President Donald Trump has dived headlong into the new year with a list of policy demands — but it’s already apparent at least some of them are going to be rejected by House Republicans, even as the chamber has shown him a great deal of loyalty up to this point.
According to Politico, Trump “fired off a flurry of ultimatums and declarations on Wednesday, first calling for Congress to ban large investors from acquiring single-family homes, a proposal expected to be included in an upcoming executive order addressing affordability” — then demanded that defense contractors be prohibited from issuing stock buybacks and dividends and have their executive pay capped at $5 million, in response to delays in contracts, and called in Congress to increase the defense budget from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion.
It appears that there is very little appetite in Congress for any of this to be enacted. Per the report, one House Republican flatly said of his defense budget proposal, “That’s not happening.”
All of this comes at a moment when the House Republican majority is more vulnerable than ever — and the margin of error to pass anything grows even tighter.
At the start of the year, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) formally resigned from Congress, leaving her seat vacant. Then Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) unexpectedly passed away due to a medical emergency. This puts additional pressure on House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who as it was could only afford to lose three votes on any bill as long as all Democrats united against him.
It also comes as House Republicans prepare a vote to potentially override Trump’s first two vetoes of the term, which proved highly unpopular among some members of his own party: the first being a bill to improve loan terms for a water quality infrastructure project in rural Colorado, and the second to improve flood control in an area of the Florida Everglades near the reservation of an Indian tribe that happened to oppose Trump’s immigration policy.
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