Welcome to Washington: The GOP’s Looming Legislative War

The old saying around Washington is that presidents don’t get four years in office — they get just 18 months to pass their legislative agenda, given the politics of the midterm elections and the history of presidents losing at least one chamber of Congress two years into their tenure. President Trump is rapidly approaching that 18-month mark, and it appears that his desire for one last major legislative push could end in defeat. Welcome to Washington, where, in just five weeks, Mr. Trump will have been in office for 18 months. If one were to look at the calendar of what the GOP-controlled Congress has accomplished in that time, one will see that fully one-third of that period was taken up by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Now, Republican legislators are staring down an even more daunting challenge — increasing the military budget by $350 billion, making additional changes to entitlement programs, and taking another stab at passing Mr. Trump’s SAVE America Act to require proof of citizenship and photo ID when voting, as well as restricting mail voting. In a Truth Social post last week, Mr. Trump told lawmakers to get on board with his next legislative proposal. “No games, no delays, and no weak compromises! Do this ASAP,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Pass ALL $350 BILLION and THE SAVE AMERICA ACT to secure the NATION for our children and grandchildren.”Speaker Mike Johnson agreed, but floated another idea, as well — reforming America’s entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. During an appearance on “The Moon Griffon Show” — a radio program back in his native Louisiana — Mr. Johnson said lawmakers have to take a look at those very programs. “The largest spending items, the reason we’re in trouble is because over 74 percent of federal spending is on autopilot — mandatory spending. That is your entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and things like Social Security — they have to be adjusted and fixed,” Mr. Johnson said. In a follow-up post on X after Democrats began accusing him of threatening to cut Social Security, Mr. Johnson said that the opposition was “fearmongering.”“During this Congress, the House has already passed substantive legislation to clean up this waste, fraud, and abuse, and Democrats have voted against nearly every piece of legislation we’ve passed,” the speaker wrote. “We will continue to do so in this Congress and in future Congresses so that these important programs can be preserved for the American citizens that need them.”The problems for Messrs. Trump and Johnson are myriad, with fiscal hawks wanting smaller spending totals, moderates fearing backlash for touching entitlement programs, and the tiny size of the Republican majorities in both chambers. The most recent party-line spending bill — the Secure America Act, which funded the president’s immigrant enforcement funding bill — took nearly three months to craft and pass, and that was a speedy resolution in terms of past reconciliation bills. If Republicans do want to try to get a third reconciliation bill done — a feat which has never been accomplished on a party-line basis in history — then they will have to work at an even faster pace than they did with this last piece of legislation. Between now and the midterms, both the House and Senate are due to be in session for only nine weeks. Without counting travel days — meaning the days that little work gets done because lawmakers are traveling either to or from the nation’s capital — members of Congress will only spend about 30 full days in session between now and November. The midterm elections are 142 days away. In the House, Mr. Johnson’s margin is as small as it could possibly be. Come early September, which is likely the earliest possible point that the reconciliation bill could be passed, two additional House Democrats will have been sworn in. Two deep-blue districts — one in Georgia and one in California — will elect new representatives during the August recess. In the Senate, even with a larger majority, Republicans do not sound optimistic. “I think it’s safe to conclude there will not be another reconciliation bill,” the former majority leader and a top Republican appropriator, Senator Mitch McConnell, said at a hearing last week. The chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Susan Collins — who is locked in a tight re-election race — said she agreed with Mr. McConnell’s assessment.

Welcome to Washington: The GOP’s Looming Legislative War

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