House Democrats were skeptical of an emerging Republican-led funding deal as they walked into a closed-door caucus meeting Thursday afternoon, meaning it's almost certainly doomed on the House floor, with less than 36 hours to go until a shutdown deadline.
“The Musk-Johnson proposal is not serious. It’s laughable. Extreme MAGA Republicans are driving us to a government shutdown,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said to reporters as he walked into the meeting.
Speaking privately to members of his caucus minutes later, Jeffries told lawmakers: “I’m not simply a no. I’m a hell no,” according to three people familiar with his remarks, granted anonymity to speak about the meeting.
Other Democratic lawmakers also expressed doubts about the legislation, which Republican leaders were teeing up for a vote Thursday evening. It would suspend the debt ceiling through early 2027, fund the government through March, and include billions in disaster relief funds, a top Democratic priority.
The vote on the bill is scheduled to come up via a process called suspension, which means it needs to meet a two-thirds vote threshold to pass. If Democrats are roundly against it, it will fail on the floor — leaving Congress without an obvious solution to avoid a shutdown.
If the bill fails to clear a two-thirds threshold on Thursday, Republicans expect leadership to try to move the bill under a so-called rule, according to two members granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations. That would allow the GOP to pass it with a simple majority, meaning leaders wouldn't need Democratic votes. But it's not clear that a rule greenlighting debate, or the actual funding bill, would be able to get the near unanimity needed from Republicans to pass under that scenario either.
“This was done on short notice,” said Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, who said he was opposed. “We reached an agreement on a bipartisan basis between the respective leadership and the membership of both parties, only to have an interruption take place and then a veto occurs after the agreement has been rendered and reached.”
President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk worked to spike the original deal on Wednesday, sending the House careening down an alternate path with a deadline looming.
“Elon Musk is not my constituent. My constituents are hard-working people who work very hard every day for every dime they have, and I'm sure as hell not bailing out on them in the final week,” said Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D-N.H.), chair of the centrist New Democrat Coalition.
Top Democrats weren’t involved in the drafting of the legislation, and the unveiling caught senior lawmakers by surprise.
“All I know is it was just reported by the press. We have not been involved in anything that they have done,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Appropriations Committee Democrat.
Republicans argue the burden is now on Democrats to justify any opposition to a continuing resolution — “CR” for short — that averts a government shutdown and also prevents the U.S. from defaulting on its more than $36 trillion in debt next year.
“Fundamentally, Democrats are going to have to explain why a clean CR with disaster relief, keeping the government functioning and open — and doing, by the way, exactly what they argued a year ago — why they wouldn’t support that,” Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.) said as he left Johnson’s office Thursday afternoon.
Those policies are typically something Democrats would support, GOP lawmakers note, without acknowledging that backing the plan threatens Democrats’ negotiating power going forward.
Olivia Beavers, Jordain Carney and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
