Tiny GOP Congressional Majorities Are Perilous for Trump

Can Mike Johnson keep his troops together? Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Donald Trump is feeling his 78-year-old oats and MAGA activists are ready to rumble in the wake of his solid presidential win and the very likely GOP trifecta in Washington. (The Senate is already safely in the bag and a House majority is very near.) But they should all exercise a bit of caution. The first Trump administration demonstrated that narrow congressional majorities can be fragile when it comes to enacting controversial legislation. And the leverage that tiny majorities confer on potential dissenters can become a real problem for would-be legislative steamrollers.

Right now, barring recounts, Republicans will have a 53-to-47 margin in the upper chamber. In the House, there remain enough unresolved races (particularly in California, which has eight of them) to create a sliver of doubt about party control, or more realistically, doubt about the Republican margin. But there’s no doubt at all the number of GOP House seats in the next Congress will be far short of the 241 they held in 2017 (somewhere south of 2020 remains a strong possibility). It’s very clear Republicans will want to put together a mammoth budget-reconciliation measure that can include most of Trump’s legislative priorities in a single bill; such bills cannot be filibustered in the Senate. But when they tried this last time around (with the budget-reconciliation bill known as the “Obamacare repeal” or “Trumpcare” legislation because of its most prominent provisions), they lost three Republicans senators in the most important vote (punctuated by John McCain’s famous “thumbs-down” gesture) and the whole thing fell apart.

Two of the three GOP Trumpcare dissenters (Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski) are still in the Senate, but then again, the Republican majority is a vote larger. The underlying problem for Team Trump is the Senate’s tradition of independence compounded by the temptation an unknown number of Republicans will face to shake down the leadership for home-state goodies or, worse yet, form an alliance with like-minded Democrats to wield some real power. That possibility could be enough to restrain the White House or the leadership from some of the more egregiously unpopular measures they might be considering.

It’s also important to remember that not every Trump or GOP priority can be included in a budget-reconciliation bill: There’s a requirement for budgetary impact that could exclude some policy legislation, particularly on issues like reproductive rights. In such cases Democrats can successfully deploy a Senate filibuster, assuming Senate Republicans don’t do a total 180-degree turn by abolishing the filibuster, one of their favorite weapons for minority rule.

Even if they can wrangle the Senate into submission, Team Trump could have problems in the House if the Republican majority is as small as it may well be (a two- or three-seat majority remains entirely plausible). Assuming there’s no revolt against Mike Johnson right out of the gate (he could further alienate hard-core fiscal conservatives by too much bipartisanship during the lame-duck session that will occur before the next Congress gathers in January), he will still be under intense pressure early in 2025 from three different directions.

The first, of course, is from the Trump White House; his close alliance with the 47th president is the only reason he’s survived so far, and he is extremely unlikely to display any independence now that his lord and master is back in the presidency. The second pressure point will be from Johnson’s pre-existing tormenters in the House Freedom Caucus, who will be determined to resist any compromises with a probably less conservative Senate, particularly on the Freedom Caucus’s pet plans to demolish non-defense discretionary spending and abolish federal agencies. If, as expected, Republicans decide to include tax cuts in their first budget-reconciliation bill, the red ink may be all Freedom Caucus types need to go medieval on federal spending, even beyond what the administration wants.

The challenge to Mike Johnson (and indirectly, to Trump) that no one much is talking about, however, is from less doctrinaire House Republicans from swing districts who narrowly won in 2024 and are looking down the barrel of potential defeat in 2026 when more than likely there will be a midterm reaction against the party in power (since there almost always is). Like Murkowski and Collins (and perhaps others) in the Senate, House Republican mavericks could threaten defection if they don’t get rich concessions from Johnson and the administration — concessions that, of course, would be bitterly resented by the HFC folk on the Speaker’s other flank. And if the GOP agenda loses popularity with any speed, then the temptation will arise for swing-state House Republicans to defect altogether on reconciliation and other must-have votes.

So as the final House races are resolved, Republicans had better hope for every seat they can get. Otherwise the whole overpowering trifecta lineup for the GOP can be on treacherous ground.