasury securities, in the form of higher interest rates, if they worry that political turmoil has made the U.S. government more of a credit risk.
“The natural concern is that this is just a prelude of what we’re going to get over the next four years,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist for Nationwide, the insurance company. “It’s just another layer of uncertainty and maybe caution that can work against the economy.”
The economy is relatively healthy by most measures, with unemployment low, consumer spending strong and inflation much cooler than it was two years ago. That momentum means the economy can probably withstand the modest drag of a shutdown without running much risk of a recession.
But recent economic data have sent conflicting signals, with some measures suggesting that inflation could be picking back up and others that the labor market could be starting to crack.
Uncertainty about what policies the incoming administration will pursue has further clouded the economic outlook. On Wednesday, policymakers at the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a quarter percentage point, but signaled that cuts next year were likely to be fewer and were not guaranteed.
A government shutdown would complicate the picture for the Fed, and not only by adding more uncertainty to the economic outlook. It could also imperil the data that policymakers rely on to make their decisions. Past shutdowns forced the government to delay or even cancel reports on jobs, inflation and other measures.
“If we do have a big delay in the economic data, I think it’s going to be really hard for the Fed to provide a whole lot of guidance,” said Michael Pugliese, senior economist at Wells Fargo.
The impact of such uncertainty is hard to measure, Mr. Pugliese said, but it is real.
“I don’t think that’s completely costless even if you don’t see it in the next G.D.P. report,” he said.
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Lazaro Gamio and
See which government workers would be impacted if a spending bill doesn’t pass.
A government shutdown would have significant consequences for more than two million federal employees. Some would be forced to report to work and the rest would be furloughed. None would be paid during the shutdown.
Both furloughed workers and the employees who would continue working during a shutdown would receive back pay once the president signs a new spending deal into law.
Federal agencies have devised their own plans for a shutdown, including who would be furloughed. Who is furloughed and who must report to work will depend on whether their duties are necessary to protect the government’s operations.
Some of the largest government agencies, including the departments of defense and the treasury, would see more than half of their employees furloughed. The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, would each have at least 90 percent of their employees furloughed.
By contrast, less than 20 percent of employees at three large agencies, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice, would be furloughed.
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Federal health authorities promote childhood vaccines in the shadow of Kennedy’s bid for health secretary.
Federal officials warned of the potential for measles outbreaks if parents avoided vaccination.Lindsey Wasson/Reuters
The Health and Human Services Department began a campaign on Friday to support childhood vaccinations that federal health officials said was intended to “cut through the noise of misinformation.”
The announcement, which came as House Republicans were racing to avert a government shutdown at midnight, did not mention Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for health secretary, a longtime vaccine skeptic. But its timing, while Mr. Kennedy has been meeting with Republican lawmakers to make the case for his selection, was striking.
The campaign, called Let’s Get Real, includes stories from physicians on the importance of the shots, and infographics and videos meant to be used by health providers and parents.
“We need to stop this dangerous trend and be more vocal about protecting our children,” Kaye Hayes, a federal infectious disease official, said in a statement announcing the campaign. “Parents have heard so much misinformation. Many of them are overwhelmed.”
Mr. Kennedy has said he does not want to take away access to any vaccines, but wants greater transparency in how they’re regulated.
In the announcement Friday, health officials cited Centers for Disease Control and Prevention research that showed that 3.3 percent of kindergartners had an exemption from at least one vaccine during the 2023-24 school year, the highest level the agency has ever reported.
Federal officials warned of the potential for measles outbreaks if parents avoided vaccination, and pointed to the success of the polio vaccine. The New York Times reported last week that a lawyer who worked with Mr. Kennedy to vet potential federal health appointees had petitioned the federal government to revoke its approval of the stand-alone polio vaccine in 2022 on behalf of a client.
Mr. Kennedy met on Capitol Hill this week with mostly sympathetic lawmakers. But he could soon encounter more resistance from Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a polio survivor, and Democrats wary of his record of anti-vaccine activism. Mr. Kennedy has cast doubt on the polio vaccine.
Dr. Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary for health and human services, said in the Friday announcement that the success of childhood vaccinations in preventing diseases like polio and Hib “means that many parents have never seen some of the diseases that vaccines prevent.”
