When Gallagher leaves, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) will be able to suffer only one defection from his side on party-line votes. The realities of the thin majority were on full display earlier Friday, as the House passed a $1.2 trillion spending bill by a narrow margin.
Gallagher had already announced last month that he would not seek reelection. He said Friday that he made the decision to resign in April after conversations with his family. Gallagher, who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, said in an interview with The Washington Post that he considers himself to be going out on a “high note” because of that assignment.
“I’ve worked closely with House Republican leadership on this timeline and look forward to seeing Speaker Johnson appoint a new chair to carry out the important mission of” the committee, Gallagher said in a statement.
Gallagher informed House GOP leaders of his desire to leave early weeks ago, and they worked with him on his resignation timeline, according to a source familiar with Gallagher’s plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. Members of the GOP leadership acknowledged that his decision would affect their already small majority. But they signaled they have learned how to govern within those parameters, the source said, because most legislation is now passed with a two-thirds rather than a simple majority.
Republicans currently have a five-seat majority after Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) resigned Friday, leaving the House earlier than he initially anticipated because he found his majority to be unproductive. Like Gallagher, Buck had also announced he would not seek reelection and then decided to call it quits early.
Currently, only two Republicans can defect to pass any conservative legislation through the chamber on a party-line vote. Once Gallagher leaves in mid-April, that margin goes down to one.
The majority will narrow even further once a Democrat is elected to replace former congressman Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.), who also resigned earlier this year. Republicans will not get a reprieve until a Republican is sworn in following a May runoff election to assume the seat former speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) held for more than a decade.
The difficulties of the slim majority came to light again with the House votes on the latest spending package. It received 286 votes — 101 from Republicans and the rest from Democrats. Even then, Johnson had to move the bill through suspension of the rules, which require a two-thirds majority to pass, to work around anticipated resistance.
Gallagher has represented Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District since 2017. The district in northeastern Wisconsin is solidly Republican.
Gallagher announced in February that he would not run for another term, saying in a statement that “electoral politics was never supposed to be a career and, trust me, Congress is no place to grow old.”
Earlier in February, Gallagher upset fellow Republicans by opposing the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, which narrowly failed on the first attempt.
Gallagher said in the Post interview that he made his decision to not seek reelection “long before” the Mayorkas vote.
“We have two young daughters and we want to have more kids, and this lifestyle sucks for a young family,” Gallagher said. “That was the main thing.”
The source familiar with Gallagher’s plan said he felt comfortable leaving early after successfully shepherding a bill through the House that could ban TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media platform. He also received assurances from Johnson that the China committee will continue based on the foundations he set.
In picking April 19 as his resignation date, Gallagher appears to avoid triggering a special election to finish his term. Wisconsin law says that election-year congressional vacancies can be filled in a special election if they happen before the second Tuesday in April, which is April 9 this year.
