Republicans understood early in 2015 that if they were going to get must-pass bills across the finish line, it would require help from Democrats to do it.
After years of struggling and failing to win over their own faction of conservatives, leading to an October 2013 government shutdown, Republican leaders decided to work across the aisle to win enough votes to move legislation in each chamber.
They skewed toward the center even as the polls show an increasingly frustrated Republican electorate who are turning to outsider candidates such as Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who both espouse a “no compromise” conservative attitude.
“Congress and Trump followers are definitely out of sync at the moment because the institution is working, and that may not sit well with those voters,” Republican strategist and former GOP congressional leadership aide Ron Bonjean told the Washington Examiner.
Trump recently lambasted the GOP’s biggest compromise of the year: a legislative package made up of $1.1 trillion in spending and $622 billion in tax cuts, which passed with broad support from both Republicans and Democrats.
“In order to avoid a government shutdown, a cowardly threat from an incompetent president, the elected Republicans in Congress threw in the towel and showed absolutely no budget discipline,” Trump told ABC News.
The deal included a mix of wins for both parties, but Democrats claimed a bigger victory, pointing to a $62 billion increase in federal spending and the elimination of policy riders that were a priority for conservative lawmakers, including an end to taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood.
“We began with a bill that had all the bad stuff in and all the good stuff out, and we ended up with a bill … that has all the good stuff in and most of the bad stuff out,” said Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., who serves as a policy and communications chairman for House Democrats. “That’s the definition of victory.”
Republicans didn’t walk away empty-handed. The deal included an end to the 1970s ban on crude oil exports, which the GOP has long wanted. And the legislative package made permanent GOP-favored tax cuts for businesses.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said that while the GOP got its way on oil, “it really gave away the store” to Democrats on the rest of the deal.
Democrats say the new bipartisanship has awarded them with tremendous leverage, because the GOP’s conservative faction prevents Republicans from passing legislation without winning support from them.
But GOP leaders and many rank-and-file Republicans considers this year’s bipartisanship a win for their own party, which in the past has been skewered in the polls for appearing obstructionist and unable to govern.
Despite conservative criticism of the slate of bipartisan deals, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell proudly embraced them in the GOP’s weekly address in late December.
The Kentucky Republican touted the passage of of multi-year bills reauthorizing federal highway funding as well as elementary and secondary education policy. Each of the two bills had been stalled on the congressional agenda for more than a decade because the partisan divide prevented passage.
“Many issues languished in the old Senate for years,” McConnell said in the GOP weekly address on Dec. 19. “Some were assumed to be too difficult for any Senate majority to address. But the Republican Senate you elected, working with the men and women who stand up for you in the House of Representatives, tackled each of them. And the president signed most into law.”
The bipartisanship is something McConnell longed to achieve in the Senate, where years of leadership under then Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., led to near gridlock and bitter fights between the two parties.
For House Republicans, the bipartisanship under new House Speaker Paul Ryan spared the party from footing the blame for another federal spending showdown or worse, a government shutdown, which polls show always inflict significant political damage on the GOP.
Republican strategist and former House GOP leadership aide Doug Heye said the party managed to pass the bipartisan legislation with significant Republican support.
The spending deal, for example, passed with 150 Republicans behind it. The highway authorization and education policy bills also passed with a majority of GOP approval.
“What you want to avoid is bipartisanship at the expense of achievable conservative policy,” Heye said. “What House Republicans have been able to do is get big partisan things done but without losing most of their team. That’s the sweet spot.”
