For the first time since January 2018, House Republicans on Tuesday passed a government-wide funding bill without needing help from Democrats. And a day after the vote, members are suggesting there’s one man to thank: President Donald Trump.
While Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team came up with much of the partisan funding plan and held the conference in line, GOP leaders heavily relied on Trump to get Republicans in line. The president made phone calls, dispatched his staff, twisted arms and even played a previously unknown role in drafting the legislation.
Johnson’s team started working with the White House on the funding measure in late January, two sources with direct knowledge of the talks told NOTUS. The sources said Trump and his team recommended a handful of the “anomalies” in the bill. And it was the White House’s recommendations that resulted in an $8 billion reduction in current funding — a key to winning over conservatives who were resistant to just extending current spending.
But this plan, these sources suggested, was just a backup. It was only when Democrats made it clear they wouldn’t support a measure that didn’t include restrictions on Trump’s ability to fire federal employees that Trump and the White House went ahead with the Republican-only approach.
Of course, the legislation can only be “Republican-only” in one chamber. The bill, which received just one Democratic vote in the House, needs eight Democrats in the Senate to support it to clear the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold. (There are 53 Republicans in the Senate, but one GOP senator, Rand Paul, has already come out against the legislation.)
Whether Republicans can clear that hurdle is still an open question. And if Senate Democrats stand in opposition, the plan very well could backfire.
But if there’s a shutdown, Republicans already think they’re in a stronger position to blame the lapse in funding on Democrats. And they see the bill’s passage in the House as its own accomplishment for a GOP conference that has been bitterly divided for years.
In the end, these sources said, Republicans were able to unite because of one person: Trump.
“He is the difference maker,” Rep. Eric Burlison, who usually opposes funding measures, said of Trump. “I would never support this language, but I do trust Donald Trump.”
Burlison isn’t alone in voting for the measure because of Trump. Other members told NOTUS it wasn’t Johnson, or the whip meetings or the promise of future funding for projects in their districts that got them to vote for it; it was Trump.
“I trust President Trump immensely,” Rep. Lauren Boebert, who said she had multiple conversations with the president about the funding measure, told NOTUS. “He is the one who brought us to the dance, and we’re going to dance with him.”
Another Republican who Trump called, Rep. Tim Burchett, told reporters Tuesday that the president was “very convincing.”
On Wednesday, Burchett described his call with Trump in detail, telling NOTUS that most of the conversation centered around cutting waste, fraud and abuse at the Department of Defense.
Burchett, who had never before voted for a continuing resolution, specifically said he told Trump that he feels there’s a lot of wasteful spending on defense contractors. Burchett told NOTUS that he actually referred to the contractors as “war pimps” on his call with Trump. The president laughed and agreed with him, Burchett said.
But Burchett also got a call from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to discuss spending at the Pentagon, and that conversation was also helpful. So was Vice President JD Vance’s trip to the Hill.
Vance met behind closed doors with Republicans on Tuesday to urge them to support the legislation. And for those worried about the bill continuing wasteful spending, Vance’s message was that Trump won’t let that happen.
“The president, under Section II, will ensure allocations from Congress are not spent on things that harm the taxpayer,” Vance told members, according to a source in the room.
That message — that the president will block certain congressionally appropriated funds — is its own marked departure from Republican priorities in the past. That the president is asserting some authority to block funds is one of the key reasons Democrats opposed the legislation. But for Republicans, they said they trust Trump to make additional cuts.
Rep. Ralph Norman, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, told NOTUS he would never have voted for the funding measure if former President Joe Biden was still in office. With Trump, however, it was much easier.
“Trump’s people and who he’s put in place played a tremendous role,” Norman said of how he got to voting yes on the bill. “It’s like having an all-star team. He’s got an all-star team that we have confidence in.”
Last week, Trump invited senior Freedom Caucus members like Norman to the White House to discuss the funding measure. The idea was to try and convince the caucus — some of whom have never voted for any government funding measure — to support the bill by laying out how a government shutdown would stall the administration’s priorities. As Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris put it, Trump “convinced us that he needed this to be done.”
The meeting led the Freedom Caucus to take an official position supporting the funding measure, which requires a four-fifths majority vote within the caucus. It was a vote of confidence that Harris said would never have happened without Trump.
“This is part of the Trump second term,” Harris told NOTUS. “Bottom line is, he has an agenda, he needs to deliver it and we’re going to help him deliver it.”
The Freedom Caucus also met with Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, on March 3, per a source familiar with the meeting. Vought pitched them on the funding plan and assuaged spending concerns.
Burlison, in fact, said he only got to yes after talking with Vought over the weekend. He told NOTUS that his call with Vought was “immensely important” in getting him to support the funding measure.
While lawmakers and congressional staff credited Trump and the White House, the White House sought to heap praise on Rep. Chip Roy, who Trump has previously threatened with a primary challenge.
A White House official said Roy “gathered members of the House Freedom Caucus and other fiscal conservatives to walk through their concerns and stress the importance of keeping the government open so that President Trump’s administration can continue its critical work.”
Roy, for his part, told NOTUS that he started working early on with the White House once it became clear that the only way to avoid a shutdown was some form of a continuing resolution.
“I’m someone who can look at the state of play and make a decision on what’s doable,” Roy said.
He started working to “mobilize” conservative support for the bill and ensure that conservatives had a seat at the table with the White House.
A second White House official told NOTUS that their message to the holdouts was just to “persuade” them that the alternative to passing this bill would be a shutdown, which would prevent the Trump administration from doing its work.
“They understand we need time to continue our work so we can eventually bring permanence to the reforms and savings we are working on,” this official said.
Of course, as much as Republicans wanted to take a victory lap over passing a partisan government funding bill, GOP sources suggested lawmakers could use some perspective. The bill still hasn’t passed the Senate, and they said the Republicans who held out until Trump called them were never going to vote no; they just wanted some time talking with the president.
“They’re members of Congress, and they need a metaphorical hand job from the president before they can vote for something,” one senior GOP aide said.
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Reese Gorman is a reporter at NOTUS.