Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) urged his House colleagues to reach an end-of-the-year spending agreement ahead of midnight Friday after Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) plan B deal failed the night before.
“Everybody around here is always, ‘Oh, woe is me.’ … The reality is, we need to get this done. It will be exceptionally stupid if we don’t get this done. And I always believe the cooler heads will prevail and that we will actually do our job around here,” Johnson said Friday on CNN.
A bipartisan continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government funded past Friday’s deadline and into the new year went down in flames earlier this week after it came under criticism from allies of the incoming president, including Elon Musk and eventually President-elect Trump himself.
Musk, who’s set to head the newly made “Department of Government Efficiency” alongside Vivek Ramaswamy flooded his social platform X with misinformation about the deal, Wednesday, calling on Republicans to reject it.
Trump on Wednesday also demanded a debt ceiling be paired with the stopgap bill, issuing a joint statement with Vice President-elect JD Vance saying that while the Republican Party wants disaster aid and support for farmers — issues tackled in the temporary funding proposal — he also wants Congress to pass a “streamlined spending bill” that doesn’t give Democrats “everything they want” and has “an increase in the debt ceiling.”
Trump later backed Speaker Johnson’s plan B agreement, but 38 House Republicans and all but two Democrats voted against it Thursday evening, defeating it and raising the odds of a government shutdown.
“If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration, not after January 20th, under ‘TRUMP,’” Trump posted Friday on Truth Social.
The Speaker said Friday morning that a plan C had been reached and would be voted on later in the day.
“Yeah, yeah, we have a plan,” Mike Johnson said as he entered the Capitol. “We’re expecting votes this morning, so you all stay tuned. We’ve got a plan.”
On CNN, Dusty Johnson praised the Louisiana Republican and said “there’s a disagreement about tactics right now, but ultimately, all of the Republicans want to do all the same things.”
“I would say that the closer you get to understanding the very difficult situation Mike Johnson was in, the more you appreciate what an incredible job he has done,” he said.
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