The 'beginning of the end' of the GOP: Mike Johnson is headed for trouble

25 April

House Speaker Mike Johnson at Columbia University in New York City on April 24, 2024 (Lev Radin/Shutterstock.com)

In 2025, President Donald Trump is to the GOP what the late President Ronald Reagan was during the 1980s: the party's most prominent and influential figure. Yet while Reagan famously said that someone who agrees with him 70 percent ally rather than a 30 percent enemy, Trump is known for demanding obedience and loyalty.

Being perceived as even mildly anti-Trump can be the kiss of death in 2025's Republican Party. Never Trump conservatives are prominently featured on MSNBC and CNN, but they aren't running Congress, the Republican National Committee (RNC) or the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

Yet among Trump's allies in Congress, there are plenty of debates and disagreements on the form that the "big, beautiful bill" that Trump wants should take.

In an article published on April 25, the Washington Monthly's Bill Scher addresses the challenges of the "budget reconciliation process" and the disagreements GOP lawmakers are having when it comes to spending.

"The filibuster-proof process often begins with assumptions of party unity on major issues members and activists, only to discover fissures festering under the surface," Scher explains. "In 2017, Republicans found out the hard way they were not united around repealing the Affordable Care Act…. Eight years later, Donald Trump is again president, Republicans are again in control of both chambers, and they again struggle to reach a consensus around health care."

Scher continues, "The House budget resolution — nonbinding legislation but a necessary step in the reconciliation process — instructed the committee with jurisdiction over Medicaid to come up with $880 billion in spending cuts. But the Senate version did not follow suit, and several House Republicans signaled they wouldn't vote for Medicaid cuts that large in the final bill."

Scher notes that "low taxes are not just an issue for the Republican Party," but rather, their "defining issue" — and how they get there is difficult.

"(Trump) appears unwilling to instigate an intra-party confrontation over taxing the wealthy," Scher observes. "However, the mere introduction of the idea may prove to be a fatal toxin injected into the party's bloodstream…. Traditional Republicans like (House Speaker Mike) Johnson want to balance the budget, but they refuse to raise taxes on the wealthy, which pushes them towards politically dangerous, draconian spending cuts for popular programs like Medicaid and, for some, Social Security and Medicare…. Prioritizing extreme deficit reduction forces Republicans to take positions that, in one way or another, threaten their coalition of business-class and working-class voters."

Scher continues, "This is why a budget reconciliation bill isn't quickly and neatly falling into place. In the worst-case scenario, Republicans’ reconciliation bill effort will collapse, and in the ugly aftermath, their intra-party rifts will harden into existential schisms."

Read the full Washington Monthly article at this link.

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