House Speaker Mike Johnson says he wants to preside over a “normal Congress,” but the Republican-led House keeps showing what that really means in practice: all-night sessions, hours of dead zones with no action on the floor, legislation written on the fly behind closed doors, sudden votes scheduled and spectacular failures. The machinery of rule is grinding, improvising, and barely holding together while ordinary people are told this is governance.
Who Has the Power
This week, the House did manage to pass bills, including a bipartisan bill to fund much of the Department of Homeland Security and end the longest agency shutdown in history. Johnson called the process “ugly” and “long,” adding, “But we got it done.” That is the language of a political apparatus that treats crisis as routine and public life as something to be patched together after the fact.
The Republican majority is described as paper-thin, and Republicans face an uphill climb in this election year to keep it. They are also preparing to ask voters in November to rehire them for another term, even as they appear at times as if they are still learning on the job years after returning to power in 2022. The article describes this week’s starts and stops as five hours of delay while Johnson huddled behind closed doors to salvage his agenda, followed by a sudden vote tally near 11 p.m. What would once have shocked the political and procedural senses is now just another Wednesday.
Rep. Ted Lieu of California, part of Democratic leadership, said, “House Republicans have shown again that they can’t govern.” He added, “They routinely pass bills to the Senate that are way too extreme, then it ends up that we have all these floor session days where we’re just doing nothing.”
Who Gets Dragged Through It
Johnson, who took over for the ousted Kevin McCarthy more than two years ago, is presiding over one of the slimmest House majorities in modern times. That leaves him no room to spare if he is trying to pass legislation on party-line votes without Democrats. He is juggling not only President Donald Trump’s priorities but also those of the various factions that make up his majority, from the conservative House Freedom Caucus to what remains of the GOP’s more pragmatic conservatives.
Johnson’s own future is always in question, after Republicans chased other speakers, including McCarthy, John Boehner and Newt Gingrich, to early exits. The revolving door at the top is presented as normal procedure, but it is really a sign of a ruling bloc that cannot keep its own house in order while demanding everyone else accept the terms.
Last year Johnson led passage of the party’s signature achievement, a big bill of tax breaks and safety net cuts, which Trump signed into law. At the time, Johnson said, “I do so deeply desire to have just a normal Congress,” and added, “But it doesn’t happen anymore. Our way is to plow through and get it done.”
What They Call Work
Ahead of the fall elections, Johnson and other Republican lawmakers have discussed an agenda that includes the promise of another GOP-only budget package like the tax cuts bill that they could push through the House and the Senate without Democratic votes. Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, said Thursday that he expects “the centerpiece” of that package “will be supporting our troops” with more than $100 billion in funding for the war against Iran as well as money to replenish defense munitions and other Pentagon-related needs. Despite the turbulent week in the House, Arrington said what they are calling budget reconciliation 3.0 should be the “next order of business.”
That is the election-year script: package the priorities of power, push them through the chambers, and call it business as usual. The article notes that GOP lawmakers may decide it is better to skip the hard work of legislating, and the dramatic upheavals that tend to come with it, and hit the campaign trail to win over voters instead. Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., chairman of the House GOP’s campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, acknowledged that trying to pass legislation with such a tight majority “can be rough. It’s ugly.” He said, “I’d be fine with letting us go home and campaign. But we’ve got a lot of important work still to do.”
Some of Johnson’s most ardent sparring partners, those most conservative Republican lawmakers, turned their blame for the messy process not on Johnson’s leadership but on their own GOP allies across the Capitol in the Senate, who often dismiss the House’s work. Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said, “Yeah, sometimes, it gets a little tense. But we’re still getting stuff done. We’re sending it over to the Senate. So we look forward to them doing their job.”
The whole scene is a portrait of hierarchy under strain: closed-door bargaining, rushed votes, factional warfare, and election-year theater, all while the people at the bottom are expected to absorb the consequences of decisions made far above them.