AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
The federal government is not shutting down, at least not this time. Yesterday, President Joe Biden signed a stopgap funding bill that essentially kicks the can down the road to mid-March, well into the first months of the next Congress and second Trump administration. It was the end of a whiplash-inducing week on Capitol Hill and on various social media platforms. Joining me now is NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Good morning, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning.
RASCOE: OK, so explain to us what happened last week.
LIASSON: Last week was a real political roller coaster. Before the final bill passed, two other ones failed. The first one was a bipartisan bill that House Speaker Mike Johnson negotiated with Democrats because he couldn't rely on his own caucus - conference to be unified enough to pass the bill. That bill had some things that both parties wanted - the disaster relief, aid to farmers. But then Elon Musk, the most richest man in the world and the person that Democrats and Republicans are referring to as the shadow president, came out against the bill. He posted that the bill was awful, no legislation should pass before Trump was inaugurated. Then Donald Trump threatened to primary any Republican who voted for the bill. And he added a big new demand that a new bill should include a suspension of the debt ceiling. And that bill, that second bill with Trump's big ask, failed spectacularly - 235 no votes, including 38 Republicans who voted no to Trump's big new demand.
RASCOE: And they were opposed to these temporary funding measures. But why would Trump want the debt ceiling suspended?
LIASSON: Well, that's a good question. The debt ceiling is the amount of money the U.S. can borrow to pay for spending that Congress has already approved. And for a long time, it's been a tool that Republicans have used to force Democrats not to overspend. But we know from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget that Trump's policies - big tax cuts, mass deportations, tariffs, et cetera - will increase the national debt by a whopping $7 trillion. So Trump didn't want the debt ceiling to get in his way, but there are House Republicans that are still deficit hawks, and they didn't want to give up the leverage of the debt ceiling - that the debt ceiling gives them to control spending.
RASCOE: So another bill passed on Friday night, or passed the House on Friday night without the debt ceiling suspension - 366 in favor, 34 against, all Republican deficit hawks. What have we learned from all of this?
LIASSON: Right. All the no votes were Republicans. What we've learned is a bunch of things. First, Trump and Elon Musk have tremendous power over Republicans in Congress, but they don't have limitless power. It's much easier for them to tank a bill - Trump did that earlier this year with a bipartisan immigration measure - but much, much harder for them to get Republicans to pass legislative (inaudible). We also learned that bipartisanship is not dead. Speaker Mike Johnson still had to rely on Democrats to keep the government from shutting down. We know that his tiny majority in Congress will be even tinier, at least for a while, starting in January. We also learned that Trump sometimes backs down. He isn't threatening anymore to primary the 38 Republicans who voted against his debt ceiling bill or to push recess appointments through the Senate.
RASCOE: So I mentioned the whiplash over this stopgap funding on Capitol Hill. But, you know, I got to say, it was kind of hard keeping track of where Musk and Trump's support was from moment to moment. These aren't exactly the clearest-communicating guys and don't seem too, like, ideologically - what? - permanent, I guess. And ultimately, it seems like things ended where they started. Was this an entire exercise more about performance than results?
LIASSON: Well, it certainly seems so. The bill - final bill did strip out some provisions, but it costs the same. There's not that much difference. And Elon Musk, who at one point had posted that the government should shut down, started posting about what a good job Mike Johnson did to make a bill that weighed pounds into a bill that weighed ounces, just because it started at 1,500 pages and ended up at 116, even though it doesn't cost taxpayers any different. So this is becoming Trump and Musk's performative strategy. Tank a bill, fail to pass the alternative you want, then claim victory.
RASCOE: That's NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Thank you, Mara.
LIASSON: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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