Testing Every Limit of the Institution

The president’s iron grip on Congress

Jul 08, 2025

The president signed his spending bill into law on the Fourth of July, so now we can look forward to a skyrocketing federal deficit while the government slashes food assistance and healthcare funding. I’m not an expert on the bill, and I tried to keep track of all the changes as it went back and forth between the House and the Senate, but I’m substantially convinced it is a bad piece of legislation that will do more harm than good.

The fact that the president was able to get such a bad bill through Congress is a testament to the iron grip he has over Republican lawmakers.

The Washington Post chronicled the White House’s pressure campaign on lawmakers who voiced concerns about the bill. Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, told the president the bill was a mistake and would cost Republicans seats in the mid-term. The president, in turn, blasted Tillis on social media—a clear warning to other Republicans who dared speak out against him. Tillis decided not to seek re-election rather than vote for a bill that he felt would spell disaster for millions in his state.

Not every Republican holdout was as resolute. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska had been vocal in her opposition to the bill, but in the final scramble for votes, Republican leaders in the Senate made some provisions for Alaska and flipped her vote. With JD Vance as the tie-breaker vote, Murkowski’s support was enough to send the bill to the House.

In a statement, Murkowski wrote:

This has been an awful process—a frantic rush to meet an artificial deadline that has tested every limit of this institution. While we have worked to improve the present bill for Alaska, it is not good enough for the rest of our nation—and we all know it.

In April, Murkowski addressed a group of non-profit leaders in Anchorage. “We are all afraid,” she said. “It’s quite a statement, but we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. And I’ll tell ya, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”

A similar scramble for votes unfolded in the House, which, at first, failed to pass the bill. The administration stepped in and met privately with Republican lawmakers. The Washington Post reports:

Trump, Vice President JD Vance and their teams worked to peel off the holdouts. Some Republicans laughed when asked if Trump was persuasive, privately noting his tendency to veer off topic. But others described Trump’s explanation of the bill as “masterful” and crucial to clinching their support.

In the end, the Washington Post reports, the president seems to have promised a flurry of executive orders, “though details are scarce.”

It appears that through coercion and the promise of his political favor, the president managed to stifle enough independent conservatives in the Congress to strong-arm the passage of his terrible bill. While other presidents have used similar tactics, the stark contrast between the negative consequences of this bill and the chief executive’s power to sway his staunchest opponents demonstrates the strength of his grip on Congress.

After the House passed the bill, a reporter asked the president about the difference between his first and second terms. “I think I have more power now, I do,” he said. “More gravitas. More power.”

Congress should be a check on the chief executive’s power. Since Republicans hold both chambers, if they continue to rubber stamp the president’s agenda, they become complicit in his tyranny, and they erode the power of the first branch of our government as they cede more authority to the second.

Corridor Rabbit

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