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Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) speaks with reporters following the Senate Republicans' weekly policy lunch on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 11, 2025.
The GOP’s budget battle begins
Wait, didn’t Congress just pass a budget? Well, kinda.Two weeks ago, Congress passed a continuing resolution, a bill to keep the government’s coffers at current levels until the end of September. But that didn’t allocate additional funds for Trump’s legislative goals – like tax cuts and increases in border and defense spending – which require Congress to pass a budget reconciliation package.
Johnson wants to pass the reconciliation before Congress leaves for Easter Break in two weeks so that he can have the bill on Trump’s desk by Memorial Day.
Key details: Budget reconciliations only require a simple majority to pass. The Republicans have that in the House and the Senate, so they don’t need Democratic votes. The Byrd Rule limits what can be in the bill to just things that affect spending, which in theory keeps reconciliation from being used as a loophole for passing nonbudgetary policies without bipartisan support. Still, parties have been known to push the envelope to get things passed that wouldn’t otherwise.
But right now, each chamber is backing very different bills. The House’s includes $1.5 trillion in spending cuts – which many in the Senate worry will affect Medicaid – and $4.5 trillion for tax cuts. Meanwhile, the Senate’s bill is far less ambitious: It calls for less spending and fewer cuts and is heavily focused on defense, allocating $325 billion in new military and border security spending.
And the debt ceiling is looming. The House’s reconciliation package would increase the debt limit by $4 trillion, meaning that Congress would also have to vote to raise the debt ceiling, something that Senate Republicans have opposed in the past but may cave on, especially if Trump starts applying pressure to get the bill over the finish line.
House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks to the media following the passage of spending legislation to avert a government shutdown, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, on Dec. 20, 2024.
US averts shutdown but offers preview of Trump 2.0
US lawmakers early Saturday struck an 11th-hour deal to avert a government shutdown. On Friday, the House voted overwhelmingly to pass a stopgap spending bill after a week of chaos on Capitol Hill in which President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk intervened to scuttle two earlier bipartisan bills. The Senate followed suit shortly after midnight.
The final measure passed on Friday funds the government through March, includes $10 billion in economic assistance for farmers, and earmarks $100 billion in fresh disaster relief funds. It doesn’t include Trump’s demand to suspend the debt ceiling, which limits how much the federal government can borrow.
Three things are immediately clear from this week:
First, Elon Musk has real government power even without a real government position. Musk’s extensive criticisms of the initial bill’s length and contents, some of which included false or misleading claims, shaped the politics immediately, sinking the first version of the spending bill. Musk does not hold an elected or even an official post, but with his 208 million followers on X, which he owns, he hardly needs to.
Trump’s grip on the GOP is hardly complete. The president-elect could not force his party to accept the idea of scrapping the debt ceiling, which would have given him substantially more spending room during his first two years in office. Instead, lawmakers pledged to take up the issue separately once he is in office.
This week was a preview. With a bold and controversial Trump policy agenda, a slim House GOP majority, and another hugely influential risk cook in the kitchen, the past few days offer a window into what legislating may often look like beginning in January. Buckle up.The U.S. Capitol.
The US government is heading toward a shutdown. What does that mean?
The US government looks set to shut down this Sunday after House Republicans indicated that they would not support a bipartisan Senate bill that would fund the federal government past this weekend’s deadline.
Absent a last-minute agreement, many federal agencies could soon shut down, while millions of federal workers could be placed on furlough without pay due to a lapse in funding from Congress, which controls the purse strings.
What led to the current stalemate and what does it mean?
You might recall that, back in June, House Republicans agreed at the eleventh hour to raise the federal debt limit to avoid the government defaulting on its loans for the first time in history. As part of that agreement, Republicans and the White House agreed to spending caps on funding bills for the next two years that aimed to avoid this sort of impasse until after the next presidential election.
But that is now up in the air as a number of “tear-it-all-down” Republicans are refusing to fund the government – an annual procedural measure – and are calling for deeper spending cuts. Crucially, they also oppose ongoing funding to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, overseeing one of the slimmest congressional majorities in decades, is hesitant to pass a funding bill with the backing of House Dems that these vocal members of his own caucus oppose, fearing they would call a vote seeking his ouster. What’s more, to appease the right flank of his party, McCarthy gave his caucus the go-ahead to start an impeachment inquiry into President Biden (the hearing will kick off Friday), but that doesn't seem to have gotten the hardliners to back off.
Indeed, this whole dance makes for very bad politics for the GOP considering that 77% of US voters don’t want the government to close.
What happens if the government shuts down? While some government departments – like the military – will continue to function, hundreds of thousands of workers (out of 4 million government employees) will be told to stay home without pay. The last time the government shut down in 2018 for 35 days, it cost the US economy a whopping $11 billion.
Plus: We asked Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, to share his view on how long the shutdown may last. Hear what he had to say here.
Biden & McCarthy both win in debt ceiling showdown
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics.
Who won the debt ceiling showdown between President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy?
