GOP Lessons From the Christmas Shutdown Brinkmanship
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After Congress narrowly avoids a pre-Christmas government closure, is this a preview of the next two years? Or what lessons can be learned from the shutdown showdown, including maybe by Donald Trump and Elon Musk? Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with The Wall Street Journal. We're joined today by my colleagues, columnist Kim Strassel and editorial board member Mene Ukwebarua.

On Saturday, President Biden signed a bill to extend government funding into March, technically after the midnight deadline, but without any interruption in government funding, government programs. The bill included $100 billion in disaster aid, $10 billion in assistance to farmers, did not include what President Trump wanted, which is an increase in the debt ceiling.

President Biden said this agreement represents a compromise, which means neither side got everything it wanted, but it ensures the government can continue to operate at full capacity. Here's what Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was saying on Friday after the bill passed his chamber. This is America first legislation because it allows us to be set up to deliver for the American people. In January, we will make a sea change in Washington.

President Trump will return to D.C. and to the White House, and we will have Republican control of the Senate and the House. Things are going to be very different around here. This was a necessary step to bridge the gap, to put us into that moment where we can put our fingerprints on the final decisions on spending for 2025.

Kim, maybe the place to start is what did Congress ultimately pass to avoid this government shutdown? And how much do you think it differed from the original proposal by Speaker Mike Johnson? So in other words, what, if anything, was accomplished by this week-long drama of will they or won't they? So if you're really concerned by Washington's tendency of getting to the end of a year and

and wrapping together one big bill and taking all kinds of flotsam and jetsam that they didn't bother to put through regular order through the rest of the year. And they jam it all into this one thing, often with provisions that nobody sees. If you don't like that process, you can argue that...

what came out in the end was slightly better. And in this regard, so the bill that they were going to pass before Elon Musk and Donald Trump through a temper tantrum was about 1500 pages long. By the time they got to the end of it, it was more like 118 pages long. And here's some of the things that came out of the bill. They,

got rid of a provision that would, for instance, tackle junk fees. That's what they call it. Certain charges that they want hotels and ticket salespeople to tell you up front. They got rid of a congressional pay raise. They got rid of changes that were going to affect pharmacy benefit managers. They got rid of a provision in which the federal government reimburses states for food stamp fraud.

They got rid of a bit in there that was about criminalizing deep fake images. It goes on and on. There was just all this catch-all stuff they'd thrown in the bill. And so in that regard, if you are a fan of Congress, like having to debate these things in public and be transparent instead of jamming everything in at the end, there was a slight improvement. However,

The funny part of this is, is that this was not necessarily the big complaint of Trump or Musk. Their big complaint and the complaint of some conservatives. Well, conservatives were unhappy with this bill because it contained a boatload of spending, including $100 billion more in disaster aid and $10 billion more for economic aid for farmers, in addition to keeping the government funded at current levels until March 14th.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk wanted there to also be a provision in the bill that would suspend the debt ceiling for longer than is currently envisioned. In the end, they didn't get their debt ceiling suspension wish, and all that money for disaster aid and for farmers remained in the bill, which is why 34 Republicans voted against it in the end.

So you have to ask yourself if the drama of four days of wondering if there was going to be a shutdown and the really ugly look for Republicans who were all throwing stones at each other and there was a giant food fight for four days and showed all the divisions and problems in the party, if it was worth it for that. I think there'd be many Republicans who, in retrospect, would argue it was not. Yeah.

And that's the difficulty is there are probably many Republicans in the House and the Senate who would be happy to advance an argument as a caucus, as a conference, as a party that this is what we're going to do. We're going to get rid of this disaster aid funding or we're going to make the argument that we need to debate these extraneous provisions about pharmacy benefit managers and so forth.

in the regular order instead of stuffing them into an end-of-year continuing resolution bill. But it seems to me, Manet, that the challenge they're having is trying to figure out what the putative leader of their party, Donald Trump, wants at any given moment because they can think that they're all on the same page.

They have a plan. They have an agenda. We're going to pass this bill. Then we're going to move into our reconciliation process next year and start getting our priorities together. And then someday at a random time of day, the Trump comes out with a tweet that says, no, this bill is complete trash. You need to kill it. Anybody who doesn't needs to get a primary challenge. Elon Musk jumps on and says, by the way, I'll fund that primary challenge.

