A spending bill backed by President-elect, Donald Trump failed in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday.
This is even as the U.S. government will go into partial shutdown at midnight Saturday if there’s no passable deal to kick the government funding deadline to March and continue spending at 2024 levels.
Reuters reports that dozens of Republicans defied Trump, leaving Congress with no clear plan to avert a fast-approaching government shutdown that could disrupt Christmas travel.
The package failed by a vote of 174-235 just hours after it was hastily assembled by Republican leaders seeking to comply with Trump’s demands.
DAILY POST reports that a prior bipartisan deal was scuttled after Trump and the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, came out hard against it on Wednesday.
The vote laid bare fault lines in Trump’s Republican Party that could surface again next year when they control the White House and both chambers of Congress.
Trump had pressured lawmakers to tie up loose ends before he takes office on January 20.
However, Democrats and some Republicans in the House refused to support a package that would increase spending and clear the way for a plan that would add trillions more to the federal government’s $36 trillion in debt.
A Republican Representative, Chip Roy, one of 38 Republicans who voted against the bill said, “I am absolutely sickened by a party that campaigns on fiscal responsibility and has the temerity to go to the American people and say you think this is fiscally responsible”.
U.S: Trump-backed spending deal fails in House as shutdown approaches
