The lights will shine brightly at the Capitol this holiday season.
Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
Conservatives profess to hate “continuing resolutions,” or stopgap measures that extend current spending levels for a fixed period of time, putting off savage battles over Republican demands for deep cuts in nondefense spending. But the “CR” that Congress is almost sure to pass in the next few weeks will be an exception since it points not to some renewal of partisan gridlock in the not-too-distant future but to a 2025 Congress in which MAGA Republicans will rule Washington at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
So instead of wrangling with Democrats in the Senate and the White House who will soon be ejected from their seats of power, even the most CR-hating, bipartisanship-despising budget slashers of the House Freedom Caucus will be happy to kick the can into the New Year and then smash the deep state’s checking account for good. For once, House Speaker Mike Johnson can work with Democrats to put the stopgap spending bill together with minimum angst and without looking over his shoulder as rebels in his own party prepare to shiv him in the back.
There has been some uncertainty about how far into the New Order these spending decisions should be pushed, but the consensus deadline for the CR is in March, when presumably the Trump administration will have gotten its act together, most if not all of the Cabinet will be in place, and congressional Republicans will have decided on an overall strategy for implementing the 47th president’s legislative agenda.
Yes, dealing with appropriations (perhaps through individual bills, as in the old days, or perhaps by a big fat omnibus appropriations measure lasting until the end of the fiscal year in September) will be an additional complication for a Congress juggling a lot of MAGA dynamite. But arguably, the huge domestic-spending cuts many Republicans want via the appropriations process will sync up with the huge domestic-spending cuts that will be pursued via the budget-reconciliation process (which will focus on entitlement programs not subject to annual appropriations). An additional factor is Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, which will be cheerleading for demolition of federal programs and services from the sidelines. And more pressure for cuts may come from the need to extend or suspend the national-debt limit; the last debt-limit suspension expires at the end of this year.
Without question, early 2025 will be a virtual jamboree of right-wing lawmaking on every front, including federal spending. Quickly getting as much government-destruction work done as possible is essential for the GOP given the very high odds they will lose their slippery grip on control of the House (and thus the trifecta that makes partisan governance possible) in 2026. Indeed, if the new MAGA regime becomes unpopular, you could see Republicans members of Congress refuse to do anything controversial in the second year of Trump 2.0, given the proximity of the midterms. So the future is right now, an attitude that likely matches the mood of the president-elect, who has completed his last campaign and probably doesn’t care what happens to his party after he’s gone.
