Why did dozens of House Republicans feel free to defy Trump this week? His power over them depends mainly on primary voters. And those voters are unlikely to punish members for not raising the debt limit.
Of course, cutting taxes will increase the debt, but those same voters would punish Republicans who opposed tax cuts.
Catie Edmondson and Andrew Duehren at NYT:
Something unusual happened this week after President-elect Donald J. Trump ordered House Republicans to back legislation raising the debt limit: Dozens refused.
It was a rare breach by a group of Republicans who have traditionally backed Mr. Trump’s policy preferences unquestioningly and taken pains to avoid defying him.
And it laid bare a disconnect between Mr. Trump and his party that could upend their efforts next year to pass transformative tax and domestic policy legislation with the tiniest of majorities. Even as Mr. Trump has displayed a laissez-faire attitude to the federal debt and a willingness to spend freely, a number of lawmakers in his party fervently adhere to an anti-spending philosophy that regards debt as disastrous.
In this week’s spending bill fight, Mr. Trump was intent on trying to absolve himself of responsibility for dealing with the debt ceiling, which is expected to be reached sometime in January. Raising it while President Biden was still in office and Democrats still held the Senate, he apparently believed, could avoid a messy internal Republican fight over the issue next year when Mr. Trump is in the White House and his party in full control of Congress
Instead, he only accelerated that clash, which unfolded on the House floor on Thursday night when 38 Republicans refused to suspend the borrowing limit without spending cuts.
They tanked a spending plan that would have deferred the debt cap for two years, and by Friday, when Speaker Mike Johnson advanced a third proposal to avert a shutdown to the House floor, they had jettisoned the debt limit measure entirely, promising instead to deal with it next year.
...
A New York Times analysis of votes on spending bills since 2011 found that hard-right lawmakers associated with the Freedom Caucus have voted in favor of government funding bills less than 20 percent of the time. A smaller group of ultraconservative members has almost always voted against appropriations bills — in an average of 93 percent of cases.
It was that group of lawmakers that revolted against Mr. Trump's call this week to raise the debt limit without any cuts in exchange.
