As President-elect Donald Trump’s comments bashing House Speaker Mike Johnson’s short-term government funding bill sent House Republicans into a deadlock Wednesday night, Senate Republicans were left trying to make sense of the remaining pieces.
Congress must act to fund the government by midnight Friday or risk a shutdown. With the house back at the drawing board, the clock is ticking.
The nature of state aid bills means the Senate is usually in a wait-and-see position until the House acts. That’s especially true this time, when Johnson has to wrangle his slim majority in the House to pass legislation that Trump will find palatable before the Senate decides whether they can accept it.
House Speaker Mike Johnson attends a news conference following a Republican conference call in the House of Representatives on Capitol Hill in Washington on December 17, 2024.
Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
The looming funding deadline means the Senate will likely be forced to stomach whatever Johnson manages to pass through the House, unless it’s so unacceptable that senators are willing to shut down the government over it. Democrats still control the Senate for a few more days, and the 60-vote threshold in the Senate makes compromise essential.
In late-night votes Wednesday night, Senate Republicans weighed in on the current government funding situation with a little more than 48 hours until a shutdown.
Many say they were not satisfied with Johnson’s original proposal
Despite the challenges Congress now faces in finishing the job of government funding, there are a number of Republicans in the Senate who admit they were not satisfied with the proposal that Johnson presented on Tuesday. Some are happy that Trump got involved to encourage change.
“This is supposed to be a CR that extends the status quo. And it’s supposed to be lean and mean,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-LA. “Well, I mean, it may have been malicious, but it wasn’t lean. And what I think we’re going to have to do to get it passed is go back to a real CR, which is just an extension of the status quo.”
Late. Mike Rounds, R-SD, said all the “bullshit” attached to the House CR was “very very disappointing to me.”
Late. Mike Rounds is seen in the US Capitol on December 4, 2024.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
He signaled a willingness to support a pure CR with disaster relief.
There seems to be some eagerness to reopen the discussion on a way forward, but time is running out and there are now a number of very difficult issues which will require a lot of negotiations in a very short time.
Southern Republicans draw the line on disaster relief
As House Republicans go back to the drawing board to try to satisfy Trump’s demands, it’s clear they’ll have to balance them against an outright insistence by many Republicans in the Senate that billions in disaster aid remain attached to this bill.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, whose home state of South Carolina was deeply affected by Hurricane Helene, said he will vote against a funding bill that does not include emergency aid for his and other affected states.
He called it a “moral imperative to get money into the system.”
“We’ve got to have the disaster relief. I can’t go home and play like it didn’t happen,” Graham said. “To anyone who thinks disaster relief is pork, come to where I live and see what happened in my state of North Carolina and Georgia.”
Late. Rep. Thom Tillis, R-NC, whose home state was affected by both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, said he would do everything in his power to slow the passage of any government funding bill that does not include funding for emergency relief .
“I feel very strong. [If] we’re not going to get a disaster in the bill, I’m going to do everything I can to keep us there until we do,” Tillis said.
Tillis said he spoke with VP-Elect Vance on Wednesday and said Vance “understands” the importance of disaster relief.
“JD understands that. I talked to him this afternoon. He understands the need to get disaster follow-up in there,” Tillis said. “Most people, at least JD and others, think we need to make the disaster allowance.”
Republicans are open to raising the debt limit, but skeptical of achieving it on this timeline
Trump significantly complicated matters on government funding with an eleventh-hour push to include an increase to the federal debt limit in that package. That has left some Republicans unclear on the way forward.
“I don’t think he’s wrong,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-LA, said when asked if Trump’s debt limit proposal was helpful. “But that complicates matters.”
That is an understatement.
Debt limit negotiations have in previous years taken months upon months to carefully weave together. A number of Senate Republicans admitted tonight that while they would support raising the debt limit in this bill, it will be a real challenge to get it passed in the little time left.
“I don’t know how we do it,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-SD. “I mean, I’m open to ideas about it, but I don’t know how we do it.”
Graham said he would leave decisions on the debt limit to Trump, but conceded that Democratic buy-in would be needed to do so.
“I don’t know how this plays out. I do know we don’t want to default. There are a lot of Republicans who will never vote to raise the debt ceiling for ideological reasons,” Graham said.
Late. Rep. John Cornyn, R-TX, acknowledged that getting all Republicans on board with a debt limit increase would be a challenge.
“I don’t know if the Republicans will vote for it, especially the Freedom Caucus, so I think we’ll take it one step at a time,” Cornyn said.
Tillis also acknowledged that Democrats would have to buy into a plan to raise the debt limit. And with the deadline to do so still months away, he said he was unsure what would inspire Democrats to engage in eleventh-hour negotiations on the issue.
“I just think there has to be something more to it than a requirement that it come in, because again, there’s no burning platform,” Tillis said.
Call with Trump
Late. Rep. Josh Hawley, R-MO, said he spoke with Trump just before he issued his original statement today discouraging Republicans from supporting the short-term government proposal put forth by Johnson.
Hawley said Trump thought Speaker Johnson’s CR was a “total disaster.”
Hawley criticized Johnson for what he said was “clearly” not reading Trump into the bill’s negotiation process.
“I pointed this out to him, to the president, that is, to the leadership of the House. I mean, is this going to be the norm? Is this how we’re going to operate? They’re going to — is that going to be the standard that we set?”
ABC News asked Hawley if Trump specifically expressed frustration with Johnson, and Hawley said “yes.”
But it was rejected by Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-OK.
“I’ve talked to the president several times today. I wouldn’t classify, I wouldn’t classify it as being frustrated with the chairman,” Mullin said.
Mullin said it was articulated to Johnson for “a while” that Trump wanted an increase in the debt limit.
Senator Markwayne Mullin speaks in Washington, DC, on March 22, 2023.
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images, FILE
“He wants the debt limit included in the package they have put forward, but he is so upset about it, I absolutely do not agree with that.
The musk factor
Senators seemed to downplay the importance of Elon Musk’s influence on the current situation. Musk took to his social media platform X to repeatedly slam the Johnson-backed bill on Wednesday.
“I think there are people who put too much weight on Musk or others who think. I think there were structural challenges to begin with,” Tillis said. “These outside influences do have an impact, but I think it came from within and not from without. I’ve seen some of the reports about how Elon basically vetoed it. I’m sure his vote weighed in, but it clearly had a structural problem before anyone thought about it.”
When asked about Musk’s weighing in, Hawley seemed to brush aside the concerns.
“As someone who doesn’t like CR, I welcome the criticism,” Hawley said.
