Republicans Kill Their Own Government Funding Deal as Shutdown Looms

Debate grew so heated ahead of the vote that the lawmaker presiding over the House broke his gavel when trying to bring the chamber to order.

AP/J. Scott Applewhite
Speaker Johnson at the Capitol, December 17, 2024. AP/J. Scott Applewhite

Republicans are headed back to square one with their government funding bill after the GOP sank their own legislation on Thursday night, with more than three dozen members turning against their party due to the lack of serious spending cuts and a lengthy extension of the debt ceiling. The government will shut down at the end of the day on Friday if no deal is reached. 

On Thursday, the House voted to kill Speaker Johnson’s funding plan, with 174 members voting yes and 235 members voting no. Among Republicans, 38 members voted no, while just two Democrats voted yes. One Democrat voted present. 

The new bill was unveiled just 90 minutes before debate began on Thursday, and many Republicans were quick to say that they would not support the plan. The provisions that most rankled conservative members included a two-year extension of the debt limit, and more than $100 billion in aid to hurricane victims and farmers, none of which was paid for with offset cuts to other programs. The original bipartisan agreement included legislation to crack down on those Americans who invest in China, a stadium land transfer that cost zero dollars, and money for childhood cancer research — all of which were scrapped. 

One of the Republican opponents of the bill, Congressman Chip Roy, delivered a barnburner speech on the House floor, screaming at his own GOP colleagues for failing to live up to their promises of being fiscally conservative. 

“I am absolutely sickened by a party that campaigns on fiscal responsibility and has the temerity to go forward to the American people and say you think this is fiscally responsible. It is absolutely ridiculous,” Mr. Roy yelled while shaking his finger at the Republican side of the aisle. “It’s asinine!”

The Democrats’ top appropriator, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, gave an impassioned speech on the floor asking her Republican colleagues to stick to the bipartisan deal that they negotiated over the course of the last several weeks. 

“The American public has been clamoring for this body to work together — Democrats and Republicans … to do what is in the best interest of the American people,” Ms. DeLauro said. “There are those in this body that don’t know how to govern and don’t care about governing!” she exclaimed to applause from the Democratic side. 

Earlier, during the debate on the floor, Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna — who has never voted for a continuing resolution during her two years in Congress — urged her Democratic colleagues to do so on Thursday. When the Democrats began booing and Ms. Luna began shouting back at them to be quiet, the presiding lawmaker, Congressman Marc Molinaro, slammed the gavel so hard on the speaker’s rostrum that it broke. 

Ms. DeLauro said on the floor that the chaos has been introduced “at behest of the world’s richest man,” referring to Elon Musk’s public pressure campaign to kill Mr. Johnson’s bipartisan deal with Democrats and the Senate. President Trump, Mr. Musk, and other allies urged Republicans to support the deal, though it seemed to have little impact. 


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