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To prevent the latest government shutdown, Congress had to approve two separate packages of spending bills. The first passed the Republican-led House a few weeks ago, though it was members of the Democratic minority that provided more than 60% of the votes.
Late last week, the second of the two packages of appropriations bills also cleared the GOP-led chamber, and this time, Democrats provided nearly two-thirds of the votes.
The good news for House Speaker Mike Johnson is that he’s now helped finance federal operations for the remainder of the fiscal year, guaranteeing that there won’t be any shutdown deadlines between now and the end of September. The bad news, as a Wall Street Journal report noted, is the Louisiana Republican and his leadership team keep having to turn to Democrats in order to govern.
When Republicans won control of the House in November 2022, the big question was whether they would be able to govern with one of the smallest majorities in history. The answer so far is no, at least not by themselves — and that has put their leaders in a perilous bind. Today the House ... is functioning more like an informal coalition government than a GOP-run chamber, with Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) buffeted by warring factions within his own party and dependent on Democrats to pass major legislation.
The examples keep piling up. Late last month, for example, House Republican leaders endorsed a stopgap spending measure and relied on Democrats to pass it. A month earlier, the House considered a bipartisan compromise on tax policy, which was endorsed by the House GOP leadership. It was nevertheless Democrats who provided most of the votes to pass it.
Two weeks earlier, a bill to prevent a partial government shutdown cleared the House, but roughly two-thirds of those votes came from the House Democratic minority.
The circumstances are becoming routine. Last September, to prevent a government shutdown, it was Democrats who provided most of the votes on a must-pass bill. Two months later, again to prevent a government shutdown, Republicans also relied on Democratic votes.
During the mid-November debate on that bill, Democratic Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois joked during floor remarks, “Next week, Americans will gather around their dinner tables and share what they’re thankful for. I hope my Republican colleagues will use that moment to reflect on how lucky you are to work with us House Democrats.”
A month later, when the House needed to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Democrats again provided a majority of the votes.
And when Republicans threatened to crash the economy on purpose by leveraging the debt ceiling, it was — you guessed it — Democrats who cast most of the votes to pass the bipartisan solution.
As 2023 came to an end, Axios highlighted the underappreciated pattern: “Republicans may hold the House majority, but Democratic yeas outnumbered GOP votes on every major bill that landed on President Biden’s desk this year.”
As 2024 advances, the pattern remains unchanged.
When John Boehner was a Republican House speaker, he too found himself dependent on Democrats when his far-right members didn’t want to govern. During Paul Ryan’s tenure, it happened some more. When Kevin McCarthy did the same thing, it contributed to the intraparty revolt that cost him his gavel.
And now, here we are, watching Speaker Johnson do the same thing, reinforcing the impression that one of the major parties on Capitol Hill is focused on constructive policymaking, and it’s clearly not the GOP.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.