Why Congress is so dysfunctional
Donald Trump is the most powerful Republican politician in a generation, but the president-elect is still no match for the most nihilistic members of his own party. The budget chaos unfolding on Capitol Hill is only a preview of the difficult realities Mr Trump will face when he starts to govern next month.
Members of the expiring 118th Congress—with a Senate narrowly controlled by Democrats and a House narrowly controlled by Republicans—had expected this week to be their last in Washington this year. The main outstanding task was to pass a simple bill, no more than a few pages long, to keep the government funded into 2025 at close to existing levels. The idea was to postpone battles over unresolved policy matters until Mr Trump and the next Congress were in place. Yet nothing is so simple in Washington these days.
Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, knew that a few dozen members of his own Republican caucus would never vote for any budget. Instead he worked with Democrats on a compromise that would keep the government open until March. With Democrats aware of their leverage, the negotiations got away from the speaker, producing the kind of legislative labyrinth that Mr Johnson had vowed to never put up for a vote. In addition to extended funding, its 1,547 pages included disaster aid, support for farmers, and a hotch-potch of other unrelated legislation, from a stadium relocation to restrictions on investments in China. A 3.8% salary increase for lawmakers—the first in 15 years and significantly lower than the 40% that Elon Musk erroneously claimed had been proposed—provoked predictable backlash.
Mr Musk, and soon Donald Trump, called for the whole deal to be scrapped. The richest man on the planet, relatively new to Washington politics, also backed calls for the government to be shut down for the remainder of Mr Biden’s term. Mr Trump and congressional Republicans, having lived through politically toxic shutdowns before, quickly scraped together a more modest compromise without input from Democrats.
That 116-page bill would have kept the government open without much of the unrelated legislation from the first bill. (It did also propose to extend America’s debt ceiling, a last-minute request from Mr Trump.) The once and future president praised the new bill and urged Republicans and Democrats to support it. Nearly every House Democrat rejected his entreaty, along with 38 Republicans. The government will run out of funding by Saturday morning absent legislative action. The most promising course of action now seems to be splitting up priorities into different bills and hoping for the best.
Where does Congress go from here? Mr Trump’s contribution wasn’t a legislative strategy so much as a coping mechanism: “If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration, not after January 20th, under ‘TRUMP’”, he posted on Truth Social. “This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!”
After the defeat, Mr Johnson told reporters, “We will regroup and we will come up with another solution, so stay tuned.” He was back on Capitol Hill on Friday morning, and J.D. Vance, the vice-president-elect, was reportedly meeting with members of the sceptical House Freedom Caucus. Congressional Republicans have a range of options, none of them appealing, and what will prevail is unpredictable. But this episode is nevertheless illuminating.
By the numbers, Republicans won full control of Congress. In reality, their legislative majority is more like a European-style coalition government. The party’s governing wing has entered into an unruly alliance with the berserker caucus. The coalition is brought together by animus for Democrats more than common legislative goals. They may agree on immigration enforcement or how to use subpoena power, but Republicans’ control over the power of the purse is weakened by their internal divisions. This will have multitrillion dollar implications as Mr Trump seeks next year to extend tax cuts first enacted in 2017, many of which will expire without new legislation.
“Fiscal responsibility is easy to talk about and very difficult to implement. This shows that there are a number of Republicans who have reached their limit,” says Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “This could lead to a fiscal showdown within the party.”
When Republicans are sworn into office in January, they will have a decision to make about legislative priorities. Should they immediately try to pass defence, immigration and energy legislation? Or should they combine those priorities with a broader fiscal bill? The idea that it would be better to bifurcate the process had gained momentum in recent weeks, but this extended fight over a much simpler government funding bill may give leaders pause.
It’s not even clear who will be leading House Republicans as they work to enact Mr Trump’s agenda next year. Kevin McCarthy became speaker of the House in 2023 after a humiliating 15 rounds of voting. He lost his job less than a year later because he allowed passage of a bill to fund the government. Mr Johnson, then relatively unknown, took power after weeks of aimless voting. Even if Mr Trump continues to endorse Mr Johnson, Republicans have shown their willingness to defy their president.
Will the GOP begin 2025 in an effective state of civil war? Mr Trump certainly has never been afraid to attack members of his own party. Eight House Republicans who voted to impeach him after January 6th left Congress following Mr Trump’s revenge campaign against them, and Mr Trump’s allies haven’t been shy about threatening senators who oppose controversial cabinet nominees. The president-elect is also willing to attack Republicans from the left: he suggested that Chip Roy, a hardline fiscal conservative, ought to face a primary challenge over his opposition to this week’s budget compromise.
“Screw it” may be the lesson Mr Trump takes from all of this, predicts Matt Glassman, a fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute. He could conclude that “I’m enjoying it as much as I can on the executive side. Better to not go through the headache of dealing with these people in the House.” Yet that would require him to cut deals with Democrats, exacerbating the divides in his own party. Soon Mr Trump may be wondering why he wanted to be president again. ■