Brace for Republican Chaos

Republican chaos has started already. It's only going to get worse.

Jan 02, 2025

In his first stint as host of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart (Comedian and early 2028 front-runner for Democratic presidential nominee1) had a bit that perfectly described Republican’s approach to politics. It went something like this: “Republicans run on how bad and inept the government is. They then win elections, enter office, run the government badly and ineptly, and go, “Told ya!”

Tomorrow, the 119th Congress will be sworn in, and Republicans will control the House, Senate, and White House for the first time since 2019. I suspect Stewart’s observation will remain as prescient as ever.

Welcome to 2025! It's time to brace for chaos. Here is a quick breakdown of what to expect:

What’s a budget?

Before we enter 2025, we need to quickly recap what happened at the end of 2024, as it will heavily influence its start.

On December 20th, President Biden signed a spending bill to fund the government until March 14th.
After several attempts to pass a bill with only Republican support, Speaker Mike Johnson was forced to rely heavily on Democratic votes to pass the spending bill through the House. All but one Democrat voted for the spending bill, and thirty-four Republicans voted against it.
While the spending bill accomplished some key funding needs (disaster relief and economic aid for farmers), it excluded a two-year lift on the debt ceiling.
The impact of this bill will play heavily on how 2025 starts.

Speaker Johnson?

The first task of the 119th Congress is to elect a Speaker of the House. For Democrats, this tends to be easy and drama-free. Not so much for Republicans. Here are the key things to know about the upcoming speaker vote:

The Republican majority in the House is 220-215, the smallest in 100 years. Come voting time, that majority will shrink to 219-215 thanks to the resignation of Matt Gaetz. This means that Speaker Mike Johnson can only afford to lose one vote to maintain his role as Speaker2.
Donald Trump has endorsed Mike Johnson as Speaker.
Five Republicans have expressed their concerns about voting for Speaker Johnson so far, including Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who told CNN he would not vote for Mike Johnson. Johnson’s cardinal sin? Working with Democrats to pass a spending bill.

Here’s the bottom line:

The Speaker of the House is the presiding officer of the House of Representatives. Without a Speaker, the House cannot formally organize, legislate, or participate in joint sessions. On Monday, January 6th, the certification of the 2024 election will occur.

If the Republicans can’t elect a Speaker, the 2024 election can’t be certified, which would delay Donald Trump’s ascendency to power.

This won’t happen. The pressure facing Republicans to elect a Speaker will be enormous. As of now, Mike Johnson is the only name with enough votes to win the required 218 votes to become Speaker. I suspect this will happen.

The question will be what concessions the five or more holdouts can extract from him for their votes.

Process Doesn’t Matter; Policy Does

All this speaker drama and infighting is entertaining. The chaos makes for good television. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter to voters. The same insanity happened at the start of the 118th Congress, and the American public sent them back in the majority.

The process stuff doesn’t tend to matter. But the policy does.

The outcomes of these fights should be our focus. It doesn’t matter that it took 15 votes to elect Speaker Kevin McCarthy. What matters is that the 118th Congress passed only 150 bills, almost half the average of past legislative sessions.

The 119th Congress will be chaotic, but it will also have a legislative agenda that is more damaging to the American people:

Extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts that will give larger tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy, adding $5 trillion to our debt.
Key social services, such as food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, will be cut to pay for those tax cuts.
Blanket Tariffs that raise prices on all Americans.
The repeal of clean energy programs.
Eliminating the Department of Education.

This should be our focus. This is the real chaos the Republican party will unleash. This is what we need to brace ourselves for.