The high-stakes battle for control of the House is over, but Speaker Mike Johnson’s politically dangerous year is just beginning.
Winning the speaker’s gavel would be easy, given that Johnson, R-La., had no Democratic support and could only lose one Republican thanks to the razor-thin House Republican majority. It’s not a thing.
On Friday afternoon, all House Republicans except Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) voted for Johnson. The two Republicans who originally voted for someone other than Johnson, Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) and Rep. Ralph Norman (R.C.), are now voting for Mr. Johnson and President-elect Trump. After some discussion, he was eventually persuaded to change his vote.
Johnson will have to similarly take the reins in the coming months to help President-elect Donald Trump deliver on what he has promised will be a very active first 100 days in office. Dew.
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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is pictured in front of the Capitol. (Getty Images/AP)
“There are a lot of expectations and a lot of potential pitfalls,” Marc Short, who served as legislative director during the first Trump administration, said in an interview on Fox News Digital late last month.
At least three separate fiscal battles are expected to occur in the first half of 2025 alone.
Meanwhile, Johnson is expected to lose two House Republicans, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York and Rep. Mike Walz of Florida. Both members are expected to join the Trump administration later this month.
That would reduce his Republican majority in the House to just 217 seats, compared to Democrats’ 215, meaning Republicans would need to vote in lockstep to pass the bill on a party-line vote. means.
A special election is scheduled for April to replace Walz and retiring Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). The election to replace Stefanik has not yet been decided.
Meanwhile, Republicans are seeking to pass two major conservative measures and a spending overhaul through a process called “reconciliation,” which lowers the threshold for Senate passage on certain budget issues from 60 votes to a simple majority.
Both Republicans and Democrats are attempting to use reconciliation to pass significant fiscal policy changes that the other side typically opposes, but this requires extraordinary levels of intraparty cooperation in both the House and Senate. It means that.
The photo shows Michael Walz (left), who was nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to be the next national security adviser, and Elise Stefanik (right), the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
“There are high expectations for budget adjustments, which are really difficult, even with large margins. When you think you’re adjusting the budget twice a year with those margins, that’s a very high expectation. I think it’s unreasonable,” Short told FOX News Digital.
“There’s another request for new funding within three months, and there’s also a debt ceiling fight.”
Republicans must also grapple with a reconciliation bill that is unlikely to gain much, if any, Democratic support, as well as a government funding deadline that was just pushed back to March 14th.
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Lawmakers in both houses of Congress passed a short-term extension in fiscal year 2024 government funding levels in December to give negotiators more time to shorten the remainder of fiscal year 2025.
Unless the House and Senate pass new funding extensions or set new priorities for the remainder of fiscal year 2025 by then, Congress risks sending the government into a partial shutdown.
The next government funding deadline will be September 30, the end of the fiscal year.
But that’s not the only thing Johnson will have to focus on in those months.
President-elect Donald Trump watches Turning Point USA’s America Fest held at the Phoenix Convention Center on December 22, 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)
A bipartisan agreement reached in 2023 suspends the U.S. debt ceiling until January 2025, after which the Treasury Department will take “unusual measures” to avoid a national credit default. I have no choice but to take it.
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The debt limit refers to how much debt the U.S. government can take on while still making the spending commitments it has already made. As of Christmas Eve, the national debt, which measures the amount the United States owes creditors, had fallen to $36,161,621,015,445.57, according to the latest figures released by the Treasury Department.
Raising the debt ceiling has also traditionally been a fraught political battle, with both Republicans and Democrats exploring every avenue to add their own policy goals to the negotiations.
A recent model created by the Economic Policy Innovation Center (EPIC) suggests that the Treasury Department’s “extraordinary measures” could extend the U.S. until mid-June or earlier, giving Congress six months to act. I predict that.
Elizabeth Elkind is a political reporter for FOX News Digital, where she leads coverage of the House of Representatives. Previous digital bylines can be found on the Daily Mail and CBS News.
Follow @liz_elkind on Twitter and send tips to elizabeth.elkind@fox.com.
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