Government could shut down this weekend

The federal government will partially shut down on Saturday at 12:01 a.m. ET, unless Congress passes a spending bill and sends it to President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature today.

If Congress can’t agree on a new measure, federal employees will be sidelined, except for essential workers like air traffic controllers, TSA, etc. They will continue to work without pay.

The week so far
President-elect Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk condemned a three-month spending package that GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled on Tuesday. They wanted Congress to pass a “streamlined bill” that doesn’t give Democrats “everything they want.” The former president said he would only endorse a bill that would raise or eliminate the debt ceiling. It is the limit lawmakers set that determines how much the federal government can borrow to pay its creditors. It doesn’t authorize any new spending.

Then yesterday, Trump and Musk backed a slimmed-down version of the bill to avoid a shutdown. It would provide $110 billion in disaster aid and suspend the debt ceiling for two years. However, the deal failed in the House after some Republicans and all Democrats opposed it.

Hours after the bill failed, Trump posted on Truth Social, “Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling. Without this, we should never make a deal.”