WASHINGTON — After days of threats and demands, Donald Trump had little to show for it once lawmakers passed a budget deal in the early hours of Saturday, narrowly averting a pre-Christmas government shutdown.
The president-elect successfully pushed House Republicans to jettison some spending, but he failed to achieve his central goal of raising the debt limit. It demonstrated that despite his decisive election victory and frequent promises of retribution, many members of his party are still willing to openly defy him.
Trump’s decision to inject himself into the budget debate a month before his inauguration also showed that he remains more adept at blowing up deals than making them, and it foreshadowed that his second term will likely be marked by the same infighting, chaos and brinksmanship that characterized his first.
“Stay tuned. Buckle up. Strap in,” said Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., a senior appropriator.
A glance at Trump’s agenda shows a cascade of opportunities for similar showdowns in the years to come. He wants to extend tax cuts that he signed into law seven years ago, slash the size of government, increase tariffs on imports and crack down on illegal immigrants. Many of those efforts will need congressional buy-in.
For many of Trump’s supporters, disruption could be its own goal. Thirty-seven percent of those who voted for him this year said they wanted “complete and total upheaval,” according to AP VoteCast, a broad survey of more than 120,000 voters. An additional 56% said they wanted “substantial change.”
But the past few days made clear the difficulty Trump could face in quickly fulfilling his goals, especially with Republicans holding only thin majorities in the House and the Senate. Some lawmakers already seem weary of the apparent lack of a unified strategy.
Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said the budget battle was “a valuable lesson in how to get our act together.”
“There are no layups and it gets more complicated,” he said.
How Trump’s demands fell flat
The trouble started when top lawmakers released a copy of the bill, known as a continuing resolution, that was required to keep the federal government functioning until March. It wasn’t the president-elect but Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a Trump confidant, who first began whipping up opposition to the legislation on social media by calling it excessive spending.
Trump eventually waded into the fight. He ordered Republicans to cancel the bipartisan deal they had made with Democrats. And he demanded they increase the debt limit — the cap on how much the government can borrow — in hopes of preventing that thorny issue from coming up while he is in charge of the government.
He ratcheted up the pressure even as his demands shifted. First he wanted to eliminate the debt limit altogether. Then he wanted to suspend it until 2027. Then he floated an extension until 2029.
If there was a shutdown, Democratic President Joe Biden would take the blame, Trump insisted.
“All Republicans, and even the Democrats, should do what is best for our Country, and vote “YES” for this Bill, TONIGHT!” Trump wrote Thursday, before a vote on a version of the bill that included a higher debt limit.
Instead, 38 Republicans voted no. It was a stunning brush-off to Trump, whose power over his party has at times seemed near-absolute.
“Without this, we should never make a deal,” he wrote on Truth Social, his social media site.
If he didn’t get what he wanted, Trump said, there should be a government shutdown. He also said members of his own party would face primary challenges if they refused to go along, saying “Republican obstructionists have to be done away with.” He singled out Rep. Chip Roy of Texas by name and with insults.
But in the end, lawmakers left out that debt ceiling increase, and a final deal passed early Saturday.
Musk and other Trump allies tried to frame it as a win because the final legislation was significantly slimmed down and omitted unpopular items such as a pay raise for members of Congress. Charlie Kirk, the prominent conservative activist, wrote on X that Trump “is already running Congress before he takes office!”
