President-elect Donald Trump sounded off against House Speaker Mike Johnson’s spending bill.
The government is set to shut down on December 21 without a continuing resolution to fund it, so Johnson and the Republican-controlled House are rushing to pass one. The bill would provide government funding through March 14 and is nearly 1,500 pages long.
Johnson’s idea has drawn criticism from certain Republican hardliners, while billionaire take-haver Elon Musk has responded by calling the measure an “insane crime against the American people.”
CNN reported late on Wednesday that Trump has been complaining about the continuing resolution in private, perhaps hoping that Johnson would make several changes to the bill.
“We just got some brand new reporting from our Kaitlan Collins on Trump’s thoughts on this spending bill that is on Capitol Hill right now that seems to be quite in peril,” Jake Tapper said on “The Lead.”
CNN reporter Lauren Fox relayed that Collins had been told that Trump had called the legislation a “bad” bill.”
Moments after CNN’s report, Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance publicly came out against the measure:
A statement from President Donald J. Trump and Vice President-Elect JD Vance:
The most foolish and inept thing ever done by Congressional Republicans was allowing our country to hit the debt ceiling in 2025. It was a mistake and is now something that must be addressed.
Meanwhile, Congress is considering a spending bill that would give sweetheart provisions for government censors and for Liz Cheney. The bill would make it easier to hide the records of the corrupt January 6 committee—which accomplished nothing for the American people and hid security failures that happened that day. This bill would also give Congress a pay increase while many Americans are struggling this Christmas.
Increasing the debt ceiling is not great but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch. If Democrats won’t cooperate on the debt ceiling now, what makes anyone think they would do it in June during our administration? Let’s have this debate now. And we should pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t give Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want.
Republicans want to support our farmers, pay for disaster relief, and set our country up for success in 2025. The only way to do that is with a temporary funding bill WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS combined with an increase in the debt ceiling. Anything else is a betrayal of our country.
Republicans must GET SMART and TOUGH. If Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, then CALL THEIR BLUFF. It is Schumer and Biden who are holding up aid to our farmers and disaster relief.
THIS CHAOS WOULD NOT BE HAPPENING IF WE HAD A REAL PRESIDENT. WE WILL IN 32 DAYS!
Speaker Johnson responded on Wednesday morning to the massive outcry from conservatives over the looming spending bill.
During an interview on Fox & Friends, Johnson discussed the disagreement over the House spending bill and argued that it would only fund the government until March.
Then, he argued, Republicans could decide on fiscal year 2025 spending when Trump is in the White House and Republicans control the U.S. Senate.
“This is the sausage making process, OK? Here’s — here’s what this bill entails. It’s a short-term funding extension until March 14. And that would have been an easy thing relatively to pass. But here’s what happened. We also had to add due to circumstances outside of any of our control emergency funding. We have two major emergencies. We had a record historic hurricane season that we all know, Helene and Milton and the rest that destroyed a big swath of the country,” Johnson began.
“We have to have funding for that. That’s a hundred billion dollars to rebuild six states. And then on top of that, we have our farmers, our small farmers and ranchers, our food producers in this country are in jeopardy of going under permanently. They’ve had three lost years in a row, primarily because of ‘’Bidenomics’’ and inflation and lots of other factors outside their control,” he added.
“So for the first time since I’ve been in Congress, guys, in 8 years, it’s not just farmers and ranchers urgently needing the help. We now have the creditors, the lenders, the banks who give them those loans who are saying we have to have a stopgap measure. So when you add those things in, here’s the other thing to remember. Our Democrat colleagues who have to vote on all this, they don’t prioritize agriculture. They don’t — they don’t really care that much about farmers and ranchers because they’re in rural red districts, right?” Johnson continued.
Johnson concluded: “But that’s our food supply. If we crush domestic food supply, that is a direct threat to national security. We need all those small farmers and ranchers. And that’s included in the bill as well.”
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