Yes, I write this more in sorrow than in anger. I am committed to Donald Trump having a hugely successful second term.
More to the point, I seem to have recognized something that Trump and his team haven’t yet noticed – his margin in Congress is razor-thin.
It will take only a few disaffected Republicans in the House to lose him that functional majority.
Why? I am concerned that the president-elect has already overplayed his hand, creating enemies where there had been none, even while his first proposed budget legislation went down to ignominious defeat.
Congress’s 1,547-page monster was a grotesquerie that included more than 1,400 pages of bloated and self-serving terms. As budget reconciliation legislation goes, it was unremarkable. It went down to defeat, a good thing. But how it went down to defeat is not so good.
The way this defeat was mis-handled – again, by a man not yet even president – had many of those Congress-critters standing up on their hind legs to voice their opposition to the man who just days before had been seen as their “once and future king,” sent to rescue Camelot on the Potomac from its own excesses.
However, Congress apparently didn’t figure on Elon Musk’s and Vivek Ramaswamy’s willingness to get started now, a full month before Trump is sworn back in.
Deservedly, this bloated corpse of a bill died a painful and fully justified death. Nonetheless, the manner of its demise lead almost automatically to its 116-page replacement’s last-minute failure on Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024, toward the end of the day.
In fact, for a variety of reasons, that logical bill didn’t stand a chance.
There are several reasons why this self-inflicted wound could not only have been prevented, but without immediate cauterization, it’s important to see how the wound will continue to fester. Here, in no particular order, are some of those reasons.
The supposedly transparent process was nothing if not opaque. At a time when Trump had been promising transparency, his Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson – along with Johnson’s Congressional Leadership Team – let Trump down. Here are some of the expenditures covered up by manifest haste:
- It included $31 billion in new subsidies for farmers; nice, perhaps, but most of this largesse is a gift to the mega-agribusiness that dominates today’s farm scene.
- It included $8 billion to rebuild a bridge destroyed earlier this year in Baltimore, even though the bridge was privately owned, fully-insured and – via tolls – is a self-liquidating, profit-making investment – i.e., not something the government should normally have paid for.
- It included $12 billion in new funding for Community Development Block Grants – whatever they are.
- It included a resounding $110.4 billion in disaster aid, $80-plus billion more than what is needed to replenish FEMA’s coffers.
- Insult to injury, Congress voted themselves a $6,600 per year raise, along – in the future – with automatic annual Cost of Living (COLA) Adjustments when inflation hits, but not an automatic reduction COLA when the economy cools down. It would also have allowed members of Congress to opt out of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare); however, their employees – and millions among the general public – would not be able to opt out. Sauce for the goose?
- Nothing if not timely, a provision would extend the Homeland Security Act to allow Homelanders to shoot down drones, such as those bedeviling New Jersey and more than a half-dozen others states. Perhaps needed legislation, but in a budget bill?
Many of these features might have passed in the new year as standalone bills, but the idea of stuffing them all into a budget reconciliation act is, well, counter to all of President Trump’s promises of transparency.
The bill was released to the floor on Tuesday, with the vote on Thursday. Given roughly two working days that Congressional Representatives were being allowed to read it all and vote reasonably for it. In each of those two busy workdays, this amounted to 97 pages of the most mind-numbing reading for every eight-hour-per-day working hour during that 48-page window. Not impossible, but unlikely.
Beyond Congress’s readiness to irresponsibly approve a bill they couldn’t have read, few if any of them had done more than skim is the opaque issue.
Threatening Elected Officials’ Career Path is NOT the Best Way to ‘Win Friends and Influence People.’
It’s one thing when a presidential appointee and notable (and usually positively-so) professional loose cannon threaten to “primary” any Republican who crosses President Trump. It’s quite another when the president vocally affirms this “suggestion.” Trump is not yet president number forty-seven, but already he’d be laying the groundwork for guaranteeing – if the Constitution didn’t already mandate this – that he’d be a one-term president, number forty-seven. Every threat of “primarying” some fellow elected official is all but certain to make of that individual a bitter enemy.
