The Christmas Eve spending fight is a complicated disaster, so let’s try to parse it out. Forced to distill it: It’s a vote of no confidence in the Republican speaker of the House, a shot across the bow for fiscal conservatives, and, if ultimately successful, one of the best-case scenarios President-elect Donald Trump could have hoped for. That all might seem contradictory, but hear me out.

Let’s start with the president. First, the deal would lift June’s debt ceiling, protecting his White House from a major battle in the first six months of the administration right as the Democrats are getting their fighting spirit back.

Egos will be bruised. Spreadsheets will be torn. It’s not peacetime.

Next, he’d get a “clean CR” (meaning one that basically continues spending on current levels) that lasts until March, when he can hope to lean on slim Republican majorities in the House and Senate to negotiate his priorities again.

Finally, a win would mean his threats carried real weight (and it worked out). If Congress had ignored him or had the plan he laid out failed, his pal Elon Musk’s big mouth would be guilty of walking Trump into a loss before he even takes office — bad news for anyone hoping to lead.

Next up is Speaker of the House Mike Johnson — one of the week’s biggest losers, regardless of what happens. Before this whole drama began, Johnson promised (1) an open process (2) led by committee chairmen (3) that produced no giant omnibuses (4) that congressmen would have time to read. He outright broke 1, 2, and 4 and stretched 3 beyond the laughing point before the Mar-a-Lago crowd came down on him like a thousand bricks.

Even while the Louisiana Republican was able to right the ship, Johnson has shown again and again that both he and his staff are in way over their heads. They lack firmness, they lack conviction, and they lack any semblance of strategy. Johnson proves he doesn’t lead on or decide events — events happen
to him. If he survives as speaker, it’ll be by the grace of no one having the energy to fight over who comes next.

Meanwhile, congressional conservatives are angry that he complied with Trump’s demand to remove June’s debt-limit fight from the calendar. But a sad reality is that Johnson would never have won a debt-limit fight anyway, so who cares? While the Democratic Party is de-energized and beaten now, six months into the incoming White House’s deportation project and other executive reforms, their base will be ravenous — and they’ll have found their groove again.

A June debt-limit negotiation would be brutal, and Johnson has shown no ability to see it through without defunding important aspects of Trump’s agenda. That’s a risk the White House does not need to take.

Which brings us to Congress’ fiscal conservatives. While their fight against the ridiculous Johnson omnibus is largely the reason we ended up with a far better spending bill (and they received high-level support from Musk), it’s also a show of the limits of their influence.

In fact, their position is reminiscent of the fiscal conservatives when President Ronald Reagan came to office. While Reagan agreed and sympathized with their case, his top priority was defeating the Soviet Union. To this end, he would not allow any cuts to military spending, even if it meant leaving big chunks of cuttable domestic spending on the table. Congressional deals to cut domestic spending by X percent for every Y percent of defense spending were dead on arrival.

Back in the present, Trump is returning to office promising to fight the illegal immigrant invasion with a major deportation program, enforce the country’s borders, renegotiate our trade deals, reinvigorate American manufacturing, and fight back hard against Democrats’ culture war excesses. A lot of that is going to cost money. More, Democrats are going to try to bog it down. Ending waste, fraud, and abuse might be important — and it is certainly Musk’s top goal — but the reality is it’s secondary to the president’s.

The president-elect is looking to make America great again by taking the fight to her enemies, both foreign and domestic. Egos will be bruised. Spreadsheets will be torn. It’s not peacetime. Best get used to it.

Blaze News: Trump backs Johnson’s new 116-page skinny CR following GOP pressure campaign

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Merry Christmas! It’s been a fantastic year with Blaze News and an honor that you’ve subscribed to (and hopefully enjoyed) the Beltway Brief. We’ll be enjoying the holiday with the family and can’t wait to see you in the New Year.

God bless,

Chris