The text of the continuing resolution to keep the federal government funded through mid March was finally released last night, and it is as big and messy as expected. That’s how legislation works sometimes, and especially in a lame-duck Congress under pressure to wrap up the year.

The bill looks likely to pass, if not before the midnight Friday deadline then not long after, and we probably won’t see a government shutdown next week. But the process that got it to this point, and the elaborate kabuki of posturing and bogus indignation that we are in for over the next few days, might offer some warning signs for Republicans about their prospects in the early months of the new Congress and administration next year.

The bill has the shape it does in large part because too many House Republicans are not willing to take responsibility for being in the majority and advancing legislation. The Democrats still control the Senate until the end of this Congress, of course, but that is not why Speaker Johnson has had to give Democrats so much ground in this bill. He was not able to negotiate from a position of strength because he has a very narrow Republican majority in the House; given that some of his members made it clear to him that they were not going to vote for any CR, he would need Democratic votes — and probably many of them — in order to pass this bill. That’s fine, legislation negotiated across party lines is how Congress should work. But those votes come at a price, and the bill shows it. Republican members who refused to vote for it in any form yet are angry at concessions made to Democrats need to look in the mirror.

Republicans will have an even narrower majority in the House next year. They lost a couple of seats in this election, and they will also start the year short a couple of members who are leaving to serve in the administration and can’t be replaced immediately. And they are setting themselves some extremely challenging goals — including probably two separate reconciliation bills (one of which they want to move very quickly. the other of which will be a highly complex tax bill that will require a precarious coalition and is nowhere near worked out). There is also another appropriations deadline in March, and the debt ceiling comes back into effect early in the year.

To deal with all of that, particularly if Republicans are intent on doing it all through party-line votes, those House Republicans who are inclined to put themselves to the right of any legislative outcome would have to be willing to support bills that will set some very ugly fiscal paths. This CR process, which they need to clear the plate for the next Congress, has been a test of that, and its character should certainly cause administration and congressional strategists to think hard about their approach to reconciliation and appropriations next year.

This is surely why some House Republicans have balked at the two-reconciliation-bill strategy. Getting all House Republicans lined up, with no dissenters, on two separate, complex bills is going to be extremely difficult. And restraining the instinct of some House Republicans to publicly attack their leaders for betraying their voters could prove to be impossible, even with Trump in the White House. Representative Victoria Spartz even announced yesterday that she will not formally caucus with House Republicans next year, though she will vote for the Republican speaker and support President Trump’s agenda.

That prospect of dissension undermining a tiny majority is further exacerbated by the bipolarity of this second Trump term, at least at the outset. The president-elect is closely aligned and affiliated with the wealthiest man in the world, Elon Musk. Republicans in Congress and various outside MAGA voices have been careful to nod toward both Trump and Musk since the election. But what will happen when they disagree? Musk came out against the continuing-resolution bill today, tweeting in the early morning hours, “This bill should not pass.” Is that Trump’s view too? If not, where does that leave Republicans intent on pleasing them both?

That question, too, will surely recur as the new administration gets going. Republicans remember all too well the challenge of trying to predict where Trump will land on strategic and tactical questions and not getting too far ahead of him for fear of getting undercut by a tweet. Next year, they’ll have to calculate where two different prolific and erratic X users may land before they speak or act.

(And if you think there’s something profoundly undignified about members of Congress struggling above all to please the president and the tycoon, then welcome to the club. You and I are going to have a long few years here, my friend.)

This continuing-resolution legislation is a test of the Trump majority because it is an exercise in governing — taking responsibility for getting decisions made, which requires compromise and therefore some tolerance for giving in return for getting. That would require making a positive case for the ultimate product of a negotiation.

There is surely such a case to be made here. Republicans generally got the spending levels they wanted for a short-term CR, and the trades they made in other areas were clearly required for that. Some of the little legislative bits tucked into the folds of the bill are defensible in their own terms too. The pay raise for members, for instance, is thoroughly justified: Members have denied one another a raise for the last 15 years, making Congress increasingly unappealing to anyone who isn’t wealthy or nuts. Letting members out of the Obamacare exchanges is right, too. It would have been a little classier to offer both of these to staff as well as members — poor pay and benefits are an even bigger problem for staff than for members, and contribute to high turnover that harms the institution. But giving them to members is good for the institution and for our system of government.

But Republican members can’t really talk over the merits of any of this in public. Even the speaker is forced to describe the minor legislative vehicle he has advanced here as at best a necessary evil. He insists it’s just a way to get to next year. But what does it suggest about how next year will go?

We have now seen four 21st-century presidencies begin with the president’s party in control of both houses of Congress. The pattern of them all has been that the house with the narrowest and most difficult-to-manage majority is the one that matters most and ultimately sets the pace and strategy for legislative action. But next year, as the fifth such presidency opens, Republicans will have the hardest time moving reconciliation bills in the House, and the hardest time moving all other legislation in the Senate. They’re going to face a very complicated set of constraints. And in the flush of their election victory, they don’t so far seem to be setting themselves up to take those seriously.

Maybe this week will drive home a few lessons.