Republicans see GOP dysfunction as major liability ahead of midterms

Senate Republicans say the dysfunction in the House is becoming a liability for the broader GOP brand ahead of this year’s midterm elections, warning that if Congress can’t break through legislative gridlock, the party’s candidates will pay a severe political price in November.

Republican senators were dumbfounded by their House counterparts’ refusal to pass a Homeland Security appropriations bill passed by the Senate to fund critical agencies such as the Transportation Security Administration, even after President Trump signed off on the deal.

The House finally did pass the bill funding most of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last week.

Now GOP senators are bracing for another protracted standoff between Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) over a long-term extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (FISA) enhanced surveillance authorities and the farm bill — two must-pass items on the GOP agenda.

Republican senators across the political spectrum say they fear the Speaker has lost control of his conference and that it will be incredibly difficult to pass legislation before the midterm elections, even though many GOP senators believe it’s important to rack up more accomplishments before Election Day.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) warned the Republican infighting in the House is hurting the GOP brand, echoing concerns voiced by several other GOP senators who predict that Democrats will likely win back control of the House and could flip the Senate as well.

“It’s not like these things are hard. That’s the thing. I feel like the Senate has teed up things fairly easily for them, even to the point where if they don’t like it, they can blame us. And they still haven’t taken the opportunity to actually govern, and I do think it’s hurting the brand,” he said. “The House is rowdy.”

After weeks of bashing the Senate-passed bill to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security because it also zeroed out funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol, House conservatives on Thursday finally agreed to let it pass by a voice vote.

That left Republican senators wondering what the whole month of House GOP protests was about.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) implied members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus are grandstanding and warned that they need to help the party show voters it knows how to govern in Washington.

“My colleagues over there need to start playing team ball. Their behavior is being noticed by people. We can’t blame Democrats for the dysfunction that’s going on over there right now and it’s a really bad look for people going into at-risk districts going into November,” he said.

Tillis, who is retiring at the end of this Congress and has been speaking more freely, delivered a blunt message to House Republicans.

“Set aside whatever your 5 percent disagreement is and play team ball between now and November or they’re going to live to regret it,” he warned.

A nationwide Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,014 registered voters conducted April 24-27 found that voters would prefer Democratic control of Congress by 41 percent to 37 percent.

The House finished the week with a burst of legislative activity.

In addition to the voice vote to approve the long-stalled Homeland Security funding bill, the House passed a three-and-a-half-year extension of FISA’s enhanced surveillance authority as well as a farm bill, reauthorizing agriculture and food programs for five years.

But Thune declared the long-term extension of the FISA authorities “dead on arrival” in the Senate because House Republicans insisted on adding language to prohibit the Federal Reserve from establishing a central bank digital currency, a proposal that is a nonstarter with many Senate Democrats.

The Senate and House had to scramble to agree to a 45-day extension of FISA’s Section 702 authorities only hours before those powers were set to expire Thursday.

Senate Republicans felt they were left in limbo for most of the week over the issue as House Republicans battled among themselves over proposed reforms to the bill.

“It’s like a wreck over there,” said one Republican senator who requested anonymity to vent frustration over the constant skirmishing between the Speaker and restive House conservatives.

The senator said mainstream GOP colleagues in the House share their frustration.

“They don’t know if they’re coming or going. Everybody is fighting,” the senator said.

The Republican senator said Senate colleagues are discussing strategies for dealing with what they view as a dysfunctional House for the rest of the year.

One proposal being hashed out is a plan to “jam” the House by working with Democrats to pass more bipartisan bills and then pressuring Johnson to put them up for votes, the source said.

In one of many signs of discord on the House side, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a prominent conservative, was spotted by a reporter walking out of a meeting with the Speaker and slamming the door and yelling: “We had an agreement today and then you changed it!”

However, Roy, the policy chair of the Freedom Caucus, on Friday pointed the finger at Senate Republicans for the gridlock in Congress. He blamed them for not taking action to eliminate or reform the filibuster, which gives 41 Democrats veto power over most bills in the upper chamber.

“The Senate GOP is killing itself — and our ability to move a conservative agenda with blind adherence to a 60-vote threshold that Democrats will jettison. It’s killing SAVE, it was the excuse to fund DHS without ICE/CBP and it is the excuse preventing banning CBDC,” he wrote Friday on the social platform X, referring to the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, which would reform voter registration requirements nationwide, and to Customs and Border Protection and the ban on a central bank digital currency.

The farm bill also traveled a rocky path in the House because some GOP lawmakers insisted on adding language to allow the year-round sale of gasoline blended with ethanol, known as E15.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman (R-Ark.) warned that the House farm bill will run “into trouble” in the Senate if the language allowing year-round sales of E15 stays in.

“I agree with the president that the small- and medium-size refineries need to be protected and right now the House bill doesn’t do that, so that’s why they’re running into trouble,” Boozman said. Boozman made his comments before House GOP lawmakers reached a deal to strip out the ethanol language.

House Republicans will address the concerns being raised by oil-state Republicans by promising to pass procedural legislation after the early-May recess to separate the E15 measure from the farm bill.

The drama that nearly derailed the FISA extension and the farm bill, two must-pass bills that GOP senators say shouldn’t be such heavy lifts, has Republicans feeling pessimistic about passing a third budget reconciliation bill before November to enact other high-priority elements of Trump’s agenda, such as increased funding for the military or an extension of working-class tax cuts.

“The House is broken,” lamented one GOP senator, who requested anonymity to discuss the internal Republican criticisms. “The venting is more with Johnson. Senators don’t like to be criticized constantly by Johnson.”

The senator said Senate GOP colleagues were left fuming last week when they saw that the Speaker panned the Senate bill to fund most of the Homeland Security Department as “haphazardly written,” only to later approve it by voice vote, ending weeks of uncertainty and confusion.

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