As a government shutdown looms, Rep. Chip Roy on Thursday night said he was “sickened” by his own Republican Party after it introduced an 11th-hour spending bill that would “increase the debt by $5 trillion.”
“Congratulations, you've added [$330 billion] to the debt since you were given the majority again on November 5. It's embarrassing. It's shameful,” the Texas lawmaker chided Republicans as he spoke from the Democrats' side of the aisle.
Earlier on Thursday, President-elect Donald Trump blasted Roy for “getting in the way” of the Republicans’ new, slimmed-down bill, and called for a primary challenger against Roy.
The House seemed prepared earlier this week to pass a three-month continuing resolution to avert a shutdown and with bipartisan support. But a tweetstorm from Elon Musk applied pressure to Republicans who were already not pleased with the deal not cutting government spending, and that deal fell apart. A slimmed-down, Trump-approved funding package, which would suspend the debt limit until 2027 and remove some funding priorities, now doesn’t even have enough GOP support to pass, let alone from Democrats who are insisting they will not back anything but the original agreement. The Trump-backed continuing resolution and debt ceiling package failed to pass the House on Thursday night after opposition from 38 Republicans and nearly all Democrats.
The federal government would shut down at 12:01 a.m. ET on Saturday if a spending bill is not passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden before then.
If there is a shutdown, it would be the 23rd since 1976, first since 2018-2019, and third since the turn of the century. The last shutdown occurred when Trump had a standoff with the Democratic-lead House over his demands for border wall funding. That shutdown also lasted through the holiday season, although it was only partial since Congress had passed funding for some parts of government. This one would be a full shutdown.
