'Nothing to spare': Speaker Johnson warns every House GOP vote will be make-or-break in 2025

05 December 2024

The GOP scored a trifecta in the 2024 election when President-elect Donald Trump narrowly defeated Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and Republicans learned that they will control both branches of Congress in 2025.

Republicans flipped the U.S. Senate, where they will have a small 53-47 majority. And they held onto their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Yet as former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan has been pointing out, none of these GOP victories are the "historic landslides" that Trump and his allies have been claiming they are.

Trump defeated Harris by roughly 1.4 or 1.5 in the popular vote, according to the Cook Political Report. A 53-47 majority in the Senate is far from a supermajority. And the GOP's House majority will also be a small one — so small that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) is warning fellow House Republicans that will have very little wiggle room in 2025.

According to The Hill's Mychael Schnell, Johnson is being candid with members of his party about how small their House majority will be.

"With former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) resigning and ruling out returning to Congress after his failed bid for attorney general, Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) set to resign January 20 to become national security adviser, and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) expected to leave the chamber to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the GOP majority will shrink to 217-215 early next year," Schnell explains in an article published on December 5. "The first special elections are set to take place in April. That leaves a zero-vote margin for the Republican conference on party-line votes, assuming full attendance, making delayed flights and illnesses critical to legislative business."

Schnell continues, "If next year, for example, all House Democrats vote against a GOP-led measure and one Republican breaks from the party and votes with Democrats, the final tally would be 216-216 — sinking the GOP effort, since a tie loses in the lower chamber. That reality will spell trouble for Johnson and his deputies as they look to usher through President-elect Trump's top priorities in the first 100 days of the 119th Congress, with the slim majority making each Republican lawmaker a make-or-break vote on high-profile measures."

Johnson spoke candidly to reporters on Wednesday morning, December 4, telling them, "Do the math. We have nothing to spare."

The speaker, however, expressed confidence that hard-right and more moderate Republicans will be able to work together in 2025.

"Just like we do every day here," Johnson told reporters, "we've developed an expertise in that. We know how to work a small majority."

Read The Hill's full article at this link.

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