Republican officials began 2025 with great optimism about their legislative prospects. The GOP controlled the House, the Senate and the White House, giving it a unique opportunity to advance its ambitious, regressive agenda.
It hasn’t quite worked out that way. The Republican-led Congress did manage to pass a wildly unpopular domestic policy megabill, the inaptly named One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was filled with health care cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy. Otherwise, it spent much of the year struggling. In fact, a recent Washington Post analysis concluded that the GOP-led Congress “set a modern record for lowest legislative output in the first year of a new presidency.”
As the new year gets underway, there’s little to suggest 2026 will be any better. Politico reported:
A bill that could incentivize employers to offer more training and education programs for their workers narrowly failed on the House floor after several Republicans, including members of the party’s pro-labor wing, defected.
Lawmakers on Tuesday voted 215-209 against the Flexibility for Workers Education Act. GOP leaders such as Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) were seen discussing the bill with several hesitant members, some of whom eventually ended up voting for the bill, but weren’t able to get enough people on board.
After the legislation failed in the face of bipartisan opposition, GOP leaders scrapped their plan to vote on two related bills, fearing additional defeats.
The House speaker told reporters that he’s still “totally in control of the House,” adding that his failure was emblematic of “life with a small margin.”
The closer one looks at this, the faster his defense falls apart.
Right off the bat, Johnson keeps reminding people that he’s “totally in control” of the chamber he ostensibly leads. The repetition isn’t doing the Louisiana Republican any favors: Effective speakers generally lead without having to remind people about their ability to lead.
Similarly, if the GOP leader were “totally in control” of the House, he’d be able to pass his own party’s bills, which clearly wasn’t the case on Tuesday afternoon. For that matter, if Johnson were on top of things, he and his leadership team would have known they didn’t have the votes to advance the legislation, which would have saved them the embarrassment of failure. Tuesday’s developments also served as a reminder that several GOP members are worried about their re-election prospects, and as a consequence they’re increasingly comfortable putting their career prospects ahead of their party’s legislative agenda. As for the House Republicans’ narrow majority, it’s true that the party’s margin is tiny, but when Nancy Pelosi held the gavel, the California Democrat managed to fare quite well with a similar numerical advantage in the same chamber. By contrast, she knew to count votes before bringing bills to the floor. Pelosi also never felt the need to tell people she was “totally in control of the House” — it was a fact that was simply and demonstrably true.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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