US lawmakers had less than two days on Thursday to avert a partial government shutdown after President-elect Donald Trump rejected a bipartisan deal and demanded lawmakers address the nation’s debt ceiling before he takes office next month.Trump’s fellow Republicans huddled behind closed doors on Capitol Hill to craft a fallback plan that could win his approval and also muster enough support to pass the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and the Democratic-majority Senate.Democratic President Joe Biden also would have to sign it into law to keep the government funded past midnight today (0500 GMT tomorrow).Republican lawmakers provided few details as they emerged from House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office.“The situation is still fluid,” Representative Tom Emmer, the chamber’s No. 3 Republican, told reporters.Without action from Congress, the US government will begin a partial shutdown tomorrow that would interrupt funding for everything from air travel to law enforcement in the days leading up to the December 25 Christmas holiday and cut off paychecks for more than 2mn federal workers.Many government operations, such as Social Security retirement payments, would continue.The last government shutdown took place in December 2018 and January 2019 during Trump’s first White House term.Republican Representative Nancy Mace said that Congress should keep the government closed until Trump takes office if they cannot reach a deal.“Let’s reset (on) January 20th. It’s not the scary shutdown the lying media tells you it is,” she said on social media.Trump and his ally Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, effectively torpedoed the spending deal on Wednesday by blasting it as a wasteful giveaway to Democrats and threatening to mount primary election challenges to Republicans who vote for it.Trump is calling on Congress to pass a stripped-down bill that would that would tie up loose ends before he takes office next month by extending the government’s borrowing authority – a politically difficult task – and extending government funding.Trump told NBC News on Thursday that Congress should abolish limits on government debt entirely.That would end the periodic debt showdowns that have pushed the country to the brink of default, but expose lawmakers to charges of fiscal irresponsibility.At $36tn, the federal debt now exceeds the nation’s GDP and could grow dramatically under Trump’s watch.He is pushing tax cuts that could reduce revenues by $8tn over 10 years, which would drive the debt higher without offsetting spending cuts, and he has vowed not to reduce retirement and health benefits for seniors that are projected to grow dramatically in the years to come.Democrats have shown little interest in revising their deal to satisfy Trump and Musk, the Tesla boss who has vowed to cut $2tn from the $6.2tn federal budget.“It is dangerous for House Republicans to have folded to the demands of the richest man on the planet, who nobody elected,” Democratic Representative Rosa DeLauro said in a statement. “Republicans own whatever comes next.”The bipartisan bill would have funded government agencies at current levels and provide $100bn for disaster relief and $10bn in farm aid.It included a wide range of unrelated provisions, such as a pay raise for lawmakers and a crackdown on hidden hotel fees.The unrest also threatened to topple Johnson, a mild-mannered Louisianan who was thrust unexpectedly into the speaker’s office last year after the party’s right flank voted out then-Speaker Kevin McCarty over a government funding bill.Johnson has repeatedly had to turn to Democrats for help in passing legislation when he has been unable to deliver the votes from his own party.Several Republicans said they would not vote for him as speaker when Congress returns in January, potentially setting up another tumultuous leadership battle in the weeks before Trump takes office.
