US hours from government shutdown over Christmas

WASHINGTON: US lawmakers raced on Friday to prevent a government shutdown due to bite within hours, after Donald Trump and Elon Musk sabotaged a bipartisan agreement that would have kept the lights on well beyond Christmas.

With government funding running out at midnight, the Republican-led House of Representatives needs to come up with a short-term fix to replace a funding package that looked like a done deal before the president-elect´s intervention. If no agreement is struck, federal agencies, national parks and other services will begin shuttering Saturday as the government prepares to send up to 875,000 workers home for the holidays without pay.

“If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration,” Trump said on social media early Friday, seeking to avoid blame for the chaos.

“This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!”

The race against the clock comes after a week of drama in Washington that began with Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson releasing a mammoth funding bill stuffed with unrelated measures that ballooned its cost.

Conservatives immediately voiced anger over the add-ons in the 1,547-page text, while Musk -- Trump´s incoming point man on government spending cuts -- led a campaign bashing the deal.

Trump dealt the fatal blow by demanding the deal be renegotiated to strip away much of the extraneous spending and to attach text suspending the country´s self-imposed borrowing cap for two years.

The new demand -- aimed at freeing up Trump from debt negotiations -- caught Republicans off-guard and they spent Thursday scrambling to write a new, pared-back package that could keep fiscal conservatives, Trump, Musk and Democrats happy.