Then they end up trying to figure out what actually the playbook is. And, Manay, I'm starting to wonder whether this is going to be a preview of how the Republicans with the narrow majority in the House and relatively narrow in the Senate, too, the challenge that they're going to have over the next two years of the Trump presidency. I do think that the presence in the background of Donald Trump was a big difference between how this funding fight proceeded compared with some of the previous ones during Mike Johnson's tenure as Speaker.

It did seem as if there was a large group of Republicans in the House, particularly members of the Freedom Caucus, who you knew were not going to vote on any piece of funding legislation out of principle because they wanted to make sure that they were offsetting spending cuts for anything that they would

put their name on, which meant that Mike Johnson knew from the very beginning that he was going to have to cut a deal with Democrats and would be able to include a bunch of different things that Democrats would demand in return for their support. And in the end, it was going to be ugly. It was going to include a lot of policy priorities that most Republicans, including Johnson himself, might not favor, but that it would pass and they would be able to move on. The fact that Donald Trump now is preparing to

returned to the White House and wants to be able to set the agenda even now before he's sworn in means that you do see a lot of these House Republicans saying that I don't want to sign on to this bill in cooperation with the Democrats when we're so close to being in full control of the government altogether. And when we know there's a possibility of President Trump condemning the deal that they strike from the background. But I do think that you

You can't pin all of this on Trump. I do think that there really is no reason why Congress isn't able to deal with some of these provisions like disaster aid, which they knew they were going to have to pass from the get-go, like the farm bill and the farm supplemental funding that they ended up deciding to give. These are the

types of policy questions that Congress should be able to hash out rather than thinking that these major funding bills are their only vehicle to be able to force consensus and get them through. So a lot of this chaos should have been avoidable if during the past few months they had been deciding to proactively put together something on them and

leave the funding fight as a separate question in its own rights, rather than trying to put it all into a single pile, which is part of what created a lot of the chaos and dissatisfaction. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment.

Welcome back. The flip side of President Trump's role here in December 2024, in the waning days of the Biden presidency, is the absence of the current occupant of the Oval Office, President Biden. And Kim, part of what's notable about that is the way that some of the press have now turned on the president. Here's the headline at Politico. Biden is AWOL as Washington spirals into shutdown chaos.

The top of the story says that more than a half dozen House Democratic lawmakers said Thursday that they had yet to hear from the president, even as Congress scrambled to salvage a funding deal and avoid shutting down the government. Kim, we're still in the Biden presidency. It's a lame duck period, but President Biden said,

has the signature pen or the veto pen. He still has a majority in the Senate. Remarkable that he seemed last week not to be invested in this funding fight, trying to get through any last priorities that he and the Democrats wanted before they lose power entirely in Washington in a little less than a month. Yeah, and this is remarkable. That's the only word.

Normally, when you have a moment like this, we're talking about shutting down the federal government. This is the head of the federal government. And we heard nothing from him. I mean, if you look back at prior shutdown or cliff moments,

The White House was a prime operator, whether it was under a Republican president or a Democratic president. They were in daily conference with the leaders of the Senate and the House. They were out making demands, at least attempting to exert pressure to see things go the direction that they want them to go.

And this is pretty much what we're getting from Biden, though, all around. He's been doing some foreign travel, but there's no engagement whatsoever with the nation, at least not publicly. I would note that most of his

cabinet heads and agencies are working 24-7 to try to put up some roadblocks to the incoming Trump administration to cement their last priorities, if that's shoveling money out the door, for instance, so that they can deny Republicans the ability to claw it back when they come in. So they're doing things. But the president himself appears to be very checked out. And I find this very concerning, not just

From the standard of or from the position of a congressional fight, Congress has now left for the rest of the year. But the rest of the world is watching this as well, too. And the last thing the White House wants is to project the appearance of a president who is not really on the job in these waning days because that's something our adversaries are watching as well.

