Republicans eager to implement Trump's agenda face slim margins, shutdown deadline
Republicans who are set to hold a trifecta in Washington in the next Congress are setting ambitious timelines for implementing President-elect Donald Trump's agenda but are also facing significant obstacles in a small majority and a lingering fight over the country's budget that could slow down those plans.
While the exact margins of the House are still being determined with some races still not decided nearly two weeks after Election Day, Republicans have secured enough seats to keep their narrow majority. Their majority will be temporarily smaller while the seats of of Florida, of New York and of Florida will be vacant until a special election is held to replace them after they were nominated to serve in the incoming administration.
Despite a narrow majority in the House and a 53-47 makeup in the next Senate, Republican lawmakers have projected confidence about a mandate from the American people to in the next Congress.
"The American people handed President Trump and Senate Republicans a decisive victory and now the real work begins, delivering on our agenda. That starts with ending the Biden-Harris border crisis and deporting illegal immigrants. Also, at the top of the list is strengthening our economic and fiscal future," Senate Majority Leader-elect John Thune said on the floor last week.
The most pressing issue facing Congress in the lame duck session is the budget for the current fiscal year, which still has not passed and appears to be on track to keep the government open through another temporary stopgap to avoid a shutdown known as a continuing resolution.
Lawmakers have until Dec. 20 to find a compromise between the GOP-controlled House and the Democratic Senate to keep the government open, leaving them just over a month to strike a deal.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said last week that both chambers need to come together to avoid a government shutdown just days ahead of the holidays.
"Government funding is scheduled to run out on December the 20th. Both sides must work together to prevent a shutdown before then. Nobody wants to hear the words 'Christmas-time shutdown' a few weeks from now. I can't think of something the American people would want less during the holidays," Schumer said on the Senate floor last week.
Senate Democrats are hoping to use the lame duck session to pass a full budget that would then pressure the Republican House into coming to a deal before they are out of power in the next Congress. If the Senate is able to pass a full budget, it would put pressure on the House to come to an agreement rather than keeping the government running at current levels.
House Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday suggested that he is favoring a continuing resolution that would run until the next Congress is seated when Republicans control both chambers and the White House.
"We're running out of clock; Dec. 20 is the deadline and we're still hopeful that we might be able to get that done. If not, we'll have a temporary measure I think that will go into the first part of next year and allow us the necessary time to get this done," Johnson said on "Fox News Sunday." "I think that will ultimately be a good move because the country would benefit from it because then you'd have Republican control and we'd have a little more say in what those spending bills are. The new reform agenda begins in earnest as soon as President Donald J. Trump takes the office in January, and we have a full agenda to run."
While it would give Republicans more leverage over the nation's spending, it could also hamper efforts to enact Trump's legislative agenda. Republicans are hoping to get to work quickly in the administration's first 100 days but may also have to deal with the massive task that is deciding the budget for the entire federal government.
The budgeting process has been difficult and chaotic during the 188th Congress as Republicans struggled to find votes at multiple points to pass full budgets or , forcing Johnson to turn to Democrats to get bills passed, a move that frustrated parts of his conference.
"It is a time-consuming and really kind of fraught process," said Ross Baker, distinguished professor emeritus of political science at Rutgers. "It's a massive undertaking under the best of circumstances, but since so little has changed in terms of the membership, you have to ask yourself why the Republicans of the of the 119th Congress looking so much like the Republicans of the 118th Congress are going to come up with something different."
Only a handful of GOP lawmakers will need to oppose any bill to doom its passage in the House despite the enthusiasm about the incoming Trump White House, and members of the most conservative groups in the Republican Party have shown a willingness to defy leadership in search of their priorities.
"The only thing I could possibly imagine that would change things is the magnitude of Trump's victory. It's indisputable and so on," Baker said. "A president with that kind of mandate, it really does have the ability to muscle things through that someone who is victory is more marginal doesn't."
