Whereas the high-stakes combat to steer the Home of Representatives is over, Speaker Mike Johnson’s politically perilous yr is simply starting.
Profitable the speaker’s gavel was no simple feat contemplating Johnson, R-La., had no Democratic help and will solely lose one fellow Republican, due to the Home GOP’s razor-thin majority.
All Home Republicans apart from Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., voted for Johnson on Friday afternoon. Two GOP lawmakers who had initially voted for somebody aside from Johnson, Reps. Keith Self, R-Texas, and Ralph Norman, R-S.C., had been finally persuaded to change their votes after talking with Johnson and President-elect Trump.
Johnson must navigate a equally slim margin over the following few months as he helps perform what President-elect Donald Trump promised can be a really energetic first 100 days of his new administration.
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Home Speaker Mike Johnson is pictured in entrance of the U.S. Capitol. (Getty Photographs/AP)
“There’s lots of expectations and potential pitfalls,” Marc Quick, who served as director of legislative affairs throughout the first Trump administration, informed Fox Information Digital in an interview late final month.
Simply the primary half of 2025 alone is predicted to see a minimum of three separate fiscal fights.
Johnson, in the meantime, is about to lose two Home Republicans – Reps. Elise Stefanik of New York and Mike Waltz of Florida. Each members are becoming a member of the Trump administration on the finish of this month.
It is going to scale back his Home GOP majority to simply 217 seats, in comparison with 215 for Democrats, which implies Republicans might want to vote in lock-step to go any payments on a party-line vote.
Particular elections to exchange Waltz and retired Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., are set for April. An election to exchange Stefanik has not but been set.
In the meantime, Republicans are gunning to go two huge conservative coverage and spending overhauls by way of a course of called “reconciliation,” which lowers the brink for passage within the Senate from 60 votes to a easy majority for sure budgetary points.
Each Republicans and Democrats have tried to make use of reconciliation to go important fiscal coverage adjustments that the opposite aspect usually opposes, which means it takes extraordinary ranges of intra-party cooperation in each the Home and Senate.
Pictured are President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for his subsequent Nationwide Safety Advisor, Michael Waltz (left), and subsequent U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Elise Stefanik (proper).
“There’s enormous expectations on price range reconciliation, and that’s actually laborious, even if you’ve acquired extensive margins. To suppose you’re going to do it twice in a yr with these margins, I believe is an enormously excessive expectation that appears to be unreasonable,” Quick informed Fox Information Digital.
“And add onto that one other funding invoice in three months, plus a debt ceiling combat.”
Together with reconciliation payments – that are unlikely to get a lot, if any, Democratic help – Republicans will even should grapple with the federal government funding deadline they just punted to March 14.
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Home and Senate lawmakers handed a short-term extension of fiscal yr (FY) 2024’s authorities funding ranges in December to provide negotiators extra time to hash out the remainder of FY 2025.
Congress will threat plunging the federal government right into a partial shutdown if the Home and Senate doesn’t go one other funding extension or set new priorities for the rest of FY 2025 by then.
The following authorities funding deadline will come on the finish of the fiscal yr on Sept. 30.
That’s not all Johnson must deal with throughout these months, nonetheless.
President-elect Donald Trump appears to be like on throughout Turning Level USA’s AmericaFest on the Phoenix Conference Heart on Dec. 22, 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Rebecca Noble/Getty Photographs)
A bipartisan agreement struck in 2023 suspended the U.S. debt restrict by January 2025 – after which the Treasury Division might be pressured to take “extraordinary measures” to keep away from a nationwide credit score default.
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The debt restrict refers to how a lot debt the U.S. authorities can accrue whereas making expenditures it has already dedicated to. As of Christmas Eve, the national debt — which measures what the U.S. owes its collectors — fell to $36,161,621,015,445.57, based on the newest numbers revealed by the Treasury Division.
Elevating the debt restrict can be historically a fraught political battle, with each Republicans and Democrats searching for any attainable leverage to connect their very own coverage targets to the negotiations.
A latest mannequin produced by the Financial Coverage Innovation Heart (EPIC) tasks the Treasury’s “extraordinary measures” will carry the U.S. by mid-June or earlier, giving Congress probably six months to behave.
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