One other thing notable I wanted to pull out from last week was the role of Elon Musk. He went on a Twitter tirade against the original spending bill. I guess maybe I'd call it an x.com tirade now. And Mene, notable in that it seems like he did not, to my view, did not understand the options that were available to House Republicans. And that is a frustration, I think,

in Washington broadly when you have divided government and a Senate that is still controlled by Chuck Schumer. You have to negotiate. Republicans are not going to get the kind of massive spending cuts that many of them want in this kind of situation. And the alternative is then to shut down the government, which in my view, the party who is trying to shut down the government often gets blamed for by the public and rarely, if ever, gets what they want out of it in the end.

And that is what Elon Musk suggested should be done in the middle of last week. He said no bills should be passed. Congress, January 20th, when Donald Trump takes office, none, zero, suggesting that we could go about a month of no Social Security checks going out, members of the military not being paid over Christmas, and there would not be a huge policy

political backlash for that. And Manay, I wonder if that is an ill portent perhaps for this Department of Government efficiency effort that Musk is leading. He's a great success as a businessman, has built some incredible companies, including SpaceX, but there's a record of successful business people coming into politics and

And not always understanding the limited options that are available within the political system. And if he thinks that Republicans would have been wise to shut down the government for about a month, I think maybe he is going to start walking into some pretty stiff walls here when he tries to take on these regulatory agencies.

Well, it's an interesting question because I think that if you asked Elon Musk today, was your intervention in this funding process successful? He would say that it absolutely was in the sense that he thinks that Congress was on the verge of potentially passing a deal that was loaded with a whole bunch of extras, including some of those provisions that Kim mentioned at the

top of this episode. And then he probably was the person most responsible for pushing Trump to intervene. And in the end, they got essentially the same version of the deal in terms of the core spending levels, in terms of the disaster and farm aid, but with some of the extra stripped out. So from his standpoint, he probably thinks, wow, that worked better than I could have possibly thought it would. But I do think that you're right. The way that he went about intervening showed a lot of

lack of awareness about how Congress has to function. Frankly, I think a more helpful thing for him to do if he were going to speak up would be to criticize some of the members of the Freedom Caucus who have staked out this territory where they're not going to vote for any clean continuing resolution and forcing Mike Johnson into the position where he has to rely on Democratic votes just to get the House side of the agreement passed.

And so he probably has a lot more to learn in terms of the balance of power between the parties as it currently stands, the way these funding fights proceed. In terms of the effectiveness of Doge, it's going to be much more in the realm of curtailing

executive branch regulations, trying to curb certain types of spending that can be done without having to rely on Congress to get involved. That's what you've seen him and Vivek Ramaswamy lay out in their most persuasive forms of describing what their mandate is going to be. But if they do reach further than that into trying to push Congress to act and trying to have a big imprint on the tax legislation that's coming up,

the border legislation that Congress is going to be working on, I do think that their lack of expertise will show and they could end up losing a lot of goodwill from Republican lawmakers and making things much more difficult for themselves. Hang tight. We'll be right back after one more break. Don't forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker. Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast.

From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. Welcome back.

Meantime, what about Speaker Mike Johnson, who is going to be up for another speakership vote on January 3rd? Real questions about whether he can muster a majority to keep that gavel. The Republican House majority is going to be even narrower, if you can believe it, next year. Some reports I'm reading doing the calculating suggesting that Johnson could maybe lose only one Republican if all Democrats show up and vote against him and vote

retain the speakership. Notably, amid this funding fight last week, one Republican said that he would not vote for Speaker Johnson again. That is Kentucky Republican Thomas Massey saying that I'll vote for somebody else. I've got a few in mind. I'm not going to say yet. As far as I know, nobody yet has decided to mount a formal challenge against

to Speaker Johnson. But Kim, are we potentially going into another confusing speaker battle where it's not clear who can get a majority and maybe the answer for some weeks or days is nobody? Well, I would note that some of the chaos that we saw this last week was that uncertainty over Mike Johnson's future and that

When he was drafting that initial bill, he was attempting to do so in a way that could get it across the finish line, but not do so in a way that outright provoked a lot of those more House Freedom Caucus members who have been skeptical of his speakership in the past. It was pretty clear a bill was going to pass that they did not like, but he was attempting to degrade

do so in a way that maintained bridges there. And this is some of the kind of unspoken secret in Washington over the past couple of months, which is that if he can simply get through January 3rd, he likely will have a lot more flexibility, not necessarily in passing legislation. He's still going to need every one of those votes, but he won't have to move every day worried that he's going to lose his job.

