Congress is designed to be a co-equal branch of government and a check on executive power, but in practice when the same party controls the White House, lawmakers in the modern era have proven willing to go along with the usurpation of their legislative power.
The dynamic applies to both parties — like when Democrats cheered Biden’s executive actions to create a student loan forgiveness program, which the Supreme Court later ruled unconstitutional.
It was this fertile ground that has allowed Musk’s team to institute cuts across departments, agencies and programs with little pushback from the GOP-led Congress.
Congressional scholars like Postell say a government that functions like this is a cause for concern. “I see the decline of a Congress that legislates as a serious constitutional crisis that anybody who believes in republican government should be concerned about. So I tend not to see this as just a neutral change. I see it as a serious constitutional concern.”
Show them the money
Lawmakers also need to decide how they are going to approve the spending bills for fiscal year 2026 — which starts Oct. 1 — after punting on this year’s bills.
Kevin Kosar, a congressional scholar with the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said it was understandable for Congress to want to clear the decks at the start of this Congress, but the real test of congressional muscle under Trump will be how they handle next year’s spending bills.
“The patient we know as Congress, I do not think is wholly dead,” Kosar said, adding that House and Senate lawmakers will want some assurances that the money is actually going to be spent, because otherwise it’s a futile process. “I would think, ultimately, the appropriators’ desire for power would kick in. I mean, it’s going to have to kick in at some point. Otherwise, what’s the point of being an appropriator?” Kosar said.
Sarah Binder, a congressional scholar with the centrist Brookings Institution, agrees. “You don’t want to overuse the word, but it is kind of existential for Congress,” she said. “It’s really hard to get around the single most important power that Congress has as the power of the purse, and if the parties can’t be sure that the administration is going to abide by those pots of money that they set into statute, that they put into law, then the jig is up, right?”
Kosar also nodded to the political reality of the moment, where the House GOP majority is on the line in 2026. Historically, the party in power in the White House tends to lose seats in the midterms. Republicans hold a slim two-seat majority.
“I do feel like the administration and congressional Republicans, to a degree, really are operating within a two-year window, and so the amount of deference that legislators are showing is to some degree, like, ‘we just have to do this to see if we can rack up as many wins as possible, because those midterms are probably not going to go our way.'”
To that end, Speaker Johnson has gone so far as to use parliamentary rules to effectively block the House’s ability to vote to repeal Trump’s tariffs, as well as any effort to vote on a resolution calling for an investigation into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the Signal messaging app to discuss sensitive military operations. “I think it’s an overreach here,” said Rep. Mary Scanlon, D-Pa., on Monday, “I think it’s simply for the purpose of having to avoid tough votes.”
For his part, newly minted Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters on Tuesday that Republicans want to be “good partners” to a president who Thune reiterated has a mandate — “It was clear, it was decisive” — to enact his policy goals.
A near-term policy fight that could upend the Senate indefinitely
Thune has been working judiciously with Senate Republicans to make those policy goals a reality in the one “big, beautiful bill” Trump has demanded.
That massive undertaking is intended to make Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent, as well as include border security and energy provision using a budget process called reconciliation that allows the majority party to skirt the filibuster, the chamber’s 60-vote threshold to pass most legislation, and advance the package without Democratic votes.
Thune has already described it as an “arduous” process that typically involves relying on the Senate parliamentarian to referee what can and what fits the strict rules for a reconciliation bill.
The parliamentarian is a nonpartisan Senate staffer tasked with safeguarding Senate rules. In the past, reconciliation has been guided by that person’s judgment. For instance, Democrats wanted to include a $15 federal minimum wage hike in a 2021 pandemic relief package that advanced under reconciliation rules. But the parliamentarian nixed the policy because it did not comply with the complicated rules for what is allowed in such a bill.
For instance, in order for a bill to qualify for reconciliation and the lower, 50-vote threshold for passage, it generally cannot increase the federal deficit over the next decade.
But Republicans, backed by Majority Leader Thune, are already looking to bypass that rule — and the parliamentarian — to use a favorable analysis for the deficit impact of the tax cuts. In reality, trillions will be added to the U.S. national debt over the next decade if Trump’s tax cuts are extended without ways to pay for them.
Binder says ignoring the parliamentarian can be consequential. “If you just ignore parliamentary history, it’s really, for a lack of a better term, it’s really “Calvin ball,” where you choose your rules solely for the purpose of getting the outcome that you want, and that’s quite destabilizing to the U.S. Congress.”
Thune will also likely face pressure to overrule the parliamentarian if the official rules that provisions on immigration or energy policy do not comply with budget rules. Thune has said publicly he does not wish to overrule the parliamentarian, but he could face a pressure campaign from Trump to get what the president wants in that bill.
Democrats warn that doing so would amount to going “nuclear” and threaten the foundational pillar of minority rule in the Senate: the filibuster. “They are tramping all over the rules that have governed the Senate for decades in order to give massive tax cuts for their billionaire friends,” said Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on the Senate floor earlier this month.