She added: “We need to make sure conversations about vaccines are balanced and factual to ensure our children get the best protection as they grow up.”
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Trump has used government shutdowns as leverage before.
President-elect Donald J. Trump has repeatedly told allies and advisers over the last few days that he does not oppose a government shutdown.Maansi Srivastava for The New York Times
In 2018, during Donald J. Trump’s first presidency, he said he would be “proud” to shut down the government if a deal was not reached that included funding he wanted for his proposed wall along the southern U.S. border.
“I’ll be the one to shut it down,” Mr. Trump said at the time. “I will take the mantle. And I will shut it down for border security.”
The partial government shutdown that followed was the longest in U.S. history. Mr. Trump was surprised at how poorly people reacted to it, according to one official who worked in the administration said.
As a midnight deadline drew closer on Friday,the incoming president both suggested he could live with a shutdown and tried to push the blame for it on President Biden, who will be in office for another four weeks.
“President-elect Trump is doing more to find a resolution for the American people than the sitting president,” said Karoline Leavitt, Mr. Trump’s incoming White House press secretary, in a statement. “If the government shuts down, the onus is on Joe Biden, who has been hiding away since Election Day.”
Mr. Trump has pushed for shutdowns consistently over time, primarily as a leverage tool. Some advisers in his first term told him that there were ways to minimize the pain that taxpayers experience in a shutdown — a message that apparently has stuck with him.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly told allies and advisers over the last few days that he does not oppose a government shutdown, according to two people with knowledge of his comments.
In May 2023, Kevin McCarthy, then the speaker of the House, reached a budget deal with Mr. Biden that included some spending cuts and suspended the debt ceiling through this coming weekend. Mr. Trump was furious. He wanted Mr. McCarthy to let the government default on its debts instead of striking a deal that would benefit Mr. Biden, who was running for a second term at the time, two people briefed on the events said.
Mr. Trump’s advisers believe voters are more preoccupied with the holidays than they are with the ins and outs of congressional negotiations. But while Mr. Trump is technically correct that a shutdown would be Mr. Biden’s problem now, it could become a Trump problem if it drags on.
The driving conceit this time has been that Mr. Trump — and Elon Musk, an ally, funder, and multibillionaire new friend whom he has tasked with cutting government costs — believes the initial bipartisan deal was stuffed with too much bloat and too many Democratic priorities. A shutdown, from that perspective, is preferable.
That may be harder for lawmakers to swallow when Mr. Trump is arguing that he wants is to remove or raise the debt ceiling — something that was not in the initial deal — which would allow government spending to continue to increase.
“Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday, hours before he called for a shutdown. “Without this, we should never make a deal. Remember, the pressure is on whoever is President.”
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Meet the 38 Republicans who defied Trump on the spending and debt deal.
Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky has never bent to President-elect Donald J. Trump.Maansi Srivastava for The New York Times
The 38 House Republicans who refused to vote for the spending deal pushed by President-elect Donald J. Trump are largely limited-government fiscal hawks who believe they are impervious to a primary threat in their bids for re-election.
There was Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, known on Capitol Hill as Mr. No, who has never bent to Mr. Trump and so far never suffered politically for it. In 2020, when he tried to derail the passage of a coronavirus emergency relief bill, Mr. Trump called him a “third rate Grandstander” and said voters needed to “throw Massie out of Republican Party!”
Mr. Massie has won re-election twice since then.
Members like Representatives Andy Biggs of Arizona, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma and Tim Burchett of Tennessee have never voted for spending deals or debt ceiling increases. They also have well-known brands in their solidly Republican districts that allow them more freedom when it comes to stepping out of line from what the party’s leader demands.
And while they may not agree with Mr. Trump on government spending, many have gone out of their way to demonstrate loyalty in other ways. Some of the defectors were among those who showed up at the criminal courthouse in Manhattan last summer to show their support for Mr. Trump during his hush money trial.
Then there is Representative Chip Roy of Texas, who has been at odds with Mr. Trump since he declined to vote to overturn the 2020 election results and then endorsed Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for president.
Mr. Roy has been publicly at war with the president-elect this week over Mr. Trump’s demand to raise the federal debt limit. He delivered a scathing lecture to his colleagues on the House floor on Thursday night, chiding them for talking tough on spending and then voting to allow more trillions to be added to the government debt.