This is not so obviously true for Senators, especially when it comes to authorizing – or not – Trump’s Cabinet and other appointees. For one, the threat has been floated – not by Trump, but by Musk – and floated well in advance of votes. The two female Republican Senators most likely to oppose Hegseth and others – Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski – got that threat from Elon Musk. This is something Trump should stay out of, but those two powerful women are on notice. They also know that if they oppose Pete Hegseth for DoD Secretary, they will have many opportunities to get back into Trump’s good graces, as long as they do him a solid down the road, and well before it’s time for them to run again.
Worse, because his margin in Congress is razor-thin, the incoming president really can’t risk offending even one or two of his supporters there, especially before the session even starts. To take steps now, before he could even act as a sitting president is, well, counterproductive. Once he’s president, when a bill goes the wrong way – or even looks as if it might – he’ll have a skilled team of behind-the-scenes one-on-one negotiators in a process Congress calls “whipping,” which is probably not as painful as it sounds.
Another thing to consider: While each Congressperson and Senator has vastly less power than the president, there are two important factors always to consider.
First, each has been elected to his or her own government position – just as has been the presidency – meaning they are independent of any executive power. And rightly so. They are also justifiably prideful at having run a contested and hard-fought race and come out on top. As such, and noting the “whipping” above, they deserve to be dealt with individually, or in small groups, or even large groups – as long as it is behind closed doors and out of the public limelight. Especially if the Congress-critter has to take one for the team, it is best done in private, instead of on X.
These kinds of wounds tend to fester and are slow to heal.
Of course, Congress is far from innocent. Knowing how Trump won the election – on transparency and ruthless, brutal budget-cutting – they should not have gotten in one more massive pork bill before the gravy train dried up. Yet they took that risk. Trump was not wrong in opposing them, but he was dead-wrong in “how” he opposed them. That he should have left the matter up to Elon and Vivek, the Power Twins of the Potomac.
The one thing to be embraced at all costs as this very early stage, is for Trump to “hate the pork spending without hating the (Republican) Congressman or woman who proposed or voted for it.” Congressional egos are notoriously fragile things, and some members would rather kamikaze themselves at the president’s expense, than merely taking a fall on his behalf.
What was called for was a set of “behind the scenes” negotiations between near-peer groups – all individually elected, though only the president was elected by the fifty states. This is especially true considering that Congress can make-or-break Trump’s second term and can do so largely out of sight of their constituents. Trump should have also done it in a way that doesn’t undermine the Speaker of the House – who must play ball on the president’s team. They need to work together, instead of working at odds with one other.
To succeed, President Trump needs a strong and secure Majority Leader, one who will work with the president. And, for his part, the Majority Leader needs the president’s support, at least in public where so much of Congress’s work is performed.
What is the Real Role of DOGE? Cutting two trillion dollars out of the budget is extraordinarily unlikely. Huge cuts are possible – more important, they’re necessary – but like the president’s first-term promise that he’d not only build the wall, but that Mexico would pay for it, there is no room for infighting, especially around DOGE, which holds such bright promise for Trump’s success.
The ideal role of Elon and Vivek is that of two independent and fabulously wealthy men, individuals beyond bribery and immune from personal reproachment, men who are willing to work for no compensation to try and turn America’s governmental budget around. One of their best assets – assuming the president chooses to remain at arm’s length from them – is the “plausible deniability” DOGE gives to the president.
These two gentlemen should not only take point, they should be the “fall guys” when things go wrong. Yet even before they formally began work, the president-elect was in there pitching with them.
Yes, playing with the big boys is hard to resist, especially for a man – despite his manifest gifts – who can’t force himself to avoid any bright lights and flashing cameras.
To be successful he must maintain his profoundly thin but functional margin of majority in the House – the margin in the Senate has yet to be finally determined, but it must be maintained, too.
Bottom Line: President Trump hasn’t been away from power long enough to have forgotten the lessons he must have learned in his first term. Let’s hope this speedbump on the road to his presidency doesn’t rip the tranny out from under the limo of state – and how’s that for a tortured metaphor?
Ned Barnett, in addition to torturing metaphors, writes books and works with authors and others who need help in getting books written, published and promoted. In 2025, he will publish: Write Now! How to Market, Promote and Sell Your Books. In early 2026 – if not sooner – Ned will also publish a book on what politicians need to do to win their campaigns. Not remarkably, the road to success involves steps including marketing and promoting the campaign, and selling the platform’s ideas. Ned can be reached at nedbarnett51@gmail.com or 702-561-1167.
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