The Tiny House Majority Giving Mike Johnson Big Headaches

House Speaker Mike Johnson wakes up every day worried about the numbers. The number of his members who could get sick, fail to travel back in time for votes or decide to team up with Democrats to derail his agenda.

First the release of the Epstein files. Then the Affordable Care Act tax credits. And now the need to double-check that enough of his members make it to the chamber to pass basic procedural votes and targeted GOP priority bills.

With Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resignation at the beginning of the session and the unexpected death of California GOP Rep. Doug LaMalfa, the number of lawmakers in the House is 431, with 218 Republicans, 213 Democrats and four vacancies. This means that with full attendance, Republicans can only afford to lose two votes for legislation they are trying to pass with a simple majority. A tie vote means a bill fails. This dynamic gives enormous power to any lawmaker who decides to threaten to tank a bill with their vote.

Another concern leadership needs to watch is whether illnesses, resignations or deaths can cause the majority of the House to flip.

The dynamic played out on the House floor Tuesday evening, when six Republicans joined Democrats to tank a GOP labor bill, forcing GOP leaders to pull two other bills off the floor that they knew wouldn’t get enough support. It’s becoming a regular dynamic for Johnson – switching gears on what bills he can pass each week.

In the last three terms of Congress, the House majority has held historically small margins. In the 117th Congress, Democrats won 222–213 in the 2020 election, making it the party’s slimmest margin since the House majority in the early 1940s.

Then Republicans retook the House in the 118th Congress with 222–213 edge. But resignations, health issues for lawmakers and their families and unexpected deaths have carried into the 119th Congress, the current term, affecting whether Republicans can pass bills with their razor-thin majority.

The start of the new year brought new pains for Johnson.

Rep. Greg Murphy posted on X about his recovery from a surgery in his home district. And Rep. Thomas Massie typically votes against his party when it comes to spending, which could create drama in the coming weeks in Congress as lawmakers work to finalize the toughest appropriations bills.

Massie dismissed the idea that his vote could derail the leadership’s goals when asked by NOTUS about the slim margin.

“I don’t think it’s going to be that big of a problem because I don’t think they’re going to do a lot in an election year,” he said in an interview. “Once they get past the funding of the government, which will be bipartisan, I don’t think they have a lot of things to pass.”

It doesn’t help that President Donald Trump lashed out at five Senate Republicans last week for voting for a measure that would limit his power in Venezuela, following the US capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Republicans were privately frustrated that Trump posted on Truth Social that they should “never be elected to office again,” considering the slim majorities Republicans hold in the House and the Senate.

“The president needs to change his tactics a little bit. He can’t tick off five people. Sure, Marjorie left, but there are a lot of people who aren’t going to leave,” Massie said. He added that Trump publicly saying members don’t deserve to be reelected doesn’t help matters given the concern about keeping defections to a minimum. “He doesn’t have that large of a margin to burn, but he’s burning it.”

There have been a handful of examples this term of lawmakers bypassing the speaker and forcing votes, with the biggest example being Massie teaming up with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna on a measure to force the Justice Department to release the Epstein files.

Because of the small Republican majority, Democrats only needed four GOP lawmakers to join them to trigger the discharge petition, the tool that forces a vote on the floor. It was rare for Republicans to coordinate with Democrats, but it’s become more of an occurrence during Johnson’s tenure.

Weeks after forcing the Epstein vote, enough Republicans joined Democrats on a measure to force a vote to extend the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies, a policy issue that Republican leadership widely opposed.

Now, Democrats plan to try their luck again on a bill banning congressional stock trading with a discharge petition, in the hopes to convince a handful of Republicans to join them again on passing the measure instead of a Republican leadership-endorsed legislation that is going through committee. The move comes after GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who sponsored a bipartisan bill that is broader, filed her own discharge petition to move that bill to the House floor. GOP leadership tried to head that off by endorsing another bill led by House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil that Democrats say they won’t get behind.

To be clear, Johnson shot down the notion that he doesn’t have control over the conference when it comes to moving legislation across the floor. When asked by NOTUS about navigating his majority, Johnson projected confidence. “We’ve been demonstrating for the entirety of this Congress what can be done with a small majority,” Johnson said. “It’s the same challenges every day around here. I got to build consensus, and we don’t have many votes to spare. On some days, we have no votes to spare. So we get everybody to ‘yes’, that’s what we do.”

Majority Leader Steve Scalise offered a more optimistic perspective on what the tiny majority means for legislation in the House.

“It puts more pressure on every individual member, but it also makes us, as leadership, go work overtime to listen to all of our members, and frankly, that makes a better product,” Scalise told NOTUS.

This story was updated with additional information.