The dozens of defections were the latest reminder of what has long been true: Mr. Trump can derail legislation on Capitol Hill and single-handedly kill someone’s chances of rising to a leadership position. But he has never been able to command lawmakers to pass legislation they fundamentally oppose or back a colleague with whom they have personal animosity.
Some of Thursday night’s rebels simply have nothing left to lose. Representative Bob Good of Virginia, for example, already suffered Mr. Trump’s wrath after making the politically fatal decision to endorse Mr. DeSantis in the Republican primary this year. Mr. Good lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger and is set to leave Congress in days.
Some of the 38 were wild cards. Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina almost always lands herself on a list of Republicans who vote in an unusual and attention-grabbing way. Ms. Mace has flip-flopped on everything from transgender rights to Mr. Trump himself, but positioning herself as a die-hard fiscal conservative has long been part of her political brand. Representative Eli Crane of Arizona often says he was sent to Washington simply to disrupt the status quo.
The consequences of the defections are not yet clear.
In an appearance on Glenn Beck’s program on Friday, Mr. Roy conceded that he had to “manage” his relationship with Mr. Trump after the president-elect got the impression — wrongly, he insisted — that he was trying to kill the spending and debt plan.
Someone “leaked out of the room, somewhere down to Mar-a-Lago, that somehow I was being resistant,” Mr. Roy said. He claimed he was merely negotiating “to give the president runway” during his first 100 days by demanding to know what the cuts to government spending would be.
The damage, however, was done.
“The very unpopular ‘Congressman’ from Texas, Chip Roy, is getting in the way, as usual, of having yet another Great Republican Victory — All for the sake of some cheap publicity for himself,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media before the vote on Thursday. “Republican obstructionists have to be done away with.”
Mr. Roy said he would vote his conscience and bear the consequences.
“My position is simple — I am not going to raise or suspend the debt ceiling (racking up more debt) without significant & real spending cuts attached to it,” he wrote on social media in response. “I’ve been negotiating to that end. No apologies.”
For better or for worse, Mr. Roy got a nod of approval from former Vice President Mike Pence.
“Congressman Chip Roy is one of the most principled conservatives in Washington DC and people across this country are grateful for his stand against runaway federal spending,” Mr. Pence wrote on social media. “We just can’t keep piling trillions in debt on our children and grandchildren.”
Wall Street rallies, shaking off the threat of a shutdown.
Stock investors took their cue from data showing that inflation continued to slow in November, shrugging off the looming threat of a government shutdown.
The S&P 500 rose 1.1 percent on Friday, its biggest gain in over a month. The rally came after the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, which is the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, showed a slower than expected gain in prices — on a monthly basis — than economists had expected.
Prices rose 0.1 percent in November from October, compared with the 0.2 percent that had been predicted. That detail helped assuage fears that had dragged stocks lower earlier in the week. On Wednesday, after the Federal Reserve reined in its forecast for interest rate cuts next year, in part because of concerns that price increases could speed up again, the S&P 500 suffered its sharpest decline in months.
Friday’s move left the appearance of calm on Wall Street, even as politicians in Washington scrambled to keep the government from partially shutting down. Investors have become used to such scrambles over government funding plans, helping inure them to the potential for economic havoc that could result.
And while a government shutdown threatens the livelihoods of federal workers and can cause transportation delays and other disruption, it is not expected to have a severe, long-term impact on the trajectory of the economy.
“Even if a shutdown occurs, we believe there is likely to be little economic or financial-market impact,” said Paul Christopher, head of global market strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute. He advised investors to not react, saying that he and his team “prefer to look through any shutdown.”
Even the Russell 2000 stock index, which tracks smaller companies more exposed to the ebb and flow of the economy, rose on Friday, up roughly 1 percent.
Of course, stock investors might not be able to shrug off the shutdown — should one begin — for long. Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, noted that the, “longer a shutdown lasts, the more disruptive it is to the U.S. economy.”
That could be especially true if economic data is delayed next year due to a protracted shutdown, making the Federal Reserve’s job of steering the economy more difficult.
Nonetheless, “a short-lived shutdown affects government workers, but has limited economic impact,” he said.
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