WASHINGTON – President-elect Donald Trump failed the first big test of whether he can hold together fractious Republicans to pass his second-term agenda when 38 GOP House members bucked him on government funding legislation late Thursday.
Now the question is whether the rest of his agenda is already in jeopardy, even before the former and future president’s January 20 inauguration.
“We got some independent thinkers, even those who are very strong Trump… the Republicans have always had a harder time corralling our side,” Nebraska Republican Rep. Don Bacon said Thursday after the vote when asked what it means for Trump’s ability to control his party going forward.
Trump has been riding high after cementing his political comeback in November with a victory that included wins in every swing state and the popular vote. Republicans were largely unified behind him during the campaign, which saw him overcome four criminal cases, two impeachment and the fallout from Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol to try and overturn the 2020 election won by President Joe BIden.
Since his 2024 White House victory, Trump and Republican allies have claimed the win came with a mandate to enact sweeping changes for the nation. But the president-elect couldn’t keep his party united behind his first big pre-inauguration policy push – keeping the U.S. government open through March while lifting the cap on the amount of debt the federal government can incur.
Trump blew up an initial short-term spending deal Wednesday that Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson negotiated with Democrats when the president-elect called for removing provisions that his rival party’s members liked and adding the debt limit increase, which some fiscal hardliners in his own party oppose.
Johnson came back with a new spending plan Thursday approved by Trump that had a two year suspension of the debt ceiling. That approach failed, despite the president-elect urging Republicans to support it. “All Republicans, and even the Democrats, should do what is best for our Country, and vote ‘YES’ for this Bill, TONIGHT!” Trump wrote on social media.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, spoke against the revised funding plan on the House floor Thursday.
“What we’re doing right now is to continue to double down on the things that are destroying the Republic,” Roy said, adding: “I’m absolutely sickened by a party that campaigns on fiscal responsibility and has the temerity to go forward to the American people and say you think this is fiscally responsible. It is absolutely ridiculous.”
Roy also called the legislation “embarrassing,” “shameful,” and “asinine” and said Republicans are “profoundly unserious about actually reducing deficits.”
Trump won the GOP presidential nomination in 2016 as an outsider campaigning against establishment Republicans, and continued to butt heads with many in his own party after taking office. During his first term he was able to pass major tax cut legislation, but saw other priorities dashed by GOP opposition, notably when Republican Sen. John McCain provided the decisive vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act enacted under Trump’s successor, President Barack Obama.
Trump’s occasional clashes with his party continued through the end of his first term, when some Republicans denounced his actions surrounding the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Former GOP House members Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger served on the House committee investigating January 6 and harshly condemned Trump. Both are no longer in Congress, with Kinzinger opting not to run again and Cheney falling to a Trump-backed primary challenger.
The primary threat has been a powerful tool used by Trump to keep Republicans in line. Before the House vote Thursday on the spending plan, Trump posted on social media that he hoped Roy would get a primary challenge and issued a broader threat, saying “Republican obstructionists have to be done away with.” It didn’t stop the GOP defections.
“You can’t primary” every Republican who voted against the spending bill, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said after the vote.
“I mean, you can,” Massie added. “You’ll weed out the weak. But the rest of us will have antibodies.”
Trump has consolidated his grip on the GOP since his first White House term, partly through primaries that have brought more Trump-friendly Republicans to Congress, and is broadly popular in his party. He focused on immigration enforcement and economic issues during the campaign, and is expected to pursue legislation to enact his campaign promises into law, including more tax cuts and stronger border enforcement.
The strong opposition from some in the GOP to Trump’s spending proposal demonstrated the limits of his ability to control a GOP caucus that is not always aligned with his populist approach, though. Government spending, in particular, can be a tricky issue for a party that has long campaigned on fiscal restraint.
Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., said Thursday as the votes on the spending bill were being counted that the legislation “may be a trial run” for Republican governance during the next Trump term.
“I think that things will eventually work themselves out, but there may be lessons learned here,” Gimenez said when asked about Trump’s ability to rally his party and pass his agenda going forward.
Bacon said debt ceiling and short-term spending legislation will always involve some fiscally-conservative Republicans in opposition. “So you gotta have Democrats on board,” he added.
The Nebraska GOP congressman also questioned the influence of billionaire Elon Musk, a close Trump adviser, on the spending legislation. Musk began posting social media messages blasting the first version of the bill hours before Trump weighed in and the GOP responded by stripping out provisions supported by Democrats.
“I was troubled that he put out false information, which in the social media environment people tend to believe what they see and some of that stuff was just out and out lies,” Bacon said of Musk’s influence.
Concerns about the original House spending legislation should have been worked out directly with House Speaker Mike Johnson, Bacon said, adding: “I don’t really get the beat-up-your-own-team on social media. It’s not right.”
Some Republicans dismissed concerns this week that the failure of Trump’s first big policy play – before he’s even been sworn in – could spell trouble for his agenda.
“Every issue is different, every vote is different.” said Rep Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla.
Massie predicted other Trump policy proposals would pass without GOP resistance under the right circumstances.
“I mean, if you put a bill to fund the (border) wall on the floor on January 3 that will pass,” he said. “The problem is, the swamp wants what the swamp wants and they’re going to try to attach what Trump wants to what the swamp wants.”
Before the House voted Thursday, Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., said Trump’s authority is not in doubt.
“Let’s be very clear, President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party,” Van Orden said. “President Trump is going to be leading this nation for the next four years.”
The turmoil in the House is just “building the muscle memory between the executive branch and the legislative branch,” he said.
“This is the first time we’ve worked collectively together after President Trump was elected,” Van Orden added. “So I expected this to be a sort of disjointed process, because now we are understanding how to communicate with each other. So this, this is a good thing.”
Sudiksha Kochi contributed
