The big bill spasms forward in the House

Clogged information and eroding trust disrupt an orderly process.

As the House spasms its way through deliberations for the “one big, beautiful bill,” I’ve been trying to make sense of GOP majority. It appears this majority must endure at least one setback before it takes a step forward. The budget resolution failed before it was finally adopted. The Budget Committee bill failed the report the reconciliation bill on Friday before finally advancing it late last night. Whether Republicans ultimately pass a deal almost less interesting than the fail-advance deliberative style of their key legislative priority.

I think Gabe Fleischer nailed it when he wrote that House Republicans have trust problem. This is not entirely surprising because party leaders have done a lot over the years to create it. In 2015, Jim Curry wrote a fantastic book, Legislating in the Dark. The main idea is that as lawmaking has become more centralized under party leaders, legislators a less aware of policymaking process. Policy increasingly written in the House Rules Committee rather than committees of jurisdiction, leading to a process that is more hidden than transparent, even for members serving in the House. For example, the bill reported out of the Budget Committee last night is already undergoing some kind of amendment. Problem is, nobody knows what is actually being negotiated. Policy that was originally passed out of committees is being reworked in the Speaker’s office. In this sense, the 11 reconciliation bills reported by various standing committees are literal placeholders as the actual deal is negotiated by speaker and discrete GOP factions.

Nothing is inherently wrong with this process. Committees are an invention of Congress. The House can ignore their work if they so choose. Today, the House has gotten in the habit of discarding committees’ policy work on the floor. (As evidenced by the increasing frequency of self-executing special rules in the House.)

But this does have implications for the majority if this process is not transparent. If policy is being “sprung” on lawmakers without explanation, it can foster distrust and a feeling of irrelevance among rank-and-file members harboring legitimate policy stances.

This is where we find House Republicans today. The rightward lurch of the conservative movement has stretched the Republican conference to a near breaking point. Basic components of party operation in Congress – e.g. organizing caucuses, procedural majorities – have become strained or outright broken the last two congresses. Within the House GOP, various factions hold antithetical political interests. It’s an open question whether the political differences are even reconcilable on some basic questions, i.e. government spending.

But these problems have arguably been magnified by Republican leaders. Speaker Johnson has not been particular adept at socializing plans during his time in office. The first spending deal he negotiated was met with immediate disapprovalfrom his conference. The deal to pass omnibus and foreign aid in 2024 sparked further controversy by working with Democrats on the House Rules Committee. Speaker Johnson had to pull appliance legislation from the schedule on multiple occasions. After Johnson failed to garner support behind his omnibus deal in December 2024, he floated multiple dead-on-arrival CR plans which provoked several on-the-record criticisms of Johnson’s leadership and uncertainty about his speakership election in the 119^th Congress. It’s been an “I lead, you follow” approach but without much followership. As former Speaker John Boehner used to say, “A leader without followers is just a guy on a walk.”

Centralized leadership and negotiations work best when information flows freely – from both the bottom up to the top down. However, it’s not clear either information highway is working very well. Beginning in the 2010s, House Republicans struggled with bottom-up information. Inaccurate whip counts forced Speakers Boehner and Ryan to pull legislation from the floor after their members denied support. Today, Republicans’ reconciliation debates also appear to have been hampered by a lack of top-down information. The evolving plans appear to lack sufficient socialization in the conference, leading to surprised members and forceful opposition when various “deals” are finally unveiled.

These problems may not scuttle Republicans reconciliation bill but it does make passage harder. And unfortunately, trust issues developed over this year will carry into other important debates like the debt ceiling, appropriations, national defense, and other must pass legislation. Information is fundamental to coalition management. The more clogged information becomes, the hard it will be to manage the politics.