Congress avoids a holiday shutdown: Winners and losers

Lawmakers came together to fund the government on Friday, keeping the lights on in Washington until early next year and preventing a Christmas season shutdown.

The package — crafted by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) — funds the government at current levels through March 14, extends the farm bill for one year and appropriates billions of dollars in disaster relief and assistance for farmers.

The legislation came together after a chaotic week that featured four different spending proposals, influence from President-elect Trump and his close ally, Elon Musk, and questions about Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) future in the top job.

Here are the winners and losers from the shutdown showdown.

WINNERS 

Elon Musk

Elon Musk flexed his muscles on Capitol Hill this week, proving that he has significant influence in the House GOP conference.

The billionaire businessman and close Trump ally came out against Johnson’s initial spending plan — which was bipartisan and bicameral — prompting a flood of Republicans to follow suit. The proposal never made it to the floor for a vote amid the widespread opposition.

When Johnson’s grip on the gavel appeared to be losing its strength, some GOP lawmakers floated Musk as a potential Speaker — a longshot prospect but one that underscored their admiration for the SpaceX and Tesla CEO, and discontent with Johnson’s leadership. A House Speaker is not required to actually be a member of the House.

“I’d be open to supporting @elonmusk for Speaker of the House,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) wrote on X, the platform Musk owns.

Even Johnson jokingly nodded to those suggestions in his remarks following the passage of the funding package, telling reporters that he joked with Musk about giving him the gavel.

“Elon Musk and I talked about an hour ago and we talked about the extraordinary challenges of this job. And I said hey, you want to be Speaker of the House? I don’t know. He said this may be the hardest job in the world, I think it is,” Johnson said.

Musk is poised to be a familiar name — and face — on Capitol Hill in the coming years after Trump put him, alongside Vivek Ramaswamy, in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), which is focused on slashing federal spending and cutting the size of government. Republicans have since launched similar groups on Capitol Hill.

Federal employees

Federal workers can breathe a sigh of relief with the passage of the recent stopgap, taking the threat of mass furloughs off the table for a few months.

Congress hasn’t seen a shutdown in roughly six years. During the last one, in 2018 and 2019, thousands of federal workers were furloughed or experienced disruptions in pay. 

Because Congress had already passed some of its full-year funding bills at the time, Congress had only entered a partial government shutdown. The partial lapse, which occurred during the Trump administration, was the longest shutdown in modern history. 

Farmers

The bill included $10 billion in economic assistance for farmers, after some Republicans had threatened to vote against the stopgap without the additional aid. 

The bill also included a one-year extension of the 2018 farm bill, as Congress has failed again to pass a longer extension. Some Republicans were also upset about language they said would have allowed year-round E15 ethanol sales being stripped from the final product.

Disaster aid

The bill included roughly $100 billion in disaster aid after leadership in both chambers faced increased pressure for relief in the aftermath of hurricanes Helene and Milton. 

A big chunk of those dollars, or roughly $30 billion, will go toward the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund, as officials had warned of dwindling funds during hurricane season. 

The bill also includes funding for the Small Business Administration after the White House said its disaster loan program had also run out of money back in October.  

IN-BETWEEN

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.)

Jeffries from the start said he did not want a debt ceiling hike to be included in the government funding negotiations despite Trump’s demand — and after days of GOP deliberations, he got his wish.

When Johnson put a package on the floor that included a two-year increase in the borrowing limit, Jeffries said “hell no,” and all but two members of his caucus followed suit.

Then, after the Speaker rolled out his final spending proposal, the minority leader huddled with his caucus to examine the legislation, later calling it a win for Democrats — in-part because of the absence of a debt limit hike.

“House Democrats have successfully stopped the billionaire boys club, which wanted a $4 trillion blank check by suspending the debt ceiling in order to enable them to cut Social Security, cut Medicare and cut nutritional assistance while providing massive tax breaks for the wealthy, the well-off and the well-connected,” Jeffries said after the vote.

By supporting Johnson’s final proposal, however, Jeffries allowed dozens of Democratic-favored provisions included in the initial package to be left on the cutting room floor, including language pertaining to prescription drugs, funding for child cancer research and pandemic preparedness and response programs.

Those provisions amounted to hundreds of pages of legislative text and are unlikely to clear the chambers over the next two years of unified GOP control in Washington.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, hammered away at the ultimate package on the House floor.

“This is the group that constructed the deal on behalf of the American public,” DeLauro said, naming the bipartisan and bicameral lawmakers who helped negotiate the initial package. “And those services are now being shortchanged.”

Chip Roy (R-Texas)

Roy saw his profile further rise during the shutdown showdown — but it came with a price.

The vocal Freedom Caucus member became the face of the opposition to Trump’s effort to raise the borrowing limit because it was not attached to spending cuts. When Johnson put a bill on the floor that included a two-year debt ceiling hike without spending cuts, Roy railed against the measure on the floor — after DeLauro, a Democrat, yielded him time to talk in opposition.

“I am absolutely sickened by a party that campaigns on fiscal responsibility and has the temerity to go forward to the American people and say you think this is fiscally responsible,” Roy said. “It is absolutely ridiculous.”

