Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news from Bloomberg World Headquarters in New York. I'm Doug Prisner with special coverage of the US House vote on a stopgap funding bill to avert a government shutdown. This bill has just been defeated after more than thirty Republicans voted against it. Government funding will now lapse Friday night without Congressional action. By the way, this bill did include a suspension of the federal debt limit for two years, and it did have the support
of President elect Trump. For a closer look, Now, let's bring in Bloomberg's Mike Dorning. He covers Congress for US from our bureau in Washington, DC. Mike, was this really a surprise the outcome here?
It wasn't at all a surprise. We've been expecting this since this deal was announced. They weren't able to get support from Democrats, and they weren't able to get support from conservative Republicans.
It was late yesterday, though, that President Electrump can out yet against It. Wasn't that after Elon Musk voiced his opinion.
Absolutely, you're right. Elon Musk just savaged the bill online all day long Wednesday, and then By the end of the day, Trump joined with him and came out against the bipartisan deal.
So what was the biggest sticking point here? Was it the suspension of the federal dead limit for two years?
Well, Trump wanted to suspend the debt limit because he didn't want to do it with him as president. He wanted to do it with Biden as president. And also that is often something where you have to give something up to Congress to get them to raise the debt limit, and he didn't want to do that. So that's why one of the reasons why a lot of Democrats didn't vote for it, and definitely a reason why the conservative Republicans voted against it. They most of them don't like raising the debt limit.
So government funding, as we know well, laps Friday night without congressional action. Where do we go from here.
Well, it's quite possible that they'll come up with some temporary patch to keep things going a little longer. That might be something that lasts into next year, but it might just be something that lasts a little while. It's also possible that a shutdown occurs. Right now, Speaker Johnson's going to go back into his office and huddle with Republicans and try to figure out their next step.
He was the negotiator of that earlier bipartisan agreement, and I was reading today that maybe his leadership is now in doubt. Is that a fact?
Well, this is definitely a failure by the speaker. The job of a congressional leader is to kind of figure out the parameters of what's acceptable, and he failed to have a sense or incorporate a sense of what Trump and Musk would tolerate. And as a result, either because he didn't think through that that they would go far as far as they did, or because maybe they've changed their minds along the way. As a result, this spell apart.
So is President elect Trump still in control? Does he have the upper hand on any deal that maybe worked out before that Friday night deadline?
He has the ability, probably in most instances, to scuttle a deal. So he essentially already has a veto power over congressional Republicans at least now.
One of the things that Musk was saying in his tweet about the earlier agreement was that he saw it as being a crime, in that anyone who voted in favor of it should be voted out of office in two years, do you think that Musk's influence over the process will remain as strong as it has been in the last twenty four hours.
He will remain influential over the process if he chooses to use that influence, because remember, he was the largest political donor in the United States this past year. He was also the richest man in the world. So if you have Donald Trump, the leader of the Republican Party and the richest man in the world, the biggest political donor against you in a Republican primary, that's a big problem for you. So you have to think twice before you defy them.
Speaking with Bloomberg's Mike Dorning there in response to the bill on stopgap funding to avert a government shutdown. It has been defeated after more than thirty Republicans voted against it, and now government funding will lapse Friday night without congressional action. So Mike, back to you. In terms of what the day will be like, Friday, will really be incumbent upon Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, to get leadership together,
to try to get people on the same page. First thing in the morning.
He'll probably be already working on this time now. Part of it is also maybe he's hoping that this will get Trump to believe it's not possible to do a dead limit increase this year, but he may not be able to persuade Trump at that. It might be that Trump would rather have a shutdown than forego a dead limit increase before he comes into office.
And we know where mister Musk is, particularly with this new committee sending up to look for more efficiencies in the way in which the US government operates? Doge I think as how it's being referred to, is there anything to suggest that Musk was trying to make a point in sabotaging this bill.
I think one of the things he did want to show is that he's serious about cutting back what he considers to be wasteful spending and show that the members of Congress that he has some power to get them to cut back spending. Because remember, his group is just like an advisory group, It doesn't really have any power. His power is twofold. His power is because he's one of Trump's key advisors and he can influence the president. And his power is because of his money and his
social media platform. So he was using both of those leavers of power to gain concessions on this.
So, as we know, government funding will lapse at twelve oh one a m. Saturday. Is there a risk that we could get a partial government shutdown first thing in the morning on Saturday.
There's definitely a risk, a high risk that will have a government shut down first thing in the morning Saturday. Now it's also possible that they come up with something and you know, if they missed them Friday night at midnight deadline, and you know, the government's formally, you know, officially shut down for a few hours or for Saturday and Sunday, is probably not going to have a big
effect on the country. The bigger thing that would have an effect is a drawn out shutdown in which non essential government services would stop and none of the employees would be paid.
Mike will leave it there, Thank you so much, Bloomberg's Mike Dorning. He covers Congress for us here on Bloomberg Just to recap, the stopgap funding bill to avert a government shutdown has been defeated. We'll have more on this throughout the night here on Bloomberg Radio.