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Electing the House speaker may have been the easy part. Now House Republicans will try to govern.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy passed his first test late Monday as the Republicans approved their rules package for governing House operations, typically a routine step on Day One that stretched into the second week of the new majority. It was approved 220-213, a party-line vote with one Republican opposed.

After that, the House Republicans will try later Monday to pass their first bill — legislation to cut funding that is supposed to bolster the Internal Revenue Service. The Republicans’ IRS bill ran into a snag ahead of votes because the budget office announced that rather than save money, it would add $114 billion to the federal deficit.

It’s the start of a new era of potentially crisis governing, House Republicans lurching from one standoff to the next, that shows the challenges McCarthy confronts in leading a rebellious majority as well as the limits of President Joe Biden’s remaining agenda on Capitol Hill.

With sky-high ambitions for a hard-right conservative agenda but only a narrow hold on the majority, which enables just a few holdouts to halt proceedings, the Republicans are rushing headlong into an uncertain, volatile start of the new session. They want to investigate Biden, slash federal spending and beef up competition with China.

But first McCarthy, backed by former President Donald Trump, will try will show the Republican majority can keep up with basics of governing.

“You know, it’s a little more difficult when you go into a majority and maybe the margins aren’t high,” McCarthy acknowledged after winning the speaker’s vote. “Having the disruption now really built the trust with one another and learned how to work together.”

As McCarthy gaveled open the House on Monday as the new speaker, the Republicans were set to consider the Rules package, a hard-fought 55-page document that McCarthy negotiated with conservative holdouts to win over their votes to make him House speaker.

Central to the package is the provision the conservative Freedom Caucus wanted that reinstates a longstanding rule that allows any one lawmaker make a motion to “vacate the chair” — a vote to oust the speaker. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi had done away with the rule when Democrats took charge in 2019 because conservatives had held it over past Republican speakers as a threat.

Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., said the rules are about “getting back to the basics.”

But that’s not the only change. There are other provisions the conservatives extracted from McCarthy that weaken the power of the speaker’s office and turn over more control of the legislative business to rank-and-file lawmakers, particularly those far-right lawmakers who won concessions.

The Republicans are allowing more Freedom Caucus lawmakers on the Rules committee that shapes legislative debates. Those members promise more open and free-flowing debates and are insisting on 72 hours to read legislation ahead of votes.

But it’s an open debate if the changes will make the House more transparent in its operations or grind it to a halt, as happened last week when McCarthy battled through four days and 14 failed ballots before finally winning the speaker’s gavel.

Many Republicans defended the standoff over the speaker’s gavel, which was finally resolved in the post-midnight hours of Saturday morning on the narrowest of votes — one of the longest speaker’s race showdowns in U.S. history.

“A little temporary conflict is necessary in this town in order to stop this town from rolling over the American people,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said over the weekend on CNN.

On Monday, Roy praised the new rules, saying he could file a motion “right now” to demand a vote on the speaker — as it has been through much of House history.

But heading into Monday evening’s voting on the rules package, at least two other Republicans raised objections about the backroom deals McCarthy had cut, leaving it unclear if there would be enough GOP support for passage as all Democrats are expected to be opposed.

Democrats decried the new rules as caving to the demands of the far-right aligned with Trump’s Make American Great Again agenda.

“These rules are not a serious attempt at governing,” said Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee. Rather, he said, it’s a “ransom note from far right.”

Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., focused his criticism on the GOP’s so-called Holman Rule, which would allow Congress to rescind the pay of individual federal employees: “This is no way to govern.”

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., the ranking member of the Rules Committee who chaired the panel the past four years, told Spectrum News’ Angi Gonzalez the rules proposal would ensure Republicans operate the House “in a very chaotic fashion.”

“It paves the way for some of the most extreme legislation — going after a woman’s right to choose, making it easy for polluters to pollute, make it easier to give tax cuts to billionaires while gutting programs like Social Security and Medicare,” McGovern said. “So, I mean, this is a reflection of the power that a small group of QAnon extremists have in the Republican conference.”

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a member of the Freedom Caucus who is expected to lead the House Judiciary Committee, defended the concessions McCarthy made and said he believes the rules package will get enough Republican support to pass. He insisted that the agreements will help ensure broader representation on committees and will curtail unfettered government spending.

“We’ll see tomorrow,” he said Sunday, but “I think we’ll get the 218 votes needed to pass the rules package.”

In the coming months, Congress will have to work to raise the debt limit before the government reaches its borrowing cap or face a devastating default on payments, including those for Social Security, military troops and federal benefits such as food assistance. Lawmakers will also have to fund federal agencies and programs for the next budget year, which begins Oct. 1.

“Our general concern is that the dysfunction — that was historic — that we saw this week is not at an end, it’s just the beginning,” said House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

The White House has rejected Republican calls to slash spending in return for an increase in the federal government’s borrowing authority. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre went so far on Sunday as to call House Republicans’ likely demands “hostage taking” that would risk default, an event that could trigger an economic crisis.

“Congress is going to need to raise the debt limit without — without — conditions and it’s just that simple,” Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One as President Joe Biden flew to Texas. “Attempts to exploit the debt ceiling as leverage will not work. There will be no hostage taking.”

Yet the White House also said it had no plans to sidestep the needed congressional approval through possible budget gimmicks such as the minting of a coin to help cover a deficit that could be roughly $1 trillion this fiscal year.

“We’re not considering any measures that would go around Congress,” Jean-Pierre said. “That’s not what we’re doing. This is a fundamental congressional responsibility, and Congress must act.”

Jordan argued that “everything has to be on the table” when it comes to spending cuts, including in defense, in light of the government’s $32 trillion debt. “Frankly we better look at the money we send to Ukraine as well and say, how can we best spend the money to protect America?” he said.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, one of the 20 who initially voted against McCarthy before throwing his support behind the Californian, said he and other conservatives will be holding their position that there should be spending cuts in a debt ceiling bill. Asked whether he would exercise members’ new authority and unilaterally initiate a vote to remove the speaker if McCarthy doesn’t ultimately agree, Roy offered a warning.

“I’m not going to play the ‘what if’ games on how we’re going to use the tools of the House to make sure that we enforce the terms of the agreement, but we will use the tools of the House to enforce the terms of the agreement,” Roy said.

Mace and Gonzales appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Jordan spoke on “Fox News Sunday,” Jeffries was on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and Roy was on CNN’s “State of the Union.”