Republican senators fear that the narrow House GOP majority in next year’s Congress could rain chaos on President-elect Trump’s agenda and are pushing to finish up work on the overdue annual appropriations bills before Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has insisted on punting the annual spending bills into March of next year, but GOP senators worry that’s a big strategic mistake. GOP senators fear that Trump’s first 90 days in office will get bogged down in fights over spending cuts that could divide the GOP and sap energy from an effort to secure the U.S.-Mexico border. And they worry the same spending fights that paralyzed the GOP-controlled House in 2023 and 2024 will plague the even smaller House GOP majority next year. “I hate it, I think it’s a mistake,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) of the plan favored by House Republicans to pass a government funding stopgap that lasts until mid- or late March. “Speaking of rebellious House members, House Republicans, I think they’re making a mistake forcing the CR into March,” he said, using an abbreviation for continuing resolution (CR). “I think it’s a bad strategy. I just think clearing the deck would have been so much better. Cramer warned that lawmakers will be forced to juggle the leftover spending bills in February and March while they’re processing Trump’s Cabinet picks and putting together a budget reconciliation package to secure the border. Senate Republicans worry more generally that a one-, two- or three-seat majority during the first few months of next year could make it difficult to pass anything. House Republicans will have a 220-215 seat majority in the next Congress, but their working majority may be smaller. Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has already resigned his seat, meaning the GOP will actually start the new Congress with a 219-215 advantage. Not long after that, Reps. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) and Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) will leave the House to join the Trump administration, the former as the president-elect's national security adviser and the latter as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Stefanik’s role requires Senate confirmation. As a result, a single House Republican lawmaker may be able bring the lower chamber to a grinding halt to gain leverage for his or her demands. The House GOP has a reputation for disorder, and it has been difficult for Johnson to get it to march in step. In the Senate, lawmakers are already speculating over who might cause the biggest headache. Sen. Bill Cassidy (La.), the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Health Committee, said that Trump’s agenda next year may hinge on one of its most mercurial members, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a libertarian-leaning conservative. “For the first three months, Johnson has a margin of one,” Cassidy said of the Speaker. Cassidy said what parts of Trump’s agenda pass next year may come down to: “WWTMD — what would Thomas Massie Do?” “The most idiosyncratic guy, everything depends on Thomas,” he said. Massie exerted his leverage as a key vote on the House Rules Committee in 2023 by pressuring then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to include language in that year’s deal to raise the debt limit that would require across-the-board spending cuts if Congress doesn’t finish up its annual appropriations bills by April 30 of the fiscal year they cover. Some Republican senators fear that House conservatives may try to drag out any spending deal next year past April 2025 to trigger automatic spending cuts, which would affect defense and nondefense programs alike. In hopes of avoiding chaos, incoming Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), with the support of other GOP senators, is pushing a plan to temporarily fund government only until mid-January. Setting up a government funding deadline in January would give next year’s Republican-controlled Senate and House a chance to “clear the decks” of the leftover fiscal 2025 spending bills while President Biden is still president. “The House is still thinking mid-March. … This senator wants to get it done by mid-January before the new president is sworn in,” Collins told reporters when asked how long the stopgap spending measure should last. “I think that’s in [Trump’s] interest as well as the country’s,” Collins said. Incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told The Hill that Senate Republicans are on board with Collins’s proposal but cautioned that it still needs buy-in from the House. “I’d love to be able to clear the decks,” Thune said. “It’s all: What’s the art of the possible, and particularly with regard to what is achievable? We got to get it through, not only through the Senate, but through the House.” Thune said Collins’s plans to get the leftover spending bills wrapped up before Trump takes office “is a message pretty well received here in the Senate.” Congress needs to pass a temporary government funding bill by Dec. 20 to avoid a shutdown. Thune will be working with a relatively comfortable 53-seat Senate majority next year, but his GOP colleagues say he recognizes the tenuously controlled House may become the choke point for passing Trump’s agenda in 2025.   That’s one reason why Thune, working in consultation with the Trump transition team, has proposed moving first on a budget reconciliation package that includes funding to beef up border security and reforms to unleash domestic energy production. GOP strategists say those proposals, which are popular with Republicans across the spectrum, have a better chance of swiftly passing both the Senate and House. A second package to extend the expiring Trump tax cuts and implement ambitious spending reforms is likely to prove more complicated and divisive among Republican lawmakers. Regardless of the Senate’s desires, it does not appear the House will bend on the timing of a spending deal. Asked about Collins’s proposal to pass a stopgap lasting only until January, Johnson said his preference is to set the next government funding deadline in mid-March. “Look, there are a number of options on the table. I think it makes the most sense to do it until March, but we're building consensus around the idea,” the Speaker told reporters. Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said the plan to pass a stopgap funding bill lasting until March is close to being “locked in.” “It hasn’t been decided for sure but I think it’s likely,” he said of a mid-March funding deadline. Emily Brooks and Aris Folley contributed.