WASHINGTON — The Senate passed a bill early Saturday morning that will avert a costly government shutdown by keeping it operating into March and provide more than $100 billion in disaster aid for storm-wracked states across the country.
The 85-11 vote on the legislation followed days of chaos in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, which struggled to reach agreement on a spending bill after objections to certain provisions from President-elect Donald Trump and mega-billionaire Elon Musk.
In the end, Democrats denied Trump a key priority: a hike in the government’s borrowing authority that he demanded to make life easier for himself as he prepares to pass another round of costly tax cuts during his second term in the White House. Trump even threatened to find primary election challengers for GOP lawmakers who opposed hiking the debt ceiling but was rebuffed by the overwhelming majority of his party.
Trump stayed quiet as the Republican yea votes in the House ― 170 of them ― rolled in on Friday and was reportedly unhappy the bill didn’t contain his main demand, according to Semafor’s Burgess Everett.
“The president has been very vocal about what he wants. He wants a debt limit, he wants it done before he gets into office … and the first thing he’s asked us to do, we are not able to deliver. That’s a problem,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), a top Trump ally, told HuffPost.
But Democrats didn’t get everything they wanted, either.
Republican lawmakers, under pressure from Musk and his army of supporters on social media, stripped from the bill several provisions that had bipartisan support, including prescription drug reforms, pay hikes for members of Congress, expanded restrictions on U.S. investments in China and legislation that would crack down on revenge porn and hidden resort fees.
“Though this bill does not include everything Democrats fought for, there are major victories in this bill for American families — provide emergency aid for communities battered by natural disasters, no debt ceiling, and it will keep the government open with no draconian cuts,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement on Friday.
ALLISON ROBBERT/AFP via Getty Images
The bill now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk. The White House said he would sign it into law.
Musk also celebrated the bill’s passage on X, his social media platform, crediting House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for paring down the size and cost of the bill substantially.
“The Speaker did a good job here, given the circumstances. It went from a bill that weighed pounds to a bill that weighed ounces,” he wrote in one post.
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Democrats, meanwhile, vowed to take up the jettisoned provisions in the next government funding bill in March. They also accused Republicans of kowtowing to Musk by killing a bipartisan provision that could limit his businesses’ ability to operate in China. As the CEO of Tesla, Musk has extensive business connections to China, and his business has a major manufacturing plant in Shanghai.
“It’s interesting that there were a bunch of provisions that would have impacted corporations’ bottom lines and billionaires’ bottom lines that didn’t make it into the final bill,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said. “I kind of think that’s going to be the story in 2025, is that billionaires are going to decide what Republicans support and what they don’t.”