And the answer is everyone's a winner. President Biden, first and foremost, avoided a default, which would have been a terrible consequence for Biden politically and the US and world economy. Very happy that didn't happen. Biden can now spin the modest spending reductions in the bill that increased the debt ceiling as a bipartisan victory, which should potentially help in his reelection campaign as he tries to campaign as a quasi-moderate, which is what brought him to office in 2020 and he put the debt ceiling issue behind us for another two years until at least January of 2025, which is going to be after the next presidential election. And the US is likely to revisit a lot of these fiscal issues once again, using the debt ceiling as a point of leverage to achieve further spending cuts and potentially an extension of the Trump tax cuts that expire in 2026.
For Kevin McCarthy, he wins because he still has his job. Earlier in the year, he had a really tough time achieving the speakership vote, having to go through 15 rounds of votes on the House floor. But it turns out that he's a pretty popular guy among the Republicans, driving forward this deal with very modest spending reductions, despite initially promising very steep reductions, particularly in 2024. They tried to get 9% cuts. They ended up with about 0% cuts, but a 3% increase in defense. And this is a win for Republicans all over the place. There might be some cranky conservatives who don't like this deal and they could potentially threaten McCarthy's speakership later in the year. But for now, it looks like he's doing okay.
He's going to be on thin ice, though, and the fiscal issues are not over for this year because the deal included something called the penny plan, which would cut overall spending by 1% if there's no appropriations bills, which are the annual bills that are legislation that funds the government, passed by January 1st of next year. This will give the conservatives who are in favor of government spending an incentive to block any of these appropriations bills and it's going to mean McCarthy's going to be caught in between the two sides of the Republican conference, the conservatives who want the cuts and the rank-and-file members who want to see increased spending on defense and the appropriators who want to see even bigger increases across the board.
So, McCarthy's not out of the woods just yet, but he's in a pretty good position and a much stronger one than we would have thought in January.
US Sen. John Thune (R-SD) talks to reporters about wrangling over the upcoming vote on debt ceiling legislation to avoid a historic default at the US Capitol in Washington, DC.
On the buzzer, US Senate passes debt ceiling deal
The US Senate on Thursday night passed an eleventh-hour compromise deal to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for spending cuts demanded by Republicans. The bill is now ready to be signed into law by President Joe Biden and prevents the US government from running out of money to pay its bills.
The expediency with which the upper chamber signed off on the House bill without further delay underscored the urgency of avoiding a catastrophic default by June 5. But dozens of Republican fiscal hawks and a smaller number of progressive Dems voted against the legislation, which passed by a 63-36 margin that somewhat mirrored its 314-117 support in the House the day before.
Still, despite all the drama, it all played out as Ian Bremmer expected weeks ago: House Republicans led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy played hardball while the White House refused to give up anything until it was almost too late. Then, both sides reached an agreement with concessions that ruffled activist feathers within their parties. Biden and McCarthy ultimately decided, again, not to fix the problem (America spends more money than the government is allowed to borrow) but rather kick the can down the road until Jan. 2025.
We don't know if the US was closer to disaster this time than it was in 2013, the last time the two parties had a major standoff over the national debt. What we do know is that it was close enough for two political enemies to actually agree on something.
On the one hand, the debt ceiling deal proves that bipartisan consensus is still possible in today's deeply polarized Washington. On the other, the fact that it came just days before the X-date for default signals that perhaps next time it might be too close. And after what happened in 2020, scheduling the deadline right after the 2024 election is no harbinger of good things to come.
Chris Christie interview: The truth about the 2024 GOP primary race
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie is playing coy on whether he'll throw his hat in the ring for the Republican presidential nomination for 2024, indicating he might simply influence the conversation from afar. In a wide-ranging interview with Ian Bremmer, Christie outlines the stark reality he sees about the GOP primary as things begin to heat up on the campaign trail. "I think there's one lane for the nomination, and right now, Donald Trump's in the front of that lane," Christie tells Bremmer. "And if you want to get in the front of that lane, you better intervene and go right through him because otherwise trying to go around him, I don't think it's a strategy."
Note: This interview was first featured in the GZERO World episode "Republican identity crisis: Chris Christie vs. Donald Trump," published on May 15, 2023.
On the debt celing, he's confident that Republicans and Democrats will avert disaster; on Ron DeSantis, he thinks the Florida Governor has made his Disney-doomed bed and has to sleep in it. He also shares his views on culture war issues, foreign policy, and Russia/Ukraine, where the former Governor's insistence on continued support for Ukraine is decidedly clearer than Trump's.
Stack of US dollar bills with ascending line
Debt ceiling crisis: A default by any other name...
The debt ceiling – dubbed by Ian Bremmer as the dumbest recurring character in US politics – is rearing its ugly head with no end in sight.
Republicans and Democrats have been sparring for weeks, and while House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden made meaningful progress in recent days, a deal remains elusive. The US government, meanwhile, will breach the so-called “X-date,” when it runs out of money to pay its bills, by late next week. Yet, legislators are fleeing Capitol Hill ahead of the holiday weekend in spite of the threat of the X-date arriving before a deal.
