The US Congress is working hard to avoid a shutdown after Trump’s demand was turned down

The U.S. Congress was working hard to keep the government from shutting down on Friday, just hours after more than 30 Republicans turned down President-elect Donald Trump’s request to use the measure to raise the debt ceiling.

A funding deadline of midnight Friday (0500 GMT Saturday) was drawing up a plan that could pass both the House of Representatives, which is mostly made up of Republicans, and the Senate, which is mostly made up of Democrats.

“We have a plan,” Johnson told reporters on Friday at the Capitol. “We’re expecting votes this morning.”

Trump asked conservative Republicans to raise the debt limit, but they said no on Thursday. Increasing the debt limit could add trillions more to the government’s $36 trillion debt.

Before he takes office in one month, Trump stepped up his rhetoric overnight. He now wants to suspend the U.S. debt cap for five years, even though some members of his party’s right wing were against a two-year extension earlier.

“Congress needs to get rid of the silly Debt Ceiling or maybe make it last until 2029.” “We should never make a deal without this,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media account just after midnight.
A deal between Democrats and Republicans was scrapped after Trump and Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, spoke out against it on Wednesday. A quickly changed option that Trump backed then lost by a vote of 174 to 235 Thursday night.

The revised bill would have kept the government budget at its current level of about $6.2 trillion until March and given $100 billion to help people affected by disasters. However, it dropped some measures that were meant to make Democrats happy. For the next four weeks, Democrats will still be in charge of the U.S. Senate and the White House.

The White House said that President Joe Biden was against the new version of the bill.
Fights over the debt ceiling in the past have scared the financial markets because a failure by the U.S. government would cause credit shocks all over the world. The limit has been put on hold because of a deal that officially ends on January 1. However, politicians probably wouldn’t have had to deal with the problem until the spring.