WASHINGTON – In the U.S. House, a familiar scenario unfolds repeatedly: Republicans struggle to pass federal funding bills independently, teetering towards a potential government shutdown. In these moments, Democrats step in to supply the necessary votes to avert serious disruptions.
Until now.
House Speaker Mike Johnson achieved a remarkable feat by uniting the GOP majority to approve a bill that ensures government operations continue uninterrupted. He successfully persuaded even staunch conservatives from the Freedom Caucus to lend their support.
President Donald Trump’s public admonishments of lawmakers and warnings of consequences for Republicans straying from the party line certainly played a part in this achievement. His strong messages helped quell significant dissent within the party.
What also won over rank-and-file Republicans was what Trump is already doing through the chainsaw-wielding billionaire Elon Musk — slashing the size of federal government and firing thousands of workers through the Department of Government Efficiency — and the White House’s promise to do more.
“In DOGE we trust,” said Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., a longtime deficit hawk who was among those voting yes.
The result is a newly emboldened House GOP majority that, for the first time in years, is able to capture and utilize the vast power of sticking together, rather than disassembling into chaotic rounds of public infighting.
And it’s leaving the Democrats, in the minority in the House and Senate, shifting rapidly to respond.
The story the Democrats have leveraged to their advantage for years — that Republicans simply can’t govern — may no longer be as true as it once was.
In fact, the Republicans who control Congress and the White House are governing at lightning speed — over the dismantling of the very government itself.
As if on cue, as the House was acting Tuesday, the Department of Education axed some 1,300 employees, about half its staff, on its way to unwinding the agency.
“The DOGE efforts and the other things that are happening in the administration are very important for the American people,” Johnson said in a victory lap, “because ultimately what we’re going to be able to do is downsize the size and scope of the federal government.”
The bill now heads to the Senate, where Republicans have a 53-47 majority and Democrats are almost powerless to stop the head-spinning series of events.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer faces politically difficult options — either provide the Democratic votes needed to advance the bill to the 60-vote threshold needed, or vote to block it, allowing a federal shutdown after midnight Friday.
Lacking leverage to shape the funding package, the Democrats are left to warn what Trump and Musk will do next.
“This is not what the American people want,” Schumer said Wednesday.
Trump is pushing the GOP-led Congress to next pass what he calls a “big beautiful bill” with some $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and $2 trillion in spending reductions, including some $880 billion to Medicaid the health care program used by some 80 millions Americans and another $220 billion to agriculture programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, to hungry adults and kids.
Musk said that Social Security and other mainstay “entitlement” programs also need drastic cuts.
“The Republican majority just voted to hand a blank check to Elon Musk,” said Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the Democratic whip.
“No wonder Republicans are canceling their town halls,” she said. “They know what the American people know: No one voted for this.”
For Republicans, particularly in the House, it’s a new day.
On Tuesday almost every House Republican — and one Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine — backed the government funding bill, which will keep federal offices running through the end of the budget year, in September.
The party was also unified last month as Johnson led House Republicans in approving a budget framework for the big tax-and-spending cuts bill, setting the process in motion for action as soon as April.
Johnson said the White House would be sending a rescissions package next — legislative shorthand for a proposal to roll back already-approved funding across the federal government.
Other Republicans are encouraging the Trump administration to impound other federal funds that have been approved by Congress but not yet spent in a way that would challenge the law, setting up a potential legal showdown over the checks and balances of constitutional power.
For rank-and-file Republicans, the DOGE cuts that are steamrolling through the federal government are beyond what they could have imagined.
“Exhilarating,” Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, the head of the Republican campaign committee, told The Associated Press.
The most conservative deficit hawks said they are willing to stand down on their usual antics to block funding bills, knowing Trump and Musk are wielding the ax on their own.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who has routinely voted against government spending bills, said what’s changed is Trump in the White House. Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., who has rarely voted for any continuing resolution to fund the government, said the cuts are underway.
As long as DOGE is calling the shots, “I can support this CR,” said McClintock of California.
The speaker said Trump is watching step by step. Trump berated the one Republican holdout on the funding package, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, and was calling others.
Massie, the libertarian leaning MIT graduate who wears a homemade debt calculator on his lapel pin, is popular among his colleagues in part because he is so consistent in his views. He refused to bend.
Another holdout, Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., said he even though he didn’t personally have a call from Trump, he was on the line when the president called another GOP lawmaker.
“I want him to succeed,” McCormick said.
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