Government shutdown looms after House conservatives revolt over GOP-backed spending bill

Washington — House Speaker Mike Johnson scrapped a last-minute measure to avoid a government shutdown late Wednesday after facing opposition from fellow Republicans — including President-elect Donald Trump — who objected to billions of dollars in spending that had been added to the bill.

Lawmakers are facing a Friday deadline to approve new spending. The measure released Tuesday would have extended funding through March 14, but it also included disaster aid, health care policy extenders and a pay raise for members of Congress, among other provisions. The disaster relief portion of the bill alone carried a price tag of more than $100 billion.  

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, confirmed that the stopgap funding measure is dead and that the path forward is unclear. 

“There’s no new agreement right now,” Scalise said on Capitol Hill after a flurry of activity Wednesday evening.

In a statement hours earlier, Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance criticized Johnson’s approach and said Republicans should pass “a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t give Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want.” They also called for House Republicans to increase the debt ceiling, which limits how much the government can borrow to pay its bills. 

“Republicans want to support our farmers, pay for disaster relief, and set our country up for success in 2025. The only way to do that is with a temporary funding bill WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS combined with an increase in the debt ceiling,” they said. “Anything else is a betrayal of our country.”

The debt ceiling has not been a part of these negotiations, and Republicans typically oppose increasing it. Trump’s decision to inject the issue into shutdown talks added a new dimension to the legislative fight with just two days to go before funding lapses.

“Increasing the debt ceiling is not great but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch,” Trump and Vance wrote. “If Democrats won’t cooperate on the debt ceiling now, what makes anyone think they would do it in June during our administration? Let’s have this debate now.” Under legislation passed in June 2023, the debt ceiling was suspended until the first quarter of 2025.

Republicans turned against the funding plan after a barrage of social media posts by Trump ally Elon Musk lambasting it throughout the day Wednesday.

At the U.S. Capitol, Vance did not answer when asked if he and Trump supported a shutdown.

The Office of Management and Budget told federal agencies to start communicating with employees about shutdown procedures starting at 10am tomorrow, sources familiar told CBS News late Wednesday.

Last Friday, the agencies were told to have their shutdown preparations in order and ready to go. 

The continuing resolution

When it was unveiled on Tuesday, the spending legislation immediately sparked anger from multiple members of the House Republican conference, mostly targeted at Johnson. While the speaker had pledged to avoid the kind of massive, end-of-year spending bills that conservatives loathe, the final product resembled a scaled-down version of what the party’s right flank has railed against for years now.

But the Republicans’ slim majority in the House means Johnson would have needed Democratic votes to pass the bill, a dynamic that gave the minority more leverage to extract concessions during negotiations. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries hinted at Democrats’ influence amid reports that Johnson could scale back the bill, writing in a post on X: “You break the bipartisan agreement, you own the consequences that follow.”

“Republicans have now unilaterally decided to break a bipartisan agreement that they made,” Jeffries, a New York Democrat, told reporters Wednesday night. “House Republicans will now own any harm that is visited upon the American people that results from a government shutdown or worse. An agreement is an agreement. It was bipartisan. And there is nothing more to say.” 

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also called on Republicans to “keep their word.” 

“Republicans need to stop playing politics with this bipartisan agreement or they will hurt hardworking Americans and create instability across the country,” she said in statement. 

Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, acknowledged that the bill was intended to be “very skinny” before a “couple of intervening things” occurred, citing the devastation left by hurricanes earlier this year. 

Before the text of the bill was released, Johnson dismissed Republican concerns that the continuing resolution was equivalent to an “omnibus” bill, a term used when Congress packages the annual appropriations bills that fund many federal government agencies into one large piece of legislation.

“This is not an omnibus, OK?” Johnson said at his weekly news conference on Tuesday. “This is a small [continuing resolution] that we had to add things to that were out of our control. These are not man-made disasters. These are things that the federal government has an appropriate role to do.” 

Johnson had also vowed to give members 72 hours to read the bill before a vote, but lawmakers said they were expecting a vote as soon as Wednesday, which would give them less than 24 hours to get through the nearly 1,550-page text. The path forward was cast into doubt by Trump’s statement, with speculation growing that Johnson would scrap the original version of the bill and bring up a narrower funding extension that includes disaster relief. 

Rep. Eric Burlison, a Missouri Republican, on Tuesday called the process “a total dumpster fire.” He said he was “disappointed” in Johnson and called on him to “communicate better.” Other members, like Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, have dubbed the bill the “Cramnibus.” Rep. Kat Cammack, a Florida Republican, said the measure was “a band-aid that is laced with fentanyl.” 

“There’s a certain sandwich that’s made of feces, and that’s what I would compare this to,” said Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, also of Florida. She argued that pairing disaster relief with the measure puts members in a tough spot. “This is a s**t sandwich. I don’t know how else to say that we’re being forced into this position.” 

The fight could prompt a challenge to Johnson’s speakership when the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, said Wednesday that he won’t support Johnson in the speaker’s election.

“I’m not voting for him,” Massie said. “This solidifies it.” 

Massie said he’s spoken with other members who have a similar stance. 

Johnson ran into a buzzsaw of opposition outside the House as well. Musk, the co-head of Trump’s advisory Department of Government Efficiency, said in a post on X that any lawmaker “who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years.” Musk posted dozens of times throughout the day calling for lawmakers to oppose the bill, which he called “criminal.”

The speaker told Fox News earlier in the day that he had discussed the situation with Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the other DOGE co-head, on Tuesday evening. Johnson said he emphasized to them that passing a continuing resolution now would be “clearing the decks” and allow the incoming GOP majorities to “put our fingerprints on the spending” in March. 

Both Musk and Ramaswamy came out strongly against the bill anyway.

Jaala Brown,

Cristina Corujo,

Ellis Kim and

Caitlin Huey-Burns

contributed to this report.