Donald Trump’s next term will benefit from a Republican trifecta at the upper echelons of government—but the party’s inner divisions and its tiny, two-seat majority in the House might stand in the way of some of his bigger policy goals.
With Congress winding down its 118th session, it’s clear that the divisions flaming both parties in both chambers have disrupted the legislature’s typical productivity. For scale: the branch’s last session, which also faced criticism for its lack of productivity, enacted 362 public laws. The 118th, by contrast, has passed just 136 laws, according to legislative data from LegiScan.
That’s partially thanks to rampant chaos in the House, which wasted months of the first half of its session unable to pick a leader, whether it was via Kevin McCarthy falling to the caucus’s far-right members last year or Speaker Mike Johnson, a relative unknown, almost accidentally acquiring the House’s highest position.
Meanwhile, Republicans, divided between traditional party values and Trump’s MAGA infusion, have continued to torpedo their own initiatives. Up next on the docket for the confused party is advancing Trump’s tax goals, which include extending his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and delaying the end of $3.3 trillion in tax breaks that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy (they’re currently set to expire in 2025).
Senior Republicans had hoped that the extension would give the president-elect the tools to expand border enforcement and begin his “mass deportations,” but even the party’s political advantages aren’t enough for a clear path forward on the issue.
“It’ll be super challenging. And the reason for that is you have razors at margins, and we’re obviously not going to get any Democrat votes. The key is going to be addressing all these coalitions that are likely going to threaten an insufficient number of votes unless they get their priorities,” Senator Thom Tillis told NBC News Sunday. “It’s infinitely more complex to get a reconciliation outcome in this cycle out of the House than the Senate.”
But the extreme nativist effort has doubly spelled out to Democrats that conservatives aren’t looking to bipartisanship to advance their policies.
“Republicans are trying to take actions that will benefit the most fortunate and grow the debt for future generations,” Representative Brad Schneider, the newly elected chair of the moderate New Democrat Coalition, told NBC. “They’ve made it very clear they’re not going to look to find any compromise. They’re going to have to work within their own caucus, this very narrow majority.”
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