The bedlam unfolding on Capitol Hill over passing a stopgap bill to avert a government shutdown could portend trouble for the GOP's broader legislative agenda, former Donald Trump director of legislative affairs Marc Short told CNBC News on Friday.
CNBC anchor Carl Quintanilla asked Short whether tech billionaire Elon Musk's interference in the process — which led the GOP caucus to scrap a bipartisan deal weeks in the making and then try to pass a partisan, stripped-down version only for dozens of Republicans to vote against it anyway — has permanently changed the way things work on Capitol Hill.
Short said he wouldn't go that far, describing it as a "fluid" process.
That being said, he continued, "this really does not bode well for the legislative agenda for next year. I think a lot of markets assumed, with the Republican sweep in November, that extending tax relief would be a foregone conclusion, but Speaker Johnson's margin is going to be tighter next year than it is right now ... and budget reconciliation is really hard."
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"This whole dynamic with the CR, I think, will get resolved, Carl," he added. "But it really doesn't portend well for what the agenda is for next year."
Already, there was deep dissension within the Republican caucus about how to even move forward with the budget reconciliation process, which allows the Senate to bypass a filibuster and pass legislation by simple majority as long as it deals solely with budgetary matters. The current plan is to pass a border security and energy package first, and then tackle an extension of Trump's 2017 tax cuts separately, but a number of Republicans are afraid this approach will lead to the tax breaks won't pass at all.
Meanwhile, liberal activists and lawmakers are beginning to rally against the GOP's plan, noting that it's impossible to achieve without deep cuts to Medicare and Social Security.
