 "US President-elect Donald Trump. Reuters")
President-elect Donald Trump has made his political calculations clear suggesting that he wants a government shutdown to happen while Joe Biden is president.
In his latest post on Truth Social, he wrote, “If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration, not after January 20th, under “TRUMP.” This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!”
The US Congress was scrambling to avert a partial government shutdown on Friday, hours after more than three dozen Republicans rejected a demand by Trump to use the measure to lift the nation’s debt ceiling.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson was working to find a solution that could pass both his narrowly controlled chamber and the Democratic-majority Senate, as the midnight funding deadline on Friday (0500 GMT Saturday) approached.
“We have a plan,” Reuters quoted Johnson as telling reporters at the Capitol on Friday.
“We’re expecting votes this morning,” he added.
On Thursday, conservative Republicans rejected Trump’s request to lift the debt ceiling, which could add trillions to the government’s existing $36 trillion debt.
Trump, set to take office in a month, intensified his rhetoric overnight, urging a five-year suspension of the US debt ceiling, despite resistance from his party’s right wing to a previous two-year extension.
Impact Shorts
More Shorts“Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling. Without this, we should never make a deal,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform shortly after 1 am.
An earlier bipartisan deal was derailed after Trump and his ally, Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, opposed it on Wednesday. A rushed alternative, backed by Trump, failed to pass on Thursday night with a vote of 174-235.
This revised measure aimed to maintain the roughly $6.2 trillion federal budget at current levels through March and allocated $100 billion for disaster relief.
However, it omitted provisions designed to satisfy Democrats, who still control the US Senate and White House for four more weeks. The White House has stated that President Joe Biden opposed the revised bill.
Past debt ceiling disputes have caused jitters in financial markets, as a US government default could trigger global credit shocks. The debt ceiling suspension, which expires on January 1, might not require immediate action from lawmakers until spring.
With inputs from agencies