WASHINGTON – One of the most turbulent sessions of Congress in the modern era is about to make way for the next one.
The recent approval of the government shutdown package late at night highlighted the growing political divisions in Washington. This comes as President-elect Donald Trump makes his way back to the White House, House Speaker Mike Johnson from Louisiana struggles to maintain his position, and Republicans prepare to take over both the House and Senate in the upcoming year.
It took bipartisan votes, Republicans and Democrats, to keep government running for a few more months and provide some $100 billion for disaster aid. Working together, the parties showed the House and Senate can still function, at times, to accomplish the basics of governing.
“After a chaotic few days in the House, it’s good news that the bipartisan approach in the end prevailed,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat. “It’s a good lesson for next year. Both sides have to work together.”
But next year, with big GOP promises to cut taxes and slash spending, while also pumping in new money to fund Trump’s border security and deportation operations, Republicans intend to go it alone.
“We are set up for a big and important new start in January,” Johnson said. “We can’t wait to get started.”
First, though, Johnson needs to be sure he has a job.
Johnson’s shaky grip on the gravel
The first vote of the new House, when lawmakers are sworn in on Jan. 3, is on electing a speaker. That leaves Johnson little time to calm the criticism after facing stark blowback over his management of the government shutdown fight.
Johnson was never the House Republicans’ top choice for the speaker’s office but he emerged when they couldn’t agree on a replacement once they kicked out the last speaker, Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.
Keeping the gavel is only becoming more difficult. The government shutdown saga exposed the limits of Johnson’s influence over his majority, and Trump, when his first two funding plans collapsed. It’s unclear if Johnson will have enough support from his ranks.
“It’s always the big question, right?” said Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., among the handful of mainly fiscal conservatives who cast their votes to oust McCarthy. “Ultimately, and let’s be honest, that’s going to be — a large portion of that — will be up to Donald J. Trump.”
And yet, Johnson was able to buy time, convincing Trump he would meet the president-elect’s demands to raise the debt limit in the new year. Johnson has worked hard to stay close to Trump — dashing to Mar-a-Lago and joining him ringside at Madison Square Garden — and the investment shows.
Johnson insisted Trump was “certainly happy” with the final deal.
“The Speaker did a good job here, given the circumstances,” posted Trump ally Elon Musk, who has been mentioned as a potential replacement, since the speaker does not need to be a member of Congress.
Johnson has no votes to spare, having actually lost House seats in the fall election, shrinking his majority. Democrats will oppose him with their own speaker candidate, Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.
“Clearly, Johnson is not up to the task,” said Trump ally and podcast provocateur Steven Bannon at a conservative conference. “He doesn’t have what we call the right stuff — that combination of guts and moxie and savvy and toughness.”
Musk emerges as a power broker on Capitol Hill
The world’s richest man is fast becoming Capitol Hill’s most feared influencer.
Musk intervened in the government shutdown debate using the enormous power of his social media platform, X, to ravage Johnson’s original 1,500-page bipartisan bill, swiftly tearing it down.
In post after post, hour after hour, Musk unleashed his criticisms, and sometimes inaccurate claims, sending his army of online followers to figuratively flood the Capitol, warning that if lawmakers voted for it he would take them on with primary elections. His vast wealth and America PAC backed up his threats.
“Kill the bill,” Musk demanded.
Musk had his moment, but also launched a new one for himself.
Democrat after Democrat, and at least one Republican, turned on Musk, seeing not a benevolent billionaire wading into the political process, but a symbol of extreme U.S. wealth and power run amok.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, decried the health care and other bipartisan provisions stripped from the bill to scale it back as Musk had demanded.
“The precedent that has been set today in Congress should upset every American,” Sanders said in a statement announcing his refusal to support the final bill. He voted against it.
“It appears that from now on no major legislation can be passed without the approval of the wealthiest person in this country,” Sanders said. “That’s not democracy, that’s oligarchy.”
Trump runs the GOP but not the deficit hawks
One of the most outspoken conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus is Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who led the charge against Trump’s demand for a debt limit hike as part of the government shutdown package.
Trump tried to bully and blister Roy into submission. It didn’t work.
“The very unpopular ‘Congressman’ from Texas, Chip Roy, is getting in the way, as usual,” Trump posted on social media.
Trump suggested there should be a primary challenge against Roy. “Republican obstructionists have to be done away with,” he said.
Roy, though, has his own popular following as a leading deficit hawk. He held his own, ignoring Trump’s attack and admonishing his colleagues not to go along with Trump’s demand to boost the debt ceiling and allow more borrowing.
“You go out and campaign, say you’re going to balance the budget, and then you come in here,” he shouted, choking up at times during the floor debate. “It’s embarrassing.”
In the end, 38 House Republicans including Roy sided with Democrats and tanked Trump’s debt ceiling increase.
The next debt limit fight is coming soon
The failure of Trump’s preferred spending bill, with the debt limit increase, signals problems ahead.
Republicans will have to raise the debt ceiling in the first half of the year — likely by early summer according to some estimates — and there will be a large price to pay. It is leverage in any policy talks.
As part of the deal Johnson made to pass the temporary government funding package, he struck a “gentlemen’s agreement” behind closed doors with his fellow Republicans ahead of Friday’s vote.
The House Republicans agreed to slash some $2.5 trillion from federal spending over the next decade as part of the emerging tax cut bill, which is an enormous sum in federal budgeting, in exchange for boosting the debt limit, as will need to happen to avoid a federal default.
Burchett, for one, had no interest in any such deals.
“I said, ‘This ain’t no place for gentlemen,’” he said. “That’s when I yelled out, ‘You’re losing me’.”
Trump may have lost the deficit hawks on the vote, but not his own political sway on Capitol Hill.
“He’s still strong,” Burchett said. “People still love him back home. And that’s all that really matters.”
___ Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.
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