Trump threatens shutdown, says Biden will be blamed

19 December 2024

President-elect Donald Trump is demanding Congress eliminate or extend the debt ceiling — not an issue it is even currently facing — and threatening a shutdown of the federal government if his demand is not met, a shutdown he claims the public will blame on President Joe Biden.

“If we don’t get it, then we’re going to have a shutdown, but it’ll be a Biden shutdown, because shutdowns only inure to the person who’s president,” Trump told ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl on Thursday.

“There won’t be anything approved unless the debt ceiling is done with,” Trump said, Karl reports.

In a statement late Wednesday afternoon, Trump also said: “Increasing the debt ceiling is not great but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch.”

There have been no government shutdowns under President Joe Biden. As President, Donald Trump oversaw three, including the longest shutdown in U.S. history. USA Todayhas a list of all 21 federal government shutdowns that have occurred in the past five decades. Thirteen occurred under Republican Presidents, including eight under President Ronald Reagan.

“At 34 days, the longest government shutdown was also the most recent, from late 2018 to early 2019, during former President Donald Trump’s administration,” Axios reported last year. That one reportedly cost the U.S. economy about $3 billion.

The House and Senate were prepared to pass a bipartisan continuing resolution (CR) that the Republican Speaker, Mike Johnson, had proposed, until billionaire tech CEO and co-chair of Trump’s nongovernmental Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk, began tweeting about it. He called the 1500-page bill that provides critical funding for farmers and Americans hit hard by hurricanes, a “crime.”

Congressional correspondent Jamie Dupree described Trump’s remarks by saying, “Trump again turns up the heat on Republicans to do what most of them oppose – eliminate or raise the debt ceiling.”

Veteran intelligence, national security, and foreign policy journalist Jeff Stein encouraged the President-elect to talk to former Speaker of the House, Republican Newt Gingrich, whose public image was negatively impacted by his role in several shutdowns, especially the ones in 1995/1996.

“Trump actually thinks the government shutdown will be blamed on Biden. He should ask Newt Gingrich about that. It’s going to land squarely—and rightly— on Republicans, and particularly him,” Stein predicted.

Brian Riedl is a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, whose work, according to his bio, focuses on “budget, tax, and economic policy.” He was also chief economist to U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH), and was the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s lead research fellow on federal budget and spending policy.

“I’m so confused,” Riedl wrote, “because Trump and his acolytes kept attacking Biden’s deficits and debt limit hikes, and instead promised to balance the budget and even pay down the debt. Now Trump is demanding space to add unlimited levels of debt.”

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