Limit of Trump’s influence on House Republicans revealed in funding fight

President-elect Donald Trump was supposed to be the leader who could unify the fractious House Republican Conference, but an early test of that last week showed the limits of his power.

Mr. Trump chose to wade into the year-end government funding fight just days before the Friday deadline and upended a bipartisan deal that Congress was set to pass.

While he succeeded in convincing Republicans to slim down the initial bipartisan agreement from more than 1,500 pages to just under 200, the president-elect did not sway enough lawmakers to sign off on his main demand of extending the debt limit.

“The time it took to battle it out really helped let them know they’ve got to get buy-in. They got to get serious about cuts,” Rep. Ralph Norman told The Washington Times. 

The South Carolina lawmaker was one of 38 House Republicans who voted against a Trump-approved bill to pair a three-month government funding extension with a two-year suspension of the debt limit because it did not contain any spending cuts.

Congress, ultimately, dropped the debt limit suspension and passed the slimmed-down bill in the nick of time to prevent a government shutdown.

The measure, which extended current funding levels through March 14 and includes $100 billion in disaster aid and $10 billion in economic assistance for farmers, cleared both chambers on broad bipartisan margins: 336-34 in the House and 85-11 in the Senate.

Mr. Trump, however, was dealt a significant blow with Congress’ failure to extend the debt limit, a move he had said was “VITAL to the America First Agenda.” 

The president-elect did not want to deal with lifting the borrowing limit early in his administration when he and the GOP-led Congress should be focused on other priorities like enacting border security measures and tax cuts. He warned Republicans against approving any government funding deal that did not dispense with the debt limit.

“Any Republican that would be so stupid as to do this should, and will, be Primaried,” Mr. Trump said. 

Mr. Norman said Mr. Trump’s social media posts threw heat his way but that he won’t be pressured to abandon his fiscal conservative principles. He said he admires Mr. Trump but will continue to stand firm next Congress if he finds their views on legislation are not aligned. 

“I’ll go against the president,” Mr. Norman said. “I don’t gauge my support or not support on what he does. … I don’t get moved on saying I’m going to get primaried or anything else.”

Mr. Norman and other members of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus have been some of Mr. Trump’s most fervent supporters, but they are also the most stringent conservatives when it comes to cutting spending. 

The push to suspend the debt limit for two years, estimated to add trillions to the borrowing limit, ran against the very core of their ideals. 

“I love Donald Trump, but I’m also a fiscal conservative, and I’m not going to go against what I told the American people, my district [on] how I was going to vote,” Rep. Eric Burlison, Missouri Republican, told The Times. “I have to keep to my word, and I told my district I didn’t come up here to raise the debt ceiling.” 

Mr. Trump had targeted Freedom Caucus member Chip Roy in particular for blocking his demands for a debt-limit extension, calling the Texas Republican “unpopular” and saying he was “getting in the way, as usual, of having yet another Great Republican Victory.” 

“Republican obstructionists have to be done away with,” he said. 

After 170 Republicans joined 196 Democrats in voting for the final government funding deal that excluded the debt limit, Mr. Roy questioned whether those members were considered pro-Trump or anti-Trump. 

“How about the 34 no votes? Confusing, huh?” he posted on X. “Or maybe not…”

Mr. Roy, Mr. Burlison, Mr. Norman and other Republicans who defied Mr. Trump said they would be open to lifting the debt limit if it comes with significant spending cuts.

The final government funding negotiations included a tentative plan to raise the borrowing limit early next Congress by $1.5 trillion and to cut spending by $2.5 trillion. Members said Mr. Trump has signed off on the handshake agreement, even though he prefers a larger increase that would ensure the debt limit does not become an issue again during his presidency.

“Everything can be providential,” Mr. Roy told the Times. “Notwithstanding my back and forth to the president yesterday — it was really just forth — the president was probably right to bring up the debt ceiling. It kind of forced the question.”

However, identifying $2.5 trillion in spending cuts that Republicans can all agree on — they can’t lose many votes with their narrow majority — will be difficult.

“It’s always going to be tight,” Rep. David Valadao, California Republican, told The Times.

While he is interested in getting federal spending under control, Mr. Valadao said he worries the deep cuts some of his colleagues are seeking could end up targeting programs that are important to swing district members like him. 

“There’s going to have to be a conversation about that,” he said. 

Another factor in the government funding chaos was billionaire Elon Musk, an adviser to Mr. Trump who ginned up opposition to the original bipartisan deal.

Mr. Musk and billionaire businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, who will co-chair the Department of Government Efficiency and help identify recommended spending cuts for lawmakers next Congress, said the original spending agreement was full of government waste.

While Republicans largely agreed, many took issue with the misinformation Mr. Musk helped spread on X, the social media platform he owns.

“A lot of them were lies, like the stuff about the Jan. 6 agreement,” said Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Texas Republican.

What was presented on social media as an attempt to hide the records of the Jan. 6 select committee was actually “an administrative change to make our rules the same as the Senate’s when it comes to the ability to release documents,” he said. 

Rep. Dan Meuser, Pennsylvania Republican, said Mr. Musk’s DOGE had a valuable role to play but questioned his blast of incorrect information, like that there were billions of dollars associated with the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium land transfer deal. 

“I think that was a mistake. And seeing as he’s the smartest guy in the world, he’s not supposed to make those mistakes,” Mr. Meuser said.

Despite last week’s setbacks, most Republicans expect Mr. Trump and whichever advisers he chooses to listen to will have great influence over the Republican-led Congress.

Mr. Trump deserves that deference, given many GOP lawmakers made it to Washington once more “because of the Trump endorsement,” said Rep. Ryan Zinke, Montana Republican.

“So all of a sudden they think that President Trump doesn’t have a say or gets to share an opinion?” he said, calling the opposition to Mr. Trump’s debt limit demands “a miscalculation.”

Mr. Zinke provided a tongue-in-cheek view of how Mr. Trump’s presence will be felt next year, saying, “We had 220 members, and now we have 221 because Trump’s in the House.”