As for timing, Republicans and Democrats don’t share the same level of concern. Jon Lieber, managing director for the United States at Eurasia Group, says there are Republicans who “don’t think going past the deadline is all that bad, and because of that, the pressure on Kevin McCarthy to compromise is minimal.”
Republicans want a long-term deal and are willing to miss the deadline to ensure they get their steep cuts and policy reforms. But Democrats are seriously concerned about the political ramifications of even a partial default. McCarthy knows this, which puts Biden at a disadvantage in negotiations.
Failing to meet the deadline would take the US into a state of debt prioritization, made possible by a GOP-led bill passed last Friday. This approach would prioritize obligations to help the government avoid default, such as paying principal and interest payments, while slowing payments for government workers and social security benefits. So basically, the scary debt collectors will get paid on time, but grandma will have to wait her turn.
Republicans are banking on prioritization to make any breach of the debt ceiling economically survivable until June 16, when the government will get an influx of tax dollars to pay bills for another six weeks.
And beyond that? “Republicans can do this all day. Until payments are being delayed for a significant period of time, Republicans will have all the leverage,” says Lieber.
There is still a strong possibility that a last-minute, short-term deal could be reached early next week, but certain issues are proving intractable. Republicans are demanding new work requirements for Medicaid and food stamp recipients, and a baseline budget for 2024 below that of 2023. The latter is proving to be so contentious that talks have broken down multiple times over it.
Many Democrats are urging Biden to use the 14th Amendment to unilaterally raise the debt limit rather than compromise with Republicans. Their argument is based on a line in the 14th Amendment that says the US debt “shall not be questioned,” which could give the president the constitutional power to make sure the country doesn’t go into default. But Biden doesn’t seem keen on this solution – which would inevitably be challenged by Congress in the courts.
The hard deadline for default is next Friday, June 2, but the US could still face a credit downgrade early next week if it becomes more likely that a deal is not going to be reached. The US was downgraded once before, under the Obama administration in 2011, when it was 72 hours shy of default (which it ended up avoiding). Nevertheless, the downgrade triggered a plummet in the markets and cost the country $1.3 billion in higher borrowing costs.
Instead of learning that even getting close to default is economically problematic, the parties seem to have drawn the wrong lessons from 2011. Democrats learned that it's not worth it to negotiate, and are demanding a clean increase to the debt ceiling without any trade-offs. Meanwhile, Republicans saw that they can leverage the moment to make gains that their party can run on and are relying on debt prioritization to play hardball.
Trouble is, while Republicans may be proud of their nifty solution to the looming deadline, risking prioritization, says Yellen, “is effectively a default by just another name.”
F-16s for Ukraine redefine red line for Putin (again)
Will Biden's reversal to allow F-16s to Ukraine be a game-changer? What is holding up a debt ceiling deal? Will the EU's lawsuit against Meta lead to a data-sharing agreement with the United States? Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
Will Biden's reversal to allow F-16s to Ukraine be a game-changer?
Well, Putin says it is. Says that that would absolutely be a line that would be crossed and be irreversible. Of course, he said that about a bunch of things, and his credibility in a response to NATO providing defense to Ukraine has been significantly eroding over the last year. Of course, we also see not just F-16s, but we see Ukrainian armored troop carriers suddenly five miles deep in Russian territory, in Belgorod. The Ukrainians say it wasn't them, but they're very happy to embarrass Putin over that. Look, a lot of things that would've been seen as red lines six months ago now are not. Of course, that's good for the Ukrainians, but it also does mean that the tail risk dangers of this conflict are also going up.
What is holding up a debt ceiling deal?
Political dysfunction in the United States. Massive divisions inside the Democratic and Republican parties. I do think you can get to a deal between Biden and McCarthy, the House Speaker. I don't think that means that McCarthy can get the first deal he gets done through his own caucus. And that not only means there's more negotiation than the time that we presently have allotted, so probably, let's say, a one-month delay looks likely to me, but also, the potential that McCarthy himself has his leadership challenged, which is another problem that you don't need in the middle of this, is rising. So, I'm still quite worried about where this all heads.
Will the EU's lawsuit against Meta lead to a data-sharing agreement with the United States?
I'm not sure that we're there yet. I still see that the Europeans and the Americans are thinking about data from different perspectives. The Europeans are much more willing to support privacy and infringe on what the technology companies have to do, the regulations, in a much less company-friendly way than the Americans, who, of course, have these companies domiciled based in the United States. There is more coordination and talk of data security between the Americans and the Europeans, but I still think we're far from an overall regulatory framework.
- G7 alignment & US political challenges ›
- “Break the neck of the Russian army”: An interview with Ukraine’s UN envoy Sergiy Kyslytsya ›
- Biden returns to join US debt ceiling talks ›
- Ian Explains: The debt ceiling ›
- Hard Numbers: Meta gets fined, Nigeria gets refined, Sudan gets a ceasefire, Nagorno-Karabakh gets a hint of recognition ›