This week, we are given a harsh reminder of what legislation was like under President Donald Trump and the chaos that is soon to be expected in his new term.
President Trump, along with his ally Tesla CEO Elon Musk, upended the bipartisan spending deal on Wednesday, just days before federal funding was set to expire. The deal would have kept the government open until March 14 with $100 billion in disaster relief, $10 billion in aid for farmers and a host of other measures. After Mr. Musk complained about the size of the bill, Mr. Trump called on Republicans to negotiate a new deal that addresses the debt ceiling and removes so-called “Democratic benefits” from the deal.
House Republican leaders tried this, introducing a new bill Thursday. Unsurprisingly, this version of the bill failed to garner the votes needed to pass, leaving lawmakers scrambling again as the closure deadline looms Friday night.
President Trump’s decision to enter negotiations at the 11th hour through social media (and without coordinating with allies in Congress) regularly shatters funding negotiations, forcing the longest negotiations directly into Reminiscent of his first-term approach to Capitol Hill that provoked. Government shutdowns in U.S. history. So this week’s turmoil is both a reminder and a harbinger of the chaos to come.
A brief history of President Trump’s deal-smashing history
During President Trump’s first term, he also proved to be a fickle negotiator, repeatedly calling for a government shutdown on Republicans to pressure Democrats to support his priorities.
Trump, in his first year in office, began calling for a government shutdown as early as August, attacking members of his own party and threatening to endure a shutdown to secure funding for his border wall. emphasized. He also went out of his way to provoke Democrats on Twitter ahead of a November funding meeting, prompting Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to skip the meeting. I let it happen.
And in January 2018, with a government shutdown looming, President Trump further helped scuttle a potential spending deal by introducing unrelated border security demands. That same month, Trump and Schumer famously met over cheeseburgers and appeared to reach an agreement, according to Democratic lawmakers.
The deal includes increased military spending and potential funding for wall construction in exchange for legislation that would create a path to legal status for DACA recipients (a category of illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children). It was supposed to include Democratic support for. But after the meeting, Trump reportedly pushed for tougher immigration policies, including a crackdown on illegal immigration across the country, ultimately killing the deal.
The following week, Democrats withheld a vote on a funding bill aimed at mandating the inclusion of DACA protections, leading to a brief shutdown. But it didn’t work out in the end. The government shutdown ended with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promising Democrats a vote on the immigration bill, which later failed to pass.
Perhaps most notably, President Trump went on to trigger a 35-day government shutdown from December 2018 to January 2019 after criticizing a bipartisan funding deal that lawmakers had already agreed to. . His comments prompted House Republicans to pass a different version of the spending bill that would include more than $5 billion in funding for border wall construction, but Democrats balked at supporting it. The inability to find a version of the bill that the House and Senate could pass caused funding deadlines to expire and the government to shut down.
More than a month later, it has become clear that Trump and his Republican allies do not have the votes to fund border wall construction, and that the shutdown’s impact on government services has become intolerable. Trump capitulated to the demands (and his approval ratings also declined, which became more evident as the shutdown dragged on). He eventually signed a short-term funding bill to restart the government, but it did not include funding for the border wall he had requested, though he later signed a national emergency bill in a second, more successful attempt to secure wall funding. declared the situation.
Even after leaving the White House in January 2021, President Trump continues to interfere with funding legislation. Just this fall, he again called on Republicans to veto funding bills and shut down the government if Congress doesn’t pass legislation to suppress the already illegal non-referendum vote.
A return to the chaos of President Trump’s first term
This week’s developments are another sign that Trump’s destructive style remains unchanged, especially with the vocal support of new allies like Musk.
If Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk adopt a common approach to governing by tweeting (or posting on Truth Social), it could add to the turmoil and pressure that Republicans face in the president-elect’s second term.
Both did not hesitate to use threats to bully people into silence. For example, Mr. Musk has said he would financially support senators running in primaries against those who do not support Mr. Trump’s Cabinet changes. And Trump has a history of pushing primaries against lawmakers who don’t follow his orders, a tactic he repeated this week.
Republicans will once again control both chambers of Congress next year, just as they did during the first two years of President Trump’s first term, but their slim majorities will bring their own challenges. To get anything done, House Speaker Mike Johnson will either have to keep his fragile coalition fully unified or rely on Democrats. Already this year, Johnson has been forced to rely on Democrats to pass several funding bills, a dynamic that has drawn the ire of Johnson’s right and threatens to challenge his leadership in a new term. There is a possibility that it will be spurred on.
Even if MPs resolve the funding dispute, Johnson will not have much time to rest. The next deadline, likely in mid-March, will be an early test for a return to unified Republican governance. If this week is any indication, Republican leaders will be left to their own devices. And Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk are likely to throw a few more grenades in the process.
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