Going behind the news

Hello! I’m Jacob Bogage, the economic policy reporter in Congress for The Washington Post.

But here, I’m your reporter inside Congress, and things that are a bonus to my daily coverage will end up here. I’ll take you past the rope-lines at the U.S. Capitol, on my reporting travels, through the public records I unearth, and behind the scenes on how a scoop comes to fruition.

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So lets start here with the narrowly avoided government shutdown this past week.

I reported for The Post about the deal House Speaker Mike Johnson struck with congressional Democrats, then swiftly walked away from after dissent from Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

Lets remember the long tale of how we got here, which I posted about on Bluesky:

Eventually, Republicans landed on Plan G, which was substantially similar to Plan A. But the ultimate solution included a handshake deal among House Republicans on the national debt.

I think that’s being underreported. Let’s zoom in a bit.

Johnson offered GOP debt hawks a deal that Republicans would cut $2.5 trillion from mandatory spending in tax legislation next year, while raising the debt limit by $1.5 trillion. That creates $4 trillion in fiscal space.

First on the debt limit: $1.5 trillion is not a lot of money. For context interest payments on the debt were $882 billion in 2024, or more than half that amount. So $1.5 trillion is not going to buy the U.S. all that much time.

But in the big picture, Trump and Republicans are thinking about a roughly $5 trillion tax bill in 2025. So even with $4 trillion in fiscal space, the GOP is looking at raising $1 trillion in debt on a single piece of legislation. That either not going to fly with the budget hawks who nearly took down Johnson’s Plan G, or could severely restrain Trump’s ambitions in the White House.

In other words, the same intra-Republican fight that just played out over spending in the government funding bill — another, bigger intra-Republican fight is brewing over taxes and spending in the months ahead.

Any questions? This is a feature I want to try with every edition of the newsletter. I’ll lay out all the things I want to know as I keep reporting this story.

• Who came up with this debt framework?

• How many Republicans bought into this debt agreement?

• Was this $4 trillion framework really enough for the House GOP’s debt hawks?

• If Mike Johnson is not reelected speaker for the 119th Congress — and that’s a distinct possibility — will the next Republican speaker abide by that framework?

• What kind of mandatory spending cuts are congressional Republicans pursuing?

• How much influence does Elon Musk have on the GOP’s spending priorities, even as it’s clear Elon has no idea how congressional spending works?

Do you have more questions? Email me! [email protected].

Thanks for joining me this edition. I hope you’ll subscribe, and we’ll catch up again soon.