Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson makes his way to the House floor, March 22, 2024.
On Friday, after Republicans repeatedly threatened to shut down the government, the House passed a budget bill without disabling cuts. The vote beautifully fragmented the Republicans.
The successful passage was the result of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) working with Democrats, keeping funding at the level agreed to in the debt limit deal. In the final roll call, the vote was 286 to 134, with 101 Republicans—not even half the caucus—joining 185 Democrats to pass the measure.
Just after midnight Friday, the bill then went to the Senate, where unanimous consent was required to expedite passage. Four far-right senators threatened to hold the bill hostage for further cuts.
But the four, Ted Budd (NC), Mike Lee (UT), Ted Cruz (TX), and Rand Paul (KY), immediately caved and settled for quickie token votes on deeper cuts that they knew would lose, and then allowed the measure to come to the floor. There was no filibuster. By 2 a.m. Saturday morning, the bill had passed the Senate, 74-24, again dividing the GOP caucus almost in half, and was on President Biden’s desk for signature.
Meanwhile, in the House, the always reliable Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, incensed at the display of bipartisanship on largely Democratic terms, filed a motion to declare the Speakership vacant and depose Johnson. She had no takers.
One more Republican, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, is quitting early, leaving the GOP with a margin of error of just one. The House is currently 217-213, and if as expected a Democrat replaces New York’s Brian Higgins in a special election next month, that will go to 217-214.
And it gets better, or worse if you are a Republican. In seizing control of the Republican National Committee and it finances, Trump has made clear that the lion’s share of the money will go to his campaign and that down-ballot candidates for the House and Senate will get whatever’s left over.
That’s fortunate, because the news for Democrats is not great, especially in the Senate. On the hopeful front, thanks to Trump’s meddling, incumbent Sherrod Brown will face the most extreme and weakest of the three Republican primary contenders, Bernie Moreno.
But the Maryland Senate seat, in a state that Biden carried by more than 30 points in 2020, is suddenly in play because the popular moderate former Republican governor, Larry Hogan, will be the GOP candidate, and is leading both Democratic contenders, Rep. David Trone and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, in early polls. Rep. Jamie Raskin would be a much stronger candidate, but Raskin says he isn’t interested in running. In fact, he just endorsed Alsobrooks, a big boost for her against the wealthy self-funder Trone.
The New Jersey seat also looks conceivably at risk, because the corrupt incumbent Bob Menendez is talking about possibly running as an independent, thus splitting the Democratic vote. But Menendez has been running at under 10 percent in the polls, and this ploy is mainly a tactic to stay out of jail; he may well not run. So the New Jersey seat is probably safe with the popular Congressman Andy Kim as the likely Democrat.
If this were a normal year, the Republican legislative disarray would help Joe Biden, since it would underscore the Democrats’ role as the grown-ups in the room, as the party that is serious about governing. But there is nothing normal about this year.
The schisms in the GOP may help Democrats take one or both houses. But Biden needs to make a more effective case for his re-election on its own terms.
