Now the hard part begins. Many Senate Republicans are demanding changes to the sweeping measure, which advances Trump’s priorities while cutting both taxes and spending on programs such as Medicaid. Democrats, meanwhile, are ready for battle — and say the GOP just gave them all the ammo they need.
“They have no idea,” Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) told Raw Story, pointing to the bill’s late-night negotiations and passage. “If you're doing something wrong, you don't want anybody to know about it, you want to do it quietly, you want to do it in secret, otherwise you're going to be held to account. They're going to be held to account on this.”
Throughout the night, congressional staffers pored over as much of the 1,000+ page bill as they could. Even committee chairs didn’t know if their amendments made the final bill or were stripped out in secret.
“These characters, they're writing the next campaign,” Garamendi said, pointing to midterm elections next year. “It is 50 districts that will be up [for grabs], maybe more. And in those districts, this bill has killer provisions. Big stuff. Medicaid, taxes are bad enough — and then we don't know all of it.”
‘Chairs don't read their own bills’
By 6:24am, when lawmakers voted on the final bill, the Capitol was more reminiscent of a frat house than the boring old chamber lawmakers know so well.
In public restrooms, aides brushed Cheetos-stained teeth. Lawmakers lounged about, in jeans or workout gear. Garbage cans overflowed with pizza boxes, cookie wrappers and crushed energy drink bottles. The caffeine stopped working at some point — most members were zombie-like.
“I’m hanging in, but struggling,” House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-TX) told Raw Story through a big yawn, just after midnight.
But on the outside at least, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) seemed energized, almost giddy.
“Mike Johnson was walking through the Capitol looking like a Cheshire Cat,” Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) told Raw Story on the steps outside, around 2 a.m. “Well, he always has a bit of a Cheshire Cat look to him, now that you say it, but it was more pronounced than usual.”
Rank-and-file lawmakers didn’t get to see — let alone read — the entire bill until around 9pm on Wednesday. Even powerful committee chairs scrambled to make sure verbal deals were enshrined in ink.
Raw Story asked Stansbury what she made of “the GOP corralling all their troops around this, and they’re still reading the bill, so they don't even know what's in it?”
“It doesn't surprise me, to be honest," the former Senate staffer said. "I can tell you that I sit on a few committees where the chairs don't read their own bills, so I was not surprised to see that many of the chairs can’t answer basic questions.”
Few if any lawmakers were able to truly digest the sweeping measure, but Democrats complained the bill had become a Trojan horse for culture wars Republicans are waging nationwide.
“Dozens, if not hundreds, of specific provisions on all of these super-conservative things — it ranges from abortion to education — goes on and on,” Garamendi said.
“It is a terrible piece of legislation. It may be the worst piece of legislation. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
‘A master of distraction’
Legislating can be dirty business. So Democrats aren’t banking on sympathy from voters.
“As much hay as we're going to make out of this … who really cares at the end of the day that we were here late and passed the bill?” Rep. John Larson (D-CT) told Raw Story, in the middle of the night.
Even though Democrats and their progressive base despise the Republican bill, they expect Trump to lean on senators until he’s sent a final measure to sign into law.
“He’s a master of distraction,” Larson said. “We don't give him enough credit, but you don't get to be president of the United States twice and not know a little bit about how to manipulate and how to get your message out. And he uses social media as effectively as anyone.”
Cracking the whip on reluctant Republicans could work in the short term but prove devastating to the GOP come next year’s midterms.
Some Democrats are having flashbacks to 2009, when then Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) forced the party to vote on an aggressive climate change measure.
In the 2010 midterms, party conservatives — so-called Blue Dog Democrats — were decimated, going from 54 members to a mere 28. There are now just 10 Blue Dogs. Parallels are being drawn.
“Are you having flashbacks to when Pelosi put the climate bill on the floor and then you lost all Blue Dogs forever?” Raw Story asked Larson.
“Yeah,” Larson said. “Oh, yeah.”
Pelosi ushered her climate measure through, 219-212. Her critics still lament that conservative Democrats walked the plank for her on a measure that never even got a vote in the Senate.
Speaker Johnson got his bill through 215-214, with two Republicans not voting and one voting present. Like Pelosi, he may not be smiling for long.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
While Johnson is urging the Senate to pass the House measure as is, Republicans in the upper chamber laugh off the suggestion. Distrust is palpable.
“They have a dynamic over there that traditionally — historically, normally — is, like, structured but less conservative,” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) told Raw Story.
After months of House Republican infighting, the ball is in the Senate’s court.
‘This should be DOA’
A handful of Senate Republicans previously served in the House, but that doesn’t mean members of the two chambers chat regularly.
That even goes for someone like Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), a former mixed martial arts fighter who left the House just two years ago.
“We don't talk like we used to,” Higgins said, smirking. “He used to come to the gym, but now he's in the fancy gym over there.”
Differences are more than just gym-deep.
There’s deep distrust between some factions of the House Republican conference and their Senate counterparts, which is why many Republicans who just risked their necks passing Trump’s agenda packaged into one bill are nervous their work will be eviscerated, based on any senator’s whim.
Some Senate Republicans have extended olive branches, promising not to gut the 1,000-page House measure.
“We’re not going to overhaul it completely,” Mullin told Raw Story. “We're gonna take the bill and try to, maybe, repaint some of the interior walls for … the Senate, because we've got to put our fingerprints on it too.”
Tell that to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI). He says this week’s damning Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report — which found the House bill will increase the deficit by $3.8 trillion — proved he’s right to demand much steeper spending cuts.
Many Republicans distrust the CBO but Johnson says his “calculation” lines up with its independent assessment.
“Is that good enough for you?” Raw Story asked, of the GOP promise to cut the debt despite official arithmetic.
“Of course not,” Johnson said. “We should be reducing 10-year deficits, not keeping them solid and certainly not increasing them. This should be DOA [dead on arrival]. We shouldn’t be talking about this.”
