This week’s installment of the long-running “House Republicans can’t govern” saga will soon be forgotten. Elon Musk’s decision to blow up a bipartisan agreement to keep the government funded by broadcasting power alone (and the latent threat posed by his immense wealth), Donald Trump’s sudden call to repeal the debt limit, House Republican Chip Roy told his colleagues they lack “a little self-respect” — all these dramas are sure to be replaced by even more ridiculous ones in the new year.
But the battle over government funding this week also revealed something that could have profound implications for the next four years of his administration: Trump’s power over Congressional Republicans is quite limited.
Just a few days ago, that didn’t seem to be the case. Trump joined Elon Musk on Wednesday in urging House Republicans to scrap a bipartisan spending deal that would have kept the government funded through March, increased disaster relief and funded pediatric cancer research, among other things. Despite the fact that the GOP needs support from a Democratic majority in the Senate to pass any legislation — and failure to pass a spending bill by Saturday would mean a government shutdown — House Republicans heeded Trump’s call to undo the carefully negotiated compromise.
If Trump had little trouble convincing his party members to block one spending bill, he proved less adept at getting them to support another.
On Thursday, in coordination with Trump, the House GOP introduced a new funding bill that is stripped of all Democratic priorities. The President-elect has ordered his party via social media to “Vote YES” on this bill TONIGHT! Then 38 House Republicans voted against the legislation, more than enough to sink it amid near-unified Democratic opposition.
House conservatives’ distrust of Trump can be attributed in part to ideological differences. The president-elect’s objections to Wednesday’s bipartisan deal were different from those of his donor Elon Musk or House hardliners. He despised the number of pages and fiscal costs in the expense account. Trump, by contrast, seemed more concerned that the legislation didn’t raise — or eliminate — the debt limit.
Which is understandable. The debt limit may be the most irrational of all US government institutions. It does not prevent Congress from authorizing expenditures far in excess of federal revenues. Rather, it authorizes the government to finance spending that Congress has already ordered through borrowing. The alternative to raising the debt limit is for the government to default on its obligations to American citizens or its creditors, or both. In practice, exceeding the debt limit could trigger global financial turmoil, as the world’s most trusted “safe” asset – US government debt – suddenly becomes a risky investment.
Although refusing to raise the debt limit would be economically disastrous, many lawmakers are leaning toward it anyway. After all, raising the limit on how much the government can raise the debt — when the federal debt is already $36 trillion — might sound bad to voters when it’s emphasized out of context in an ad campaign. And some conservatives see the threat of sabotaging the global financial system as a potential means of pushing through unpopular spending cuts.
So getting Congress to raise the debt limit is inevitably a bit of a headache. And Trump doesn’t want high red tape to get in the way of his plans to enact big tax cuts that — if history is any guide — will substantially increase the debt and deficit.
So Trump called on House Republicans to suspend the debt limit for at least two years — or repeal it entirely — so it wouldn’t interfere with his honeymoon period (as it is, Congress will likely have to raise the debt ceiling sometime next year, a year after he narrowly warned of crisis in 2023). House Speaker Mike Johnson met that demand, adding a two-year increase in the debt limit to Thursday’s bill.
For dozens of conservatives in the House of Representatives, the idea of voting for a spending bill without any major funding cuts that also suspended the debt limit was more repugnant than the prospect of defying Trump.
Not surprisingly, some Republicans in the House of Representatives have taken conservative purity over loyalty to Trump. That almost 40 of them will have such priorities, however, is a revelation. During the 2024 campaign, Trump demonstrated a remarkable ability to dictate the ideological terms of his party, officially renouncing a national abortion ban without provoking any sustained attacks from his right. Combined with his apparent success in overhauling conservative orthodoxy on trade, entitlement spending, and US-Russia policy, Trump’s emphasis on abortion has raised the possibility that the modern right is a personality cult first and an ideological movement second.
It is now clear that for a substantial portion of House Republicans, this is not the case. And that will mean serious challenges for Trump’s agenda next year.
Republicans will control both houses of Congress in 2025, but their majority in the House will be slim: They will have a five-vote majority by the end of the year, assuming they sweep all the upcoming special elections in deep-red districts. The party will need to achieve something close to unanimity to push legislation through without the help of Democrats. Passing the cornerstone of Trump’s legislative agenda, extending and expanding his tax cuts in 2017, may not seem like such a difficult feat: If Republicans can agree on anything, it’s that taxes should be lower, after all.
Still, some conservatives shrug off genuine concerns about deficits, insisting they will pay for the tax cuts by cutting spending. Others come from swing districts and may be nervous about signing unpopular cuts to welfare programs. At least a few Republicans are even reluctant to repeal all of the Clean Energy Tax Credits under the Inflation Reduction Act, which have disproportionately benefited Republican areas. Satisfying all relevant constituencies will be difficult.
In theory, Trump could make this task easier by intimidating non-compliant Republicans with accusations of disloyalty and threats of primary challenges. But after Thursday, it seems less certain that the president-elect actually boasts such power over House GOP backbenchers.
It’s worth remembering that Trump is a 78-year-old lame duck. If you’re an up-and-coming conservative member of the House with aspirations of running for higher office in a decade, a reputation for conservative ideological purity may ultimately prove more useful than a record of perfect loyalty to an older man whose interest in the Party’s Republicans may evaporate the moment he loses the presidency .
Whatever happens, Trump is poised to exercise an alarming amount of personal power over the executive branch next year. But he may find that his ability to dictate the terms of Congress is as frustrating as our government’s power to issue new debt.