ArcaMax

Let me tell you the story of the star-crossed Republican Senate and House of Representatives.

Republicans can't cross the president and can't compromise with Democrats. They are utterly useless as lawmakers, precariously perched on slim majorities.

The Trump Republican plan for the people is etched in black and white in a 1,000-page death warrant for the federal government, except for the five-sided fortress across the Potomac River.

This is on top of the 100,000-plus skilled workforce jobs Elon Musk scuttled, doing President Donald Trump's dirty work.

The capital has undergone loss, shock, trauma and other stages of grief since the day Trump was sworn in, Jan. 20. We're braced for Army tanks and soldiers in the streets (Saturday) for his own military birthday parade.

Congressional Republicans, to a MAGA man, are out to drastically cut Medicaid for the poor and other social services such as school nutrition. Sixteen million Americans stand to lose health care coverage. The same bill adds at least $2.4 trillion to the deficit due to tax breaks for the very rich.

Republicans make no bones about it, betting Democrats can't get the message out to the American people.

The June donnybrook over Trump's blockbuster bill will reveal how helpless -- or heedless -- Republicans are in his hands. You can count on your hands the few with the gumption to stand up to him. Trump, the master intimidator, knows it.

House Democrats stayed up all night trying to halt the massive bill and lost by one vote, 215-214. They had the fighting team spirit Senate Democrats now need on their floor. They are 53-47 in the minority. Their chorus is "four Republicans," wanted to oppose the looming Trump bill.

Some Democrats hope Trump's rupture with Musk, who tore into the titanic bill as an "abomination," will help them sink it.

The real deal is the narrow Republican leadership controlling each chamber.

The top House Republicans, obsequious Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, are both from deep-red country in Louisiana. Louisiana! How unfortunate.

The Senate top Republicans, Leader John Thune and Majority Whip John Barrasso, hail from scarcely populated states: South Dakota and Wyoming, respectively.

The two states have a combined population of fewer than 2 million people. California has 40 million. But it only has two senators. South Dakota and Wyoming have four.

Majority leaders set the legislative agenda. Nothing reaches a floor vote without their approval. That's why we're stuck in an unlovely mess -- a country choked in crisis.

(Oddly, the House and Senate Democratic leaders are each from Brooklyn, but New York is the state fourth-highest in population.)

Thune, new to the job, has proved a hardliner. He forced a wavering Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) to cast a deciding vote for Pete Hegseth, the warlike secretary of defense. That was a defining moment. The tall, lean and hungry Thune, too, is a partisan warrior.

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars," as Shakespeare wrote, but in the constitution coauthors.

The Senate's power, lopsided as it is, tips toward small-state political will. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison -- mostly Madison -- are to blame.

Yet they created a unique design of checks and balances, now a fallow field.

Hamilton and Madison would be sad to see Congress cede its authority over the executive branch. The president on a tear; that's not what they meant at all.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley Law School, says the 1787 Constitution cries out for a rewrite or reform. We've outgrown the founders' and framers' frock coats.

Legal scholars also say Trump skates close to defying court orders - the third branch of government. That's a first in history.

Politics, the old "art of the possible," has turned into a dead end in the Capitol's marble walls and halls.

Lawmakers once had friends in the other party, across the aisle. Pols, by nature outgoing, used to play poker and share belly laughs.

Now the noisy House is full of hard feelings. There's not a lot of love lost in the Senate, but it's a bit more civil.

Fear of Trump's "retribution" is real in both places. What they have in common is clear. Republicans love their jobs too much.

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The author may be reached at JamieStiehm.com. To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, please visit creators.com.

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