Mike Johnson has 'little room to maneuver' as GOP lawmakers fight over spending

03 March

When a spending bill was narrowly passed, 217-215, in the U.S. House of Representatives on February 25, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) was reminded how small his GOP majority is.

House Democrats were united in their opposition to the bill, and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) was the only Republican who joined them in voting "no." A few more GOP defections would have doomed the bill.

Politico's Meredith Lee Hill, in an article published on March 3, explains why Johnson "will likely have little room to maneuver" in the weeks ahead.

"Among those he now needs to placate are tax writers who want a costly permanent extension of Trump's 2017 tax cuts, hardliners who want even deeper spending cuts if the tax provisions expand, swing-district members who want assurances on safety-net programs and even billionaire Elon Musk, who has raised public concerns about Johnson’s plan," Hill explains. "That's to say nothing of (President Donald) Trump himself, who has sided, at times, with all of those competing factions."

Those "factions," according to Hill, range from budget hawks like Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) to House Republicans who represent swing districts and fear that cuts to Medicaid and other programs will hurt them politically.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) told Politico, "The Senate will never agree with (those cuts). That’s just the fact."

Roy, however, told Politico, "The House has spoken, and I think we need to defend that position…. We've stated there was a floor (for cuts), and we ought to stick to it being a floor. If the Senate wants to move to permanence, and if any of that is going up, we’re going to have to see even more cuts."

Further complicating matters, Hill reports, is Tesla/SpaceX/X.com CEO Musk's "criticism of the speaker's plan."

"Johnson has tried to brush off Musk's online criticism, saying in a brief interview that he had 'no concerns” after the tech mogul launched a broadside on X the night before the budget vote last week," Hill observes. "In December, Musk rampaged online against a spending deal Johnson had forged with Democrats, forcing the speaker to scrap it."

Read the full Politico article at this link.

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