Because I would note as well that another thing that's at least envisioned as part of the new House package of rules is that they're going to raise the threshold for the number of members you would need to call for a motion to vacate the chair. So, you know, this was what was the cause of Kevin McCarthy losing his speakership. Matt Gaetz and others piled on and that threshold had been set very low. In theory, the new rules package will increase.

make it harder for that to happen. So if he can simply get across the line on January 3rd, he should have some more maneuvering room. One big unknown here is Donald Trump.

who at least publicly and at times where it has mattered more has expressed support for Mike Johnson's speakership, but he's been quiet now. Is he going to attempt to step in there and throw his weight around in that space as well? I'm hoping that one of the things that people are telling him is there is not a natural response

replacement for Mike Johnson. When you have the margins that you mentioned, Kyle, anybody else who wants to come in is also going to have to have the support of pretty much the unanimous caucus.

And right now, there really isn't anyone. I mean, especially if Johnson were ousted, there'd be a lot of bruised feelings on that, which would mean any replacement would find it that much harder to get some of those votes. That's exactly what we saw in the Kevin McCarthy fight. And at that point, Republicans had a bigger majority than they're going to have next year.

So this, I think, is that huge question on January 3rd. He can lose Massey if there are any more House Freedom Caucus members who come out and on principle say no. And then you get into the question is if Donald Trump does weigh in and he weighs in in favor of Johnson, does he then exert his pressure to get the rest of members to fall in line? In my view, Johnson has done a pretty good job since becoming speaker and

to Kim's point here, might be one of the few people who can bridge this divide in that he has conservative credibility. I don't think there are real doubts that he is a conservative at heart, that he would like to go further than his current majority allows him to get spending under control just to pick one issue. But he's also a realist in that he knows sitting in the

if he has a majority of one or two seats, are to pass something that all Republicans will vote for, but he knows he has this rump of Republicans who say they won't vote for any continuing resolution, for example, or to pass something that some Democrats will vote for, which will necessarily mean there are less conservative policies in it, or to blunder into some kind of shutdown.

And Mene, we'll give you the last word, but that is the constant difficulty, it seems to me, is that it is easy to be on the back benches, as they say in UK politics, and throw peanuts at the guy who is trying to keep the government open so that his party doesn't get blamed.

for some kind of shutdown that doesn't pay members of the military over Christmas. And it is much harder to be sitting there in the Speaker's office actually trying to figure out which kind of a bill can advance some conservative priorities while still getting enough votes to get over the finish line. I think you just described the core irony, which is that the members of the House Republican caucus who

say that they're most opposed to the deals that Mike Johnson has cut are the ones who are the most responsible for the fact that he has to constantly rely on Democratic support to get these funding bills across the line because they refuse to sign on to any type of agreement so that they would be able to pass something just with Republican votes. And then they could go into conference with Chuck Schumer and Senate Republicans with President Biden and figure out

how are we going to amend this so that we can finally agree on getting something passed? I think that one of the greatest successes of the current Congress came during Kevin McCarthy's speakership, actually, when they were negotiating over the debt ceiling deal. It certainly wasn't a perfect agreement. In fact, it restrained the growth of defense spending. And that's a problem that Republicans are now having to

tried to make up for in the coming Congress, but it did get work requirements attached to food stamps. It did get billions of dollars clawed back from some of the funding that Democrats gave to the IRS and the Inflation Reduction Act. And they were able to do that because it was one of the only major spending bills when Republicans got together and presented a united front.

rather than having Republican extensions and having to force Kevin McCarthy to reach across the aisle. And there's no way that House Democrats would have allowed some of those positive provisions to make it into the deal in the first place. And so I think that the way forward for House Republicans is for some of the quote unquote fiscal hawk

to do some soul searching, realize where their power actually comes from and the approach that's going to maximize the Republican advantage. And that's going to be being willing to actually cooperate with leadership and put a united front forward. So I'm not optimistic about that happening. That definitely would be the best way for Republicans to be able to exert as much leverage as they possibly can in the Congress. Thank you all for listening. You can email us at pwpodcast at wsj.com.

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