Donald Trump is the most powerful Republican politician in a generation, but the president-elect is still no match for the most nihilistic members of his own party. The budget chaos unfolding on Capitol Hill is only a preview of the difficult realities Mr Trump will face when he starts to govern next month.
Members of the expiring 118th Congress—with a Senate narrowly controlled by Democrats and a House narrowly controlled by Republicans—had expected this week to be their last in Washington this year. The main outstanding task was to pass a simple bill, no more than a few pages long, to keep the government funded into 2025 at close to existing levels. The idea was to postpone battles over unresolved policy matters until Mr Trump and the next Congress were in place. Yet nothing is so simple in Washington these days.
Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, knew that a few dozen members of his own Republican caucus would never vote for any budget. Instead he worked with Democrats on a compromise that would keep the government open until March. With Democrats aware of their leverage, the negotiations got away from the speaker, producing the kind of legislative labyrinth that Mr Johnson had vowed to never put up for a vote. In addition to extended funding, its 1,547 pages included disaster aid, support for farmers, and a hotch-potch of other unrelated legislation, from a stadium relocation to restrictions on investments in China. A 3.8% salary increase for lawmakers—the first in 15 years and significantly lower than the 40% that Elon Musk erroneously claimed had been proposed—provoked predictable backlash.
Budgetary chaos is a sign that governing will be harder than Donald Trump might assume https://t.co/8QX33oATck 👇
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) December 20, 2024
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