Roy’s position did not go unnoticed in Trump world. Amid the government funding negotiations, Trump took to Truth Social and called for a primary challenger to take on Roy, re-upping the rivalry between the two that broke out after the congressman endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the GOP presidential primary. Trump did the same back in 2013, but levied the call after the filing deadline.

“I hope some talented challengers are getting ready in the Great State of Texas to go after Chip in the Primary,” Trump wrote. “He won’t have a chance!”

In a separate Truth Social post, Trump called Roy “unpopular” and said he was “getting in the way, as usual, of having yet another Great Republican Victory - All for the sake of some cheap publicity for himself.”

Roy, for his part, brushed off the offensive, writing on X “No apologies” and tagging the president-elect’s account.

“My position is simple - I am not going to raise or suspend the debt ceiling (racking up more debt) without significant & real spending cuts attached to it. I’ve been negotiating to that end. No apologies,” he wrote.

LOSERS: 

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.)

Johnson averted a shutdown, allowing federal agencies to remain open, letting lawmakers return home for the holidays, and officially capping off business for the 118th Congress.

But in doing so he angered Republicans across the House GOP conference — especially hardline conservatives — and Trump, spelling trouble for his chances of keeping hold of the gavel during the Jan. 3 Speaker election on the floor.

Thirty-four GOP lawmakers voted against Johnson’s final spending proposal, and 38 opposed the one brought to the floor before that, a sizable show of opposition to a pair of plans crafted by the Speaker. With the funding fight in the rearview mirror, some Republicans are starting to reassess their support for Johnson — and they could potentially join Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) in opposing him on the floor next month.

“I am now undecided on what House leadership should look like in the 119th Congress,” Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus who opposed both measures, wrote on X after the vote.

Trump, meanwhile, has not yet commented on Johnson’s final spending deal, but it did exclude the president-elect’s main demand — a debt limit hike — a fact that could draw ire from the president-elect. Instead, Republicans entered into an agreement to increase the borrowing limit by $1.5 trillion in exchange for $2.5 trillion in net cuts to spending, done through a reconciliation package in the next Congress

Johnson, for his part, has expressed confidence in his chances of hanging on to the gavel, telling reporters on Friday he believes he will be re-elected to the top job on the first ballot next year.

PBM advocates

Members on both sides have lamented the loss of bipartisan proposals for pharmaceutical benefit manager (PBM) industry reforms.

Incoming House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) told reporters on Friday that it was “a shame” the reforms were scrapped, but vowed to work on stand-alone health legislation in the next Congress.

City of DC

Language was stripped from the final plan that would have transferred administrative jurisdiction of RFK Stadium over to the District of Columbia, paving the way for the Washington Commanders to potentially move their stadium from Landover, Md., to the nation’s capital.

The language had originally been included in the initial bipartisan funding package unveiled early this week, but the deal was taken out after misinformation elevated by Elon Musk on social media that falsely said the bill included $3 billion for an NFL stadium in D.C.

President Biden

President Biden is ending his term with another shutdown averted, even after Trump suggested he would be okay with a funding lapse under the president’s watch.

He also saw much of his disaster relief request fulfilled. The president previously asked for roughly $100 billion in disaster relief in November, a request that was later updated to roughly $115 billion. The final bill approved on Friday landed close to the initial request, despite calls from hardline conservatives for the ask to be rejected without offsets.

But despite those victories, Biden faced enormous flack for remaining out of the public eye during the funding negotiations.

Reporters pressed White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about why Biden had not made any public statements about the shutdown, which she responded to by saying he was following “strategy” utilized in the past.

“This is a strategy that we have done many times before, not the first time,” Jean-Pierre said. “And this is for Republicans in Congress, in the House specifically, to fix, they created this mess. There was a bipartisan agreement.”

It’s possible that Biden’s absence was calculated, and that Democrats and the White House thought getting the bill across the finish line would not have been helped by public, on-camera criticism of Trump or congressional Republicans by Biden.

Yet the president also seemed to be ceding the stage to his successor, heightening a feeling that the current president is absent. A new Wall Street Journal report critical of White House aides for shielding what the story suggested was a declining Biden added to the president’s problems.

Biden has been coming under more criticism for Democrats upset they lost the White House and Senate majority in this year’s elections while failing to win the House. He appeared to do little to reassure them this week.

President-elect Trump

Trump has a tremendous amount of power over House Republicans, something highlighted by how quickly they moved to accede to his demands when he called for a debt ceiling hike to be a part of this week’s package.

But then 38 Republicans in the House ignored his calls, voting down a bill that included a two-year suspension of the debt ceiling.

The final bill approved by the House had no debt ceiling hike — defying the president-elect’s key demand.

Johnson, for his part, told reporters after the vote that he “was in constant contact with President Trump throughout this process,” speaking to the president-elect shortly before the vote.

“He knew exactly what we were doing and why, and this is a good outcome for the country,” Johnson added. “I think he certainly is happy about this outcome as well.”

Trump, however, has not yet publicly commented on the final legislation.