The House Republicans just -- stunningly and amazingly -- actually did something. I know! You could've knocked me over with a feather....

I start with such snark because it seems entirely appropriate. But this is rather big news, as what it truly means is that the Republican House cats have now (for once) been successfully herded. This really is a big deal, since it hasn't happened much at all in the past decade or so.

The way things usually go in the GOP House is that they attempt to pass a bill (usually a budget, since that's about all they're capable of paying attention to) but their slim majority in the chamber means that their speaker cannot convince enough of them to vote for it, and so it dies. This usually leads to negotiations with Democrats and kicking the can down the road once again (it can also lead to a new Republican speaker, as we've seen before).

There are essentially two competing GOP factions that any Republican speaker has to cope with. One might be called the remnant of the Tea Party, which votes against pretty much every budget bill that gets proposed, because none of them magically solve the deficit or slash taxes on the wealthy enough for their tastes. Then there is an opposing faction who hail from purple "swing" districts, who know that if they vote for something too extreme, they will have a very tough time getting re-elected. They fight to limit the budget slashing, putting them in direct opposition to the Tea Party remnant.

Donald Trump, in his second term as president, now seems to have enough political leverage with his MAGA base to intimidate most of them into voting for things they really don't want to. This, as mentioned, is a rather stunning achievement. After Trump personally talked to all the holdouts yesterday, Speaker Mike Johnson was able to get all of his caucus but one (a Tea Party hardliner) to vote for his proposed budget resolution. If one more Republican had voted against it, the bill would not have passed -- that's how thin the majority now is for the GOP.

So what does this all mean and how is it going to play out? Well, the first step is going to be getting the House and Senate to agree on a bill. Senate Republicans were sure that the House GOP wasn't going to be able to deliver (a pretty safe bet, considering recent history), and so they came up with a "Plan B" -- they would first pass a quickie bill that would continue the federal budget past the government-shutdown deadline of March 14th, as well as adding in a few things designed to make Trump happy (like boosting the funding for border security). Once the House realized they couldn't pass their bill then they'd be forced to hold a vote on the Senate's Plan B, and a shutdown would be averted. Then later in the year they'd have plenty of time to tackle the big issues with taxes and everything else that got left out.

This didn't go as planned, obviously, since the House astonished everyone by actually passing their "big, beautiful" bill, which contains all the tax code changes. What this now means is that the Senate has just a little over two weeks to decide what to do. They could pass the House budget bill unchanged or they could tinker with it and pass a slightly different version (which would then have to go back and pass the House again). Their institutional pride might push them towards passing their own Senate version, but then again the timeline is incredibly short (since they fully expected to have months and months to sort all this stuff out). What this means is that any changes to the House bill will likely be minor -- mere tinkering around the edges. One way or another, it does seem more likely than not that the House and the Senate will be able to put something on Trump's desk before the deadline hits.

So what does this all mean? Well, that depends on who you ask. Congress essentially has to pass two budgets every year -- the first being merely a "blueprint" or "framework" for the budget. This sets top-line numbers but doesn't delve into the details of how those targets will be achieved. The second part of the process is where the details are added -- this program gets cut while this other one gets its funding boosted. What just passed the House is merely the framework, with no actual details.

Politically, there's a battle on right now as to how to frame the bill. One Democrat exited the House floor after the vote exclaiming: "We just won back the House." This optimism springs from what Republicans are going to have to do next.

The biggest targets the bill sets are for tax cuts and slashing the budget. The tax cuts passed during Trump's first term are expiring this year, meaning if Congress does nothing about them everyone's taxes will go up -- for normal taxpayers, taxes would go up a bit, but for the uber-wealthy, they'd go up a lot. The bill just passed sets a target of $4.5 trillion in tax cuts over the next ten years.

That's a lot of money, but even so it is not enough to accomplish everything Trump promised on the campaign trail, as the New York Times explains:

Mr. Trump has mostly focused on the tax side of the legislation. On the campaign trail, in addition to vowing to extend the cuts he signed into law in 2017, he made a number of promises, including that he would eliminate taxes on tips, on Social Security benefits and on overtime pay. Those are all extraordinarily expensive propositions.

The blueprint the House adopted on Tuesday puts a $4.5 trillion upper limit on the size of the tax cut, as part of an effort to placate fiscal hawks who have said they will not vote for legislation that results in a huge increase in the deficit.

Extending the 2017 tax law will cost about $4 trillion over a decade, while several other strongly desired business tax breaks will eat up another couple hundred billion. That leaves only a sliver of the budget for the potpourri of other tax cuts Republicans hope to cram into the legislation, including not taxing tips and lifting the $10,000 cap on the state and local tax deduction.

In other words, there's not going to be enough left over to cover all of Trump's campaign promises. So some of it is going to get shortchanged.

The other big number in the bill is how much they're planning on cutting over the next decade -- $2 trillion. Those who can do basic math will note that overall this means that this plan will actually add to the deficit, not cut it. The Times goes on to explain how all of this will be handled:

A budget blueprint sets only the contours for fiscal policy legislation, so the plan adopted on Tuesday did not detail specific changes House Republicans plan to enact in order to reach their spending targets.

But it instructs the Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid and Medicare, to come up with at least $880 billion in cuts. That makes up nearly half of the $2 trillion in spending reductions that Republican leaders have promised their most conservative members that they will include in the legislation to offset the cost of the tax cuts.

While some Republicans denied that they would slash programs for the poor, the amount of revenue they are calling to raise would all but certainly necessitate cuts to at least one of those programs.

. . .

A New York Times analysis found that even if the committee cuts everything that is not health care to $0, it would still be more than $600 billion short.

"Everything that is not health care" is not going to be enough (as that Times analysis shows). The committee oversees Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program. These are the programs that are going to bear the brunt of that $880 billion cut. And of those three, Medicare and CHIP would both be much tougher (in political terms) to cut.

Which is why Democrats are optimistic. They even broke into a chant of: "You're going to be sorry!" while the vote was being held. Republicans are now playing defense, insisting: "The bill doesn't even mention the word Medicaid!" Meanwhile, Democrats are accusing them of slashing Medicaid by $880 billion to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. That's the political framing battle in a nutshell. Democrats have already broken the numbers down to each individual congressional district, so they can highlight what such cuts would mean in vulnerable Republican districts.

This framing battle is going to continue from this point on. Republicans have taken to calling everything they're targeting for cuts "waste, fraud, and abuse," but that may not work if they wind up throwing millions of people off Medicaid. Trump himself has promised that he wouldn't cut Medicare (and, on occasion, even Medicaid), but sticking to his promises is not exactly a strong suit for him. Democrat will be hammering on "$880 billion in Medicaid cuts" from this point forward. At some point, the Republicans will have to put actual specific numbers on paper, and then hold votes on them (when they pass the second round of budget bills).

And then they'll have to defend their votes to the voters. Which is exactly what the moderates have always been afraid of (for good reason). So while Trump was successful in getting them all to toss aside their worries and vote for the bill last night, they might wind up paying the price for it in next year's midterms.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant