The Speaker's Troubles

He doesn't seem to have the votes for his budget bill, and if he finds them it could be costly.

Speaker Mike Johnson is….oy. Where do I even start? He’s asking his conference to knowingly BTU themselves.

I guess I’ll have to explain that one.

Republicans don’t have much of a legislative agenda, but they do have one big thing they need to do: The old tax cuts from Donald Trump’s first term are set to expire this year, so Congress needs to pass an extension or else taxes go way up on rich folks and corporations. On top of that, Trump went around during the campaign promising a variety of tax breaks (no taxing tips or overtime, for example).

There’s also spending increases on stuff that Republicans like, such as spending on border issues. And cutting spending on things Republicans don’t like, such as health care.

All of that is going to draw zero votes from Democrats, so with a 53-47 Senate falling seven short of 60 votes, Republicans need to use special procedures that allow their bill or bills to avoid the filibuster and pass with just a simple majority. That’s called “reconciliation.” And to do so, they first have to pass a budget resolution. You may have heard that there’s a big dispute between the chambers on this one: Senate Republicans passed their version without the tax component last week and plan a second bill for taxes later in the year, while the House wants to do one enormous bill that gets it all done.

That’s scheduled for a vote on Tuesday. Or later, if necessary.. The problem? The bill as written calls for huge cuts of Medicaid. Some Republicans want even more massive cuts to Medicaid and other popular programs, and some are afraid of cutting it at all. And remember, the Republican majority in the House right now is only 218-215, which means (given full attendance) that if two Republicans vote “no,” the bill will fail.¹

So what did Johnson offer ahead of this tough vote? Less than nothing, per Politico: “Look, everybody needs to understand that the resolution is merely the starting point for the process…So there’s nothing specific about Medicaid in the resolution. The legislation comes later, so this is the important first start.”

This is where we get to BTU. Back in 1993, Bill Clinton supported a tax on energy consumption – a “BTU” tax – as part of his fiscal plan and persuaded reluctant House Democrats to pass a budget resolution containing the tax. But then the Senate dropped the tax, leaving House Democrats with a tough vote on their record, perhaps even worse because it was easy for Republicans to play up the importance of the never-advanced tax. Since Democrats got clobbered in the midterms, the sense they had been BTU’d looked even larger than it probably was.

So now Johnson is claiming that voting for the budget resolution with large Medicaid cuts, even as angry constituents are flooding town hall meetings, because…maybe the cuts won’t really happen? This seems like small consolation for Members of the House who will correctly assume that the votes will be held against them regardless.² And meanwhile, given that spending hawks want even deeper cuts, it seems likely that the cuts could easily wind up in the final reconciliation bill after all, at which point the pressure to vote yes will presumably be at least as strong and probably stronger than it is now.

The long-term history of the less extreme conservatives is that they regularly fold, while the most extreme conservatives are willing to tank major bills to get their way. So Johnson may just not consider the less extreme faction a serious threat. Then again, this group includes several Members who hold contested seats; force them to take tough votes and it really could cost Johnson his majority next November.³

To be fair to Johnson, most of this has nothing to do with him. Not only are there a whole bunch of radicals in his conference who don’t believe in compromise, but he’s trying to pass an ambitious and unpopular bill with a tiny majority. And no help from the president, who hasn’t focused on this at all and is well-known to shift positions at any point anyway. Johnson is also going to have to go back to his conference in in the next three weeks and get votes to fund the government for the remainder of this fiscal year, which promises to also be a tough vote. All in the context of a presidency that’s already flailing and losing popularity rapidly, although Trump isn’t quite unpopular yet.

I have no idea how this ends up, other than I’m reasonably confident that they’ll eventually manage to extend the old tax cuts and very confident that they’ll substantially increase the federal budget deficit. By the way, don’t be fooled by the claims that they need the Medicaid cuts to offset the tax cuts (or the increased spending on border issues, which is probably the most popular thing in the bill). These Republicans don’t think in terms of offsets. Those who want the Medicaid cuts want them because they don’t think the government should spend money on health care, especially for working class and poor people. A party that actually cared about federal budget deficits would consider giving up other priorities in order to cut deficits; that’s not what this GOP does.

Still, while it may not all be Johnson’s fault, he doesn’t seem to be very effective at all in protecting his most at-risk Members. And it sure looks like they’re about to take a hit. At this point, either a bunch of Republicans in contested seats are going to cast an unpopular vote that could hurt them…or they’re going to tank (for now) the bill containing virtually their entire legislative agenda and thereby make the party look like clowns.

Hey, at least they probably won’t have to explain it in person to their constituents, since I doubt Republicans are going to schedule any more town hall meetings anytime soon. Which isn’t exactly good news for them either.

1. How fragile is the GOP majority? The Senate is slow-walking the confirmation of Elise Stefanik for UN Ambassador so that she doesn’t have to resign her House seat before two upcoming special elections in Republican districts. And then there’s Florida’s Cory Mills, who in different times might have vacated his own seat after police were ready to arrest him for assaulting a woman, but innocent or guilty he’s unlikely to go anywhere or get any pressure from Republicans to do so.

2. We can’t know how effective Democratic attacks based on the vote will be next November, but Johnson’s excuse — that the specific Medicaid cuts aren’t listed in the bill, even though the bill and the debate over it make it clear what’s happening — isn’t likely to be a very effective defense.

3. Can one vote really cost multiple seats eighteen months from now? Probably not. But it’s not impossible; after all, given the slim margin all it would take is moving two or three seats over the edge, and there are always a few very close House elections. Besides; if the cuts survive the first House vote, they’re likely to get at least another vote at some point, and perhaps become law — and that means a lot of people would be losing benefits. That’s something they might notice!