Can The GOP Hold It Together on Reconciliation?

Or is the big beautiful bill DOA?

May 14, 2025

There’s a nickname for House Speaker Mike Johnson shared among some Hill staffers and observers: “Deacon Mike,” a nod to his quiet Southern Baptist religious demeanor. But it also contains the idea that he is a man elevated beyond his expected station, charged with the monumental task of wrangling an extremely thin Republican House majority when he should rightly be in charge of keeping the worship center donuts fresh and the coffee hot.

In managing the expectations of his conference, Deacon Mike now faces his biggest test, one that was widely anticipated coming out of the November elections: a reconciliation bill larded with the priorities of multiple factions in Congress, and particularly hampered by the opposing forces of blue-state moderates and fiscal conservatives (yes, they still exist in the GOP). The sticking points are all well-known by now, but the amount of wiggle room available is shrinking.

House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, fresh off a marathon hearing featuring one party-line vote after another, told reporters that there was only around $50 billion left for the state and local tax deduction pushed by the so-called SALT Republicans – an amount far too insufficient for some of the members from New York, with Representative Nick LaLota pronouncing the bill “dead on arrival” on the floor should the current language of a $30,000 deduction up to $400,000 in income endure (LaLota and his fellow New Yorkers want to effectively quadruple that number).

As for the conservatives and the shrinking number of moderate Republicans who still believe in workforce reforms for able-bodied Medicaid recipients, the potential of leadership to kick the can on the requirements until well into the future is prompting frustration. The expansions in the program due to Obamacare have overwhelmingly gone to able-bodied, working-age adults – representing 85 percent of participants in the expansion over the past decade – and according to the Congressional Budget Office, the program now pays more for them than it does for seniors, individuals with disabilities or low-income children.

In the past, this type of welfare-to-work programmatic reform would have garnered wide popularity among Republicans and even some Democrats. But this is the land of MAGA now, and in such a place, the rules have changed, and work requirements for “working-class” voters are a bridge too far for some. And another Medicaid policy could prove a particularly tough sticking point with Republicans on the other side of the hill, as senators like Josh Hawley of Missouri has already indicated his opposition to policy changes regarding healthcare provider taxes which would hurt his state’s ability to draw more funds from federal taxpayers (provider taxes effectively allow states to launder money from the federal government – it is not, in fact, a matter of a courageous dispute with the GOP’s “ghoul caucus”). And Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin compared the whole package to the Titanic, predicting it will sink in the Senate without bigger spending cuts.

For the Speaker, this is his first major test as a leader of the tenuous House Majority in the second Trump presidency. Their relationship has been relatively solid, but the Louisianan is in a job he was never expected to have, and it seems entirely dependent on the trust of the president and the bulk of his conference. As the Wall Street Journal’s Olivia Beavers reported today, some Republican members doubt if they can trust Johnson to keep his word, and “questioned whether his efforts to please colleagues hurt his ability to deliver tough news.”

Shepherding a reconciliation package through this many factions is definitely something that requires the energy of an Elder, not a Deacon. For Johnson and the GOP majority, the consequences of failure could be dire. And it’s possible the best endgame is finding a way to compromise where nobody’s happy, but nobody’s furious. In this Republican House, that’s how you keep your job.

All Hail Sheikh Trump

Daniel McCarthy in The Spectator:

President Trump is an America Firster, but he has an undeniable affinity for the Arab world. He would have made a good sheikh – he doesn’t drink, he loves developing flashy properties to show off his power and wealth, and he’s brutally realistic about the role of oil (and other commodities) in world politics.
In his first run for president eight years ago, Trump not only surprised the Republican establishment by criticizing the Iraq War, he surprised the war’s critics by saying that if America was going to invade we should at least have seized the oilfields.
The Abraham Accords were a triumph of the President’s first-term foreign policy, and this week Trump is back in the Middle East to strike new deals for peace and profit alike. In Riyadh on Tuesday he declared “a land of peace, safety, harmony, opportunity, innovation, and achievement right here in the Middle East” is “within our grasp.”
If that’s true, it will be because Trump’s approach to the Arab world, in contrast to that of other American leaders, isn’t ideological. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman was visibly delighted by the President’s remarks, as well he might be on hearing Trump say, “too many American presidents have been afflicted with the notion that it’s our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use US policy to dispense justice for their sins.”
Trump instead “believe[s] it is God’s job to sit in judgment – my job [is] to defend America and to promote the fundamental interests of stability, prosperity, and peace.”
The Middle East has long wrongfooted America’s foreign-policy moralists. It has stubbornly resisted the democratization and liberalization that are meant to accompany “the end of history,” the myth (in Georges Sorel’s sense) on which the faith of Western elites depends. Twenty-five years ago, neoconservatives tried to explain away the problem by invoking the malign influence of just a handful of “rogue states” which prevented the region from developing into Switzerland. If only America could bring “regime change” to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the Islamic Republic of Iran, the rest of the Middle East would take inspiration and in a peaceful revolution adopt western attitudes toward women, human rights, and Israel. In the meantime, while war had to be waged against Iraq, and sooner or later Iran, it was perfectly fine if Saudi Arabia remained theocratic and autocratic. Change would arrive before the House of Saud knew it, once America’s wars were won.

The Downfall of The King of Davos

The Wall Street Journal:

For decades, Klaus Schwab ruled over Davos like royalty. That reign ended when he hit “send” on an email to World Economic Forum trustees on a recent Friday afternoon.
Schwab was seemingly headed for a graceful exit from the organization he founded more than a half-century ago, after a 2024 investigation by The Wall Street Journal exposed evidence of a toxic culture at the Forum for women and Black employees. But by Friday, April 18, the trustees’ audit committee recommended opening a probe into a new wave of whistleblower allegations against Schwab and his wife, Hilde.
Incensed, Klaus Schwab fired off a two-paragraph message to the board’s audit committee, threatening trustees with an investigation into how they were carrying out their duties and accusing them of risking the future of the organization.
“You have the opportunity to withdraw your note to the board in the next 24 hours with the specific regret to have put into question my reputation,” his email said. He offered some advice: “To facilitate such a move, you could refer to the fact that I will file a criminal complaint.”
“Yours sincerely,” he signed off. “Klaus.”
The bombshell email was aimed at stopping trustees from responding formally to accusations that the Schwabs for years had improperly intermingled their personal finances with the well-endowed nonprofit’s accounts.
Instead it backfired on the 87-year-old founder of the Forum, the Swiss institution behind the glitzy annual gathering of world leaders, finance moguls, celebrities and journalists each January in the Alps…
Now, the founder is at war with the organization he started and led with an iron grip. He has been instructed by Forum lawyers not to destroy emails, financial documents or other records, said people familiar with the situation, and he is forbidden from interacting with staff or using Forum computer systems.