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CNN
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How do you cram multiple big promises into a very small majority vote?
That’s the difficult question facing Republicans in Washington. Republicans claim they have been given a mandate to enact sweeping, permanent changes after the November election, but they have one of the smallest congressional majorities in history to work with.
CNN’s Capitol Hill team reported that Republicans are currently considering two paths.
‘Big, beautiful bill’ – President-elect Donald Trump described the massive bill pushed by House Speaker Mike Johnson to extend tax cuts, change border policy, set a debt ceiling and change energy policy. Expressing. Two bills – Senate Majority Leader John Thune wants to tackle immigration and energy first, then tax cuts later in 2025.
Republicans don’t pretend to promote bipartisanship. Either the one- or two-bill scenario would use a complex budget-making process known as “reconciliation” to bypass Democratic obstruction in the Senate and deliver significant gains with just a simple majority. .
CNN’s Manu Raju and Sarah Ferris outline the complex settlement process.
To achieve their goals, Republicans will need to act in two steps. First, the House and Senate would need to agree on a non-binding budget blueprint with fiscal goals. Congress must then draft legislation to achieve the goals set out in the budget plan. If a lawmaker adds a provision that violates budget rules, he or she can be killed by the Senate. …
Unlike most bills, which can be blocked by the Senate minority, reconciliation is exempt from the filibuster because it is supposed to allow lawmakers to adjust the budget. Ironically, it is often used for the opposite purpose.
Raju and Ferris explain the leverage strategy behind one big bill:
…This is a daunting task that will require a marathon series of votes in the Senate. And many House Republicans believe it would be nearly impossible to accomplish that process twice in one year, given the divisions within the party. So they believe that putting everything in one bill would make it nearly impossible for Republicans to try to kill it.
Mr. Trump and his allies know that they can expect two years of unified government before the next election, and that reconciliation is the most direct route to passing significant legislation.
American lawmakers have fallen into a pattern in recent years. A new president is elected with a majority in the House and Senate, and both chambers use reconciliation to enact signature legislation during their first two years in office. They will lose their House majority in the next midterm elections. Variations on this pattern have occurred in each of the last three presidents.
barack obama. The powerful Democratic majority in the Senate still needed reconciliation to complete Donald Trump’s signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act, and get it across the finish line in 2010. President Trump and the much smaller Republican majority used reconciliation to pass significant tax cuts into law in 2017. The individual tax cuts included in the bill are set to expire this year, but President Trump wants to extend them. Joe Biden. Biden has twice used reconciliation to pass huge spending bills despite evenly divided views in the Senate. The American Rescue Plan of 2021, which dealt with the coronavirus pandemic, and the Suppressing Inflation Act of 2022, which actually has little to do with inflation. Instead, it included factors related to climate change and lower prescription drug prices.
yes. During his first term, President Trump and the Republican Party initially tried to use reconciliation to repeal the ACA, also known as Obamacare, but failed when three Republican senators opposed it. Arizona Sen. John McCain, who was undergoing treatment for a brain tumor, dramatically undermined the effort with a late-night no vote on the Senate floor. Mr. McCain has since died.
The failure to repeal Obamacare continues to haunt Mr. Trump and the Republican Party, and they will likely keep this in mind as they consider how to advance his agenda if Mr. Trump retakes the White House. Unsurprisingly, Trump still says he wants to replace Obamacare, but he only has a “concept” of the plan and has not shared it publicly.
In fact, Republicans have not released concrete plans for their current top priorities related to immigration, energy production, and taxes. There will be serious debate about what can be passed on all issues, including immigration, especially if legislative deliberations occur alongside President Trump’s promised mass deportation efforts.
Trump made a number of new tax promises during his 2024 campaign, including eliminating taxes on tips and Social Security, among other things. Taken together, this would mean a significant reduction in the U.S. government’s revenue for services and the social safety net. CNN’s Tami Looby reported that extending the current tax cuts and adding in all of President Trump’s additional pledges would “create a nearly $8 trillion hole in the federal budget over the next 10 years.”
It’s also notable that there was no unanimous Republican support for his tax plan in 2017.
During President Trump’s first term, 12 Republicans and one Republican senator opposed the tax cut bill. Most of those votes came from legislators representing districts in New York and New Jersey who were angry that the law drastically reduced the amount of state and local taxes that voters can deduct from their federal tax bills. . Several of these members remain in Congress, including New York State Representative Elise Stefanik. Despite her opposition to President Trump’s signature legislative accomplishments, she is now one of his most loyal supporters on Capitol Hill. In fact, President Trump selected Stefanik to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a key point that would require her to leave elected office if confirmed, further reducing the Republican House majority.
It’s tight. Combined with President Trump’s nomination of Florida Rep. Mike Walz as national security adviser and the departure of former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who is no longer a candidate for attorney general, the House majority is now Democratic. The number of Republicans will shrink to 217 compared to 215. Early in President Trump’s term. Mr Johnson may have to wait until the seats are filled before passing anything even remotely controversial. For example, Gaetz’s successor won’t be chosen until April 1st. The schedule for Walz and Stefanik’s replacements will not be known until they resign.
it depends. During President Trump’s first term, Republicans ultimately failed in their efforts to repeal Obamacare with a settlement in July 2017. The subsequent tax cut bill was signed into law by President Trump in December of the same year. During Biden’s term, the coronavirus-focused American Rescue Plan was signed into law in March 2021, but the Inflation Control Act was passed more than a year later, in 2022, when Democrats lost their House majority. It was passed just before the election.
