The Numbers Don't Add Up

Why House Republicans are a majority party in name only

Photo by Roman Mager on Unsplash

Let’s do a little math. I promise there won’t be any formulas involved.

Last week at this time, House Republican leaders were scrambling for a way to square the incoming president’s demand to raise the debt ceiling as part of a stopgap government funding package with the hard reality that they didn’t have the votes to do it.

The measure came to the floor without the support of Democrats. It failed.

House Republicans then had to consider whether they were going to further risk the wrath of Trump and pass a funding measure anyway—this time with bipartisan support—or go home for Christmas and explain to their constituents why they voted to shut off government services over the holidays.

Perhaps to Trump’s surprise, they chose Option One.

As we will soon see, this is also to the benefit of those of us looking to block Trump’s plans to centralize power in the Oval Office.

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Generally speaking, there will be two arenas where Trump will aspire to exercise total control over the government—the Executive Branch and Congress.

As chief executive, he will find it easier to appease his whims in the branch he heads. He can issue executive orders affecting domestic and foreign policy, direct the military as he sees fit, place loyalists in key positions, and follow the Project 2025 playbook to reclassify many civil servants as political appointees, fire them, and replace them with even more loyalists.

This is not to suggest Trump won’t meet resistance in the form of litigation from affected groups, objections to questionable military orders, and pushback from entrenched bureaucrats. The executive branch is enormous, complex, and geographically dispersed—dominating it will be challenging. But it remains the president’s branch, and a determined president can use intimidation and fear to plow forward with plans to consolidate power.

The legislative process is a different matter. Yes, Trump will find willing enablers to promote his wishes in the form of Republicans who live in fear of MAGA and will defer to Trump against their better judgment time and again, as we are likely to see when the Senate considers his blatantly unqualified nominees.

But Congress is also a snake pit of overlapping obstacles. This was vividly displayed last week, when Trump toothlessly threatened to whip up primary challengers to any Republican who failed to lift the debt limit as a condition for keeping the government running. Thirty-eight House Republicans defied him outright.

Small margins, incompatible interests, profound incompetence, and simple math can complicate, confound, and even counteract Trump’s commands.

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The root of the problem is that Trump does not actually have a governing majority in Congress.