Some kind of spending bill must become law before Friday at midnight, otherwise a partial government shutdown would begin. Shown is the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 26, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — U.S. House Democrats released details early Thursday on how much federal disaster aid each state would lose if Republicans drop it from a stopgap spending bill that’s been rejected by their own members as well as President-elect Donald Trump.
The state-by-state breakdown of roughly $100 billion came just hours after Trump and many of his closest allies, including tech billionaire Elon Musk, urged GOP leaders in Congress to walk away from a bipartisan year-end spending package.
That short-term spending bill, or some version of it, must become law before Friday at midnight, otherwise a partial government shutdown would begin. A partial shutdown would halt paychecks to federal employees and U.S. troops just ahead of the holiday season.
The breakdown shows states battered by hurricanes and other natural disasters such as California, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia would miss out on more than $2 billion each, though the figures for the larger states go above $10 billion.
Misinformation over pay raise
The stalemate over the short-term spending bill began shortly after congressional leaders released the 1,547-page package on Tuesday evening.
Speaker Mike Johnson defended some of the extraneous measures during a press conference Tuesday before it was publicly released and during a Fox News interview Wednesday morning.
The Louisiana Republican reinforced the need for disaster aid and economic assistance to farmers, though the spending package includes dozens of unrelated items, including a provision that would allow the nationwide sale of 15% ethanol blended gasoline year round.
The bill also dropped a long-standing provision that blocked members of Congress from getting an annual cost of living adjustment salary increase.
There was considerable misinformation Wednesday around how much of a boost in pay lawmakers would stand to receive next Congress, riling up people who didn’t have access to the correct figures.
The incorrect numbers were spread by many online, but received special attention from Musk, who advocated shutting down the government before Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance weighed in later Wednesday.
Lawmakers would receive a maximum 3.8% salary increase, boosting their annual pay from $174,000 to $180,600, according to a report released in September by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Lawmakers haven’t received a COLA increase since January 2009.
Sudden debt limit demand
The full package, which congressional leaders and committees spent weeks negotiating, would have given Congress until March 14 to negotiate a bicameral agreement on the dozen annual government funding bills that were supposed to become law by the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1.
Republicans wanted to hold over the full-year spending bills until they have unified control of government next year.
The package would have given lawmakers until Sept. 30 to work out a deal on the five-year farm bill, which they should have completed work on well over a year ago.
Trump pressed Wednesday for lawmakers to add the debt limit to negotiations, with just about two days left before the shutdown deadline. Working out a bipartisan agreement to raise or suspend the nation’s borrowing authority typically takes months of talks.
Trump said he didn’t want to have to deal with the debt limit debate once his second administration begins on Jan. 20 and would rather have had it on President Joe Biden’s record.
Trump told NBC News on Thursday morning that he wanted Congress to eliminate the debt limit entirely, marking a substantial shift in how Republicans have approached the cap on borrowing.
The GOP typically leverages the debt ceiling debate to push for spending cuts, though not always successfully.
Democratic leaders in Congress maintain they are not going to renegotiate with Republicans, which would prevent any Republican-only bill from becoming law before the deadline. While the GOP controls the House, Democrats right now run the Senate and hold the White House.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said Thursday morning in a floor speech that GOP infighting over the bipartisan bill was risking an unnecessary government shutdown.
“Unfortunately, it seems Republicans are in shambles over in the House,” Schumer said. “But as they try to piece things together, they should remember one thing — the only way to get things done is through bipartisanship.”
Jeffries urges vote on stopgap
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., on didn’t entirely rule out lawmakers from his party voting for a slimmed-down stopgap spending bill, but urged GOP leaders to stick with the version they spent weeks negotiating.
“This reckless Republican-driven shutdown can be avoided if House Republicans will simply do what is right for the American people and stick with the bipartisan agreement that they themselves negotiated,” Jeffries said at a Thursday press conference.
Trump’s insistence that the package address the debt limit in some way was “premature at best,” he said.
Jeffries also said Democrats would not give Johnson extra votes to secure the speaker’s gavel in January, should several of his GOP colleagues refuse to vote for him during a floor vote.
Numerous far-right Republicans have hinted or said directly that they might not support Johnson continuing on as speaker due to their grievances over provisions in the stopgap spending bill.
Republicans will have an extremely narrow House majority next year, meaning Johnson can only lose a few votes before the GOP would begin the third prolonged speaker race in just two years.
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy began this session of Congress in January 2023 going through 15 floor votes before he was able to secure the votes needed to become speaker.
Republicans voting to oust him a little over a year ago led to several GOP speaker nominees, who were unable to get the 218 votes needed to become speaker on a floor vote or who opted to not even try.
Republicans nominated House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan and Minnesota’s Tom Emmer before landing on Johnson, who was able to win a floor vote.
Musk for speaker?
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who tried but failed to oust Johnson as speaker in May, has been leading the charge to select someone else, possibly Musk. The Constitution is silent on the question of whether the speaker must be a member of the House.
“The establishment needs to be shattered just like it was yesterday,” Greene wrote on social media. “This could be the way.”
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