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Regardless of whether Republicans can convince enough Senate Democrats to capitulate to a clean continuing budget resolution, the GOP's longer-term agenda is in serious trouble in Congress. The economic headwinds engulfing the economy as a direct result of President Donald Trump's deliberate (and completely insane) stock market tanking, job market saturating, and inflation stoking are only going to make it harder for Republicans to fill in the blanks of their cruel February budget resolution in the reconciliation process this summer. Efforts to cram the square pegs of the GOP's austere, oligarchic economic agenda into the round holes of an unraveling economy led by an unpopular, unstable autocrat are going to consume most of the next several months even in a best-case scenario for the party.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and his allies in the House declared victory last month when they narrowly passed a budget resolution that contained massive but unspecified cuts to programs like Medicaid. When moderate, swing-district members of the House balked prior to the vote, Johnson assured them that the caucus wouldn't really go through with such destructive and heartless cuts to a program that serves as a lifeline for millions of poor Americans. "We're talking about finding efficiencies in every program, not cutting benefits for people who rightly deserve them," Johnson said on CNN. No one even pretended to do the math.
At the time, Johnson warned that new work requirements (which of course are unnecessary) would be imposed and that Medicaid is "not for 29-year-old males sitting on their couch playing video games"—seemingly without realizing he is at this point describing his own party's most fervent supporters. But his vague promises not to completely gut Medicaid were enough to get the resolution through the House. The trouble is that a budget resolution is just a blueprint with spending targets that have to be filled in later with more precision, and then worked out to the letter with the Senate. The House and Senate will ultimately have to pass the exact same budget package, and the road to that outcome looks filled with potholes.
A lot of the magical thinking now common among Republicans is a consequence of needing to extend tax cuts from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which are expire at the end of 2025. Those cuts primarily benefited higher earners and would lower revenues by $4.5 trillion between 2025 and 2034, according to the Tax Foundation. The House Budget Resolution called for $2 trillion in offsetting spending cuts but no one knows where exactly they are going to come from.
Republicans won't be able to rely on Democrats to rescue them this time. As has become depressingly standard practice in gridlocked Washington, Republicans will rely on the arcane "budget reconciliation" maneuver to pass a gargantuan bill along party lines without running into the Senate's filibuster rule, just as Democrats did with the American Rescue Plan in 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. Unfortunately for Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), they are likely to run into internal coalition problems every bit as serious as those that plagued Democrats a few years ago.
On one hand, swing-district Republicans in the House are not going to be happy about big cuts to Medicaid, which will cause immediate pain for their constituents, worsen the already dire situation for rural hospital systems and exacerbate any potential economic downturn. But the austerity hawks in the House Freedom Caucus sound unlikely to settle for anything less than dramatic, economy-warping spending cuts in the very areas that the moderates will want to defend. And the GOP will be facing a political situation dramatically worse than what Democrats were dealing with at this point in Joe Biden's presidency.
Less than two months into his second term, Trump has already squandered whatever political capital he earned during his successful quest to retake the White House. His schizophrenic, on-again, off-again tariff edicts against our close allies have sent markets tumbling and consumer confidence plummeting. Americans now have a negative view of Trump and disapprove of his handling of the economy—undoing what had been his most persistent political advantage. Conspiracy-addled, far-right billionaire Elon Musk's increasingly prominent role in policymaking has also contributed to voters' sour appraisal of Trump's performance in office.
Thus far, Trump has maintained discipline and fealty among congressional Republicans with a combination of fear and menace—with many members clearly more worried about the consequences on their lives and families if Trump's minions are unleashed than they are about losing their next election. But as the 2026 midterms approach, and Trump's status as a lame-duck president becomes clearer, elected Republicans are unlikely to continue showing this level of subservience to the White House and its bizarre behavior.
For now, either they green-light deep cuts to the safety net and spending at the exact moment the economy needs to be stabilized, or they radically dial back their ambitions and risk the wrath of the party's fiscal hardliners and amped-up base. Either way, the pipe dream of massive spending cuts without risk or pain is already dead. It won't be long before many Republicans realize that they need to start swimming for the life rafts before Trump's sinking ship drags them to the bottom.
David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. His writing has appeared in The Week, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Washington Monthly and more. You can find him on Twitter @davidmfaris.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
