WASHINGTON — Congress struck an 11th-hour deal to avert a government shutdown during the holidays, but in the process, it lengthened an already extensive to-do list for the first year of President-elect Donald Trump’s return to office.
The funding bill keeps the government open until March 14. Even though Republicans will control the White House, the House and the Senate, they’ll again need Democratic votes to stop a shutdown in less than three months.
In addition, Trump’s demand that Congress extend or abolish the debt ceiling to take it off his plate next year failed dramatically. On Wednesday, he threatened electoral primary challenges against “any Republican” who voted to fund the government without dealing with the debt limit. On Friday, 170 House Republicans defied him and did just that.
The turmoil of the week previews the legislative chaos that awaits Washington in the second Trump administration when the incoming president faces a wide range of major deadlines and ambitions.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said Republicans made a mistake by punting funding to March 14, and instead should have approved a stopgap bill through the end of next September to clear their plate for Trump’s agenda.
“I think it’s kind of stupid,” he said of the new deadline. “Don’t ask me to explain or defend this dysfunction.”
Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., said late Friday that the “lesson” of the last few days is: “Unity is our strength. Disunity is the enemy of the conservative cause.”
He advised Trump and his team to avoid such a situation in the future by presenting legislative demands “early” so the GOP can “air out whatever differences there are” well before a deadline.
“The House needs to over-communicate within our various factions,” Barr said. “The House needs to over-communicate with [incoming Senate] Majority Leader [John] Thune, and House and the Senate both need to over-communicate with the administration.”
In the last four days, the communication was particularly poor. A day after Speaker Mike Johnson released an initial bipartisan deal, Trump and his billionaire confidant Elon Musk blew it up. The speaker went through three additional iterations of his plan to prevent a shutdown, ultimately succeeding after nixing Trump’s most consequential — and last-minute — demand.
“I’m concerned,” said Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., who faces re-election in 2026. “Obviously, we’ve seen this kind of chaos for the last two years. So I would fully expect we’ll see that continue in the next two years and probably get even worse.”
On Thursday night, Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., downplayed what he called a “disjointed process,” saying it’s a natural way for House Republicans and Trump’s team to understand “how to communicate with each other.”
“It’s going to be awesome. You know why it’s going to be awesome? Because now we know how to work together,” Van Orden said just before Speaker Johnson’s Plan B went down in flames in the House.
Van Orden’s fellow Wisconsinite, Sen. Johnson, was less bullish about smoothly plowing through the early part of the 2025 agenda.
“We got a big mess on our hands, no doubt about it,” Johnson said. “That’s why I’m trying to underpromise and hopefully over-deliver.”
In addition to another government funding deadline and a debt limit that must be addressed by mid-2025 to avert a calamitous default, Trump and Republicans need to confirm his personnel through the Senate, and they want to pass major party-line bills to beef up immigration enforcement and extend his expiring 2017 tax law.
“It’s not going to be boring,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, deadpanned when asked about the tasks facing Congress next year.
There’s also the question of Musk’s role after his part in scuttling the original bipartisan funding deal raised hackles across Capitol Hill.
“A lot of people on both sides of the aisle are deeply disturbed by a billionaire threatening people if they don’t vote the right way,” Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., said.
The tumult of the last week “foretells something very ominous about next year,” Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., said after the House vote, noting that the Republican majority in the lower chamber will be even smaller next year.
“I think we’re in for a lot of turbulence on the Republican side of the House because of the instability and chaos and disruption that Trump embraces,” Connolly said.
He also wondered whether Republicans will be able to elect a speaker on Jan. 3 with a wafer-thin majority; it took 15 rounds of voting to elect a speaker at the beginning of the last Congress and some hard-right Republicans are wobbly on Speaker Johnson after his handling of the shutdown threat this week.
“So I leave very unsettled tonight in terms of what we just experienced,” Connolly said before the House adjourned for the holidays. “I think it’s very ominous, and it is portentous.”
