Chairman Johnson faces a year of tight votes and acrimony: ‘A lot of expectations’

While the high-stakes race to lead the House of Representatives is over, Speaker Mike Johnson’s politically dangerous year is just beginning.

Winning the chairmanship was no easy feat given that Johnson, R-La., had no Democratic support and could only lose one fellow Republican, thanks to the nearly slim GOP majority in the House of Representatives.

All House Republicans except Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., voted for Johnson Friday afternoon. Two Republican lawmakers who initially voted for someone other than Johnson, Reps. Keith Self, R-Texas, and Ralph Norman, R-C., were eventually convinced to switch their votes after speaking with Johnson and President-elect Trump.

Johnson will have to make do with a similarly slim margin over the next few months as he helps implement what President-elect Donald Trump has promised will be a very active first 100 days of his new administration.

REPUBLICANS RELEASE DETAILS OF CLOSED-DOOR MEETING WITH DOGE MUSKA, RAMASWAMY

“There are a lot of expectations and potential pitfalls,” Marc Short, who served as director of legislative affairs during the first Trump administration, said in an interview with Fox News Digital late last month.

At least three separate fiscal struggles are expected in the first half of 2025 alone.

Johnson, meanwhile, will lose two Republicans in the House of Representatives – Reps. Elisa Stefanik of New York and Mike Waltz of Florida. Both members join the Trump administration at the end of this month.

That will reduce his Republican majority in the House of Representatives to just 217 seats, compared to 215 for Democrats, meaning Republicans will have to vote consecutively to pass any legislation on a party-line vote.

A special election to replace Waltz and retiring Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., is scheduled for April. Elections for the dismissal of Stefanik have not yet been announced.

Meanwhile, Republicans are trying to pass two major conservative policy and spending overhauls through the process called “reconciliation”, which lowers the threshold for passage to the Senate from 60 votes to a simple majority for certain budget issues.

Both Republicans and Democrats have tried to use the reconciliation to pass significant fiscal policy changes that the other side otherwise opposes, meaning extraordinary levels of intra-party cooperation are needed in both the House and Senate.

“There’s a huge expectation to match the budget, and it’s really difficult, even when you have big margins. To think you’re going to do it twice a year with those margins, I think that’s an enormously high expectation that seems unreasonable,” Short told Fox News Digital.

“And add to that another funding bill in three months, plus the fight over the debt ceiling.”

Along with the reconciliation bills — which are unlikely to get much, if any, support from Democrats — Republicans will also have to grapple with a government funding deadline just postponed until March 14th.

DANIEL PENNY TO BE AWARDED CONGRESSIONAL GOLD MEDAL BY GOP REPRESENTATIVE

House and Senate lawmakers passed a short-term extension of state funding levels for fiscal year (FY) 2024 in December to give negotiators more time to reach an agreement on the remainder of fiscal year 2025.

Congress will risk pushing the government into a partial shutdown if the House and Senate do not pass another funding extension or set new priorities for the remainder of fiscal year 2025 by then.

The next deadline for government funding will be at the end of the fiscal year on September 30.

However, that’s not all Johnson will have to focus on during those months.

AND bilateral agreement struck in 2023 suspended the US debt limit until January 2025 – after which the Treasury Department will be forced to take “extraordinary measures” to avoid defaulting on the national credit.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

The debt limit refers to how much debt the U.S. government can accumulate while meeting the expenses it has already committed to. Since Christmas, national debt — which measures how much the US owes its creditors — fell to $36,161,621,015,445.57, according to the latest figures released by the Treasury Department.

Raising the debt limit has also traditionally been a tense political battle, with both Republicans and Democrats looking for any possible leverage to attach their own political goals to the negotiations.

A recent model produced by the Economic Policy Innovation Center (EPIC) projects that the Treasury Department’s “emergency measures” will be implemented by the US by mid-June or earlier, giving Congress potentially six months to act.