Vice President-elect JD Vance met with Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans on Thursday night, hours after the spending deal failed in the House of Representatives.
Vance was in Johnson’s office along with a handful of Republican lawmakers to discuss government funding and Friday’s looming shutdown deadline. It’s unclear as of Friday morning what Republicans will do or if a shutdown is inevitable.
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When Vance was walking down the hallway, a reporter asked, “Mr. Vance, will you accept any deal that does not include a debt limit increase?”
Vance shot back, “Look, I’ll say one thing. The Democrats just voted to shut down the government, even though we had a clean CR, because they didn’t want to give the president negotiating leverage during his first term — during the first year of his new term. And number two, because they would rather shut down the government and fight for global censorship bullsh*t. They’ve asked for a shutdown and I think that’s exactly what they’re going to.”
Vance walked away as several reporters continued to shout questions at him about the spending bill and what Republicans were planning to do next.
On Thursday night, President-elect Donald Trump’s bill to prevent a partial government shutdown was not approved by the House of Representatives.
With the deadline at the end of Friday, Congress is approaching the prospect of a partial shutdown.
The bill did not even receive a majority in the House, even though it required two-thirds of the body to pass. 38 Republicans defied Trump and voted against the plan, while two Democrats joined most Republicans in supporting it.
The bill failed by a vote of 174 to 235.
It follows two days of mayhem in Congress as members squabbled over how to proceed with federal spending, a battle that Trump and his allies Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk joined.
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In the meantime, the national deficit is more than $1.8 trillion, and the national debt has increased to more than $36 trillion.
After GOP hardliners led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy rebelled against an early bipartisan agreement that would have delayed the federal funding deadline until March 14 and contained several irrelevant policy riders, the legislation was hurriedly crafted on Thursday.
Although the 116-page bill is far shorter than its 1,547-page predecessor, the new pact nonetheless contains a number of important issues unrelated to maintaining government operations.
The latest version of the agreement, which Trump had campaigned for, suspended the debt ceiling and extended the federal funding deadline to March 14.
It suggested delaying that battle until after the 2026 Congressional midterm elections while maintaining the debt limit for two years, until January 2027.
Along with a measure to pay for the reconstruction of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, which was struck by a barge earlier this year, the revised package also contained almost $110 billion in disaster relief funds for Americans impacted by storms Milton and Helene.
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The first salary increase for congressional lawmakers since 2009 and a plan to revitalize RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., were left out of the second-round measure.
Additionally, the revised bill’s language was substantially condensed, reducing from 1,547 pages to just 116.
“All Republicans, and even the Democrats, should do what is best for our Country, and vote ‘YES’ for this Bill, TONIGHT!” Trump posted on Truth Social.
However, before the legislative language was even made public, the bill encountered opposition.
During their closed-door conference meeting on Thursday night to discuss the plan, Democrats yelled “Hell no” in rage at Johnson for breaking their initial bipartisan agreement.
