As Congressional Democrats are increasingly divided by bitter infighting among the party’s leadership ranks that has spilled out into the open, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer is taking a moment to taunt his colleagues who are, in his view, “completely lost.”
Emmer, fresh off two major wins as House Republicans stuck together to pass a budget resolution and government funding bill largely along party lines, believes House Democrats have seriously misjudged the GOP conference’s ability to remain unified despite Speaker Mike Johnson wielding the smallest majority in American history. Though House Republicans often struggled to unite during former President Joe Biden’s term, Emmer is confident that the conference will continue to form a largely united front to pass President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda with a GOP trifecta in Washington.
“In spite of ourselves we just keep succeeding,” Emmer told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Everybody always underestimates us, everybody always doubts us, and then we get it done.”
“I think Democrats are realizing this is why they’re so despondent,” Emmer added later. “They’re realizing we don’t need their votes.”
The Daily Caller News Foundation interviewed Emmer in his office on Friday to discuss how House GOP leadership has united the conference in the first few months of the 119th Congress to overcome House Democrats’ ineffective opposition.
Shortly after the interview, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and nine Democrats would break with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to advance a GOP spending bill that 212 House Democrats voted against. Schumer and Jeffries’ jarring split came as Democratic lawmakers initially hoped that House Republicans would need their help to pass the Trump-backed government funding bill.
The stopgap measure ultimately passed the House 217 to 213. House GOP leadership promptly adjourned the chamber upon passage, effectively forcing Senate Democrats to choose between shutting down the government or voting to advance a Trump-backed spending bill.
“I think they made a huge mistake,” Emmer told the DCNF. “I’m not sure what Hakeem was thinking — why he invested so much political capital into this.”
“And there’s the politics of what was in the bill,” Emmer continued. “He forced his members to vote against the largest pay increase that our junior enlisted servicemen and women have received in a generation.”
House Republicans’ campaign arm is already running digital ads against Democrats for voting to shut down the government.
Emmer, who is tasked with ensuring House GOP leadership has the votes to bring legislation to the floor, credited Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s involvement in helping House Republicans remain unified, describing Vance as a “value-add” to his whip operation.
Just one GOP lawmaker, Republican Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, broke with House GOP leadership on two high-profile votes that Republicans passed with little to no help from Democrats. Though the president threatened Massie with a primary challenge for bucking the party, Emmer struck a more conciliatory tone, telling the DCNF his job as whip is to respect and listen to each House Republican, including Massie.
“We get people who sometimes have a problem accepting a win,” Emmer acknowledged while describing Massie as a “thoughtful” colleague. “The beauty of our party, in my opinion, is that we don’t all agree. I think that’s what makes us unique.”
“This is a customer service business, and every one of the members is our customer,” Emmer continued.
Challenges for House GOP leadership loom ahead as the conference looks to pass major pieces of Trump’s legislative agenda later in the year. House and Senate Republicans in the beginning stage of the budget reconciliation process, which will allow congressional Republicans to provide additional funding to ICE to fast-track the president’s deportation efforts, boost defense spending, extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year and enact the president’s other tax priorities, including no taxes on tips, Social Security benefits and overtime pay.
House Republicans will have to stay united during votes on passing the president’s agenda that Democrats are expected to whip their members to vote against, including passing a forthcoming budget bill and raising the statutory debt limit, which some conservative Republican lawmakers have never voted for.
Emmer is optimistic that House Republicans will remain in lockstep as the conference sees the benefit of coming together to pass legislation without needing support from their Democratic colleagues.
“The more we perform — and you’ve seen it with two major votes in the last two three weeks — the more we perform, the more accustomed our members will get to it,” Emmer told the DCNF. “That’s why the stuff passing is great, because it’s giving our team a little institutional memory of what it’s like to do these sorts of things to be successful.”
“Even though they may not socialize together, some of them may not like each other … doesn’t matter because at the end of the day, they’re all going to want to accomplish the same thing,” Emmer continued.
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