South Dakota Sen. John Thune speaks to reporters after being elected Republican leader during a closed-door, secret ballot election held inside the old Senate chamber in the U.S. Capitol building on Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024. At right is Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican elected as the Republican Policy Committee chair. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — Republicans in the Nov. 5 election took over the White House, the U.S. Senate and as of late Wednesday, the House, after calls were made in enough races to project a majority.
They are expressing high hopes for unified control of government. But before they’ll be able to celebrate enacting sweeping changes to the country’s tax code or overhauling the health insurance marketplace, they’ll need to broker agreement between centrist lawmakers and far-right members in Congress.
More often than not, those two factions of the GOP hold significantly different ideas about how to draft legislation and strong opinions about whether to amend it on the floor.
Keeping everyone on the same page will be crucial for Republican leaders once the new Congress begins Jan. 3, especially since they have just three votes to spare in the Senate and a razor-thin majority in the House.
States Newsroom looked at what’s ahead for Republicans as they begin sorting through where to make changes to U.S. law in seven key policy areas:
TAXES
Nearly every Republican politician campaigned on addressing the country’s tax structure, making it one of the first issues the party is expected to take up when the next session of Congress begins.
The GOP will likely use the complicated budget reconciliation process to address the tax code, the same way lawmakers did in 2017 when they passed their signature tax law during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term in office.
That reconciliation process would allow Republicans to avoid the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster that would otherwise require them to get Democratic support. But the process has strict rules and requires a marathon amendment voting session in the Senate that’s often called a vote-a-rama.
Some provisions in Republicans’ original tax law have already expired or will do so in the coming months, giving the GOP incentives to jump through the many hoops that come with the reconciliation process.
Extending the expiring provisions will bring along a hefty price tag, however.
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget wrote in an analysis released in late September that extending the individual and estate tax elements in the law would increase the deficit by $3.9 trillion through 2035. Republicans opting to extend or bring back tax code changes for business would likely increase the deficit to $4.8 trillion.
Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, expressed concerns at the time about lawmakers ignoring or diminishing the deficit impact.
“There will undoubtedly be efforts to pretend that extending the tax cuts is free – obviously this is not the case,” she said. “Extending policies that are scheduled to expire — and were scored as expiring — would clearly add to the national debt.”
MacGuineas added that lawmakers “should consider carefully which parts of the TCJA are working, which parts aren’t, and if they want to extend some parts, how to responsibly extend them without increasing the debt beyond current law.”
IMMIGRATION
Republicans are expected to hold votes on legislation addressing border security and immigration after much of their campaign for Congress focused on those two areas.
Whether they’ll be able to do that through the reconciliation process with only GOP support or through the traditional legislative process, which requires bipartisanship in the Senate, will depend on how exactly they write the bill and what budget impacts the various provisions will have.
Immigration and border security legislation would fail to comply with a reconciliation rule in the Senate, also known as the Byrd Rule, if it produces a change in federal revenues or spending that is deemed “merely incidental” by the Senate parliamentarian.
While the requirement is vague, it could apply to several items that don’t have big price tags when considered as part of the multi-trillion-dollar federal budget.
For example, Democrats’ efforts to raise the federal minimum wage as part of the reconciliation process in 2021 were deemed “merely incidental” by the Senate parliamentarian and removed from the bill.
Trump has already laid out his wish list for an immigration-related bill he wants Congress to send to his desk.
Trump reposted campaign videos on social media in early September requesting Congress pass legislation to prevent future presidents from using executive authority to grant humanitarian parole — something the Biden administration has used to allow more than 1 million people to obtain work permits and live in the United States temporarily.
Trump has called the use of parole authority “abuse,” but it’s been used by presidents since 1956, during the Eisenhower administration.
Trump, who campaigned on mass deportations of immigrants without proper legal status, is also expected to ask Congress to foot the bill for his promise to deport more than 13 million people.
Getting any immigration-related policy to the president-elect’s desk will be daunting since it’s been almost four decades since Congress overhauled U.S. immigration law.
“The last big immigration bill was passed in 1986 when Ronald Reagan was president and both houses of Congress were held by Democrats,” according to an analysis from the nonpartisan Brookings Institution. “A smaller bill was passed in 1990 when George H.W. Bush was president and both houses of Congress were still controlled by Democrats.”
Earlier this year, a bipartisan border security and immigration bill was brokered by Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford and Arizona independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.
The trio of senators spent months negotiating the particulars of the deal only to have it scuttled after Trump told GOP members he didn’t want the legislation to pass.
That legislation could be used as a starting point if Republicans are unable to move an immigration bill through the reconciliation process and want to get a bill past the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster.
TARIFFS
Tariffs could become one point of contention between Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration.
The president-elect has vowed to stack tariffs of at least 10% on nearly all goods entering the country, raising alarm bells with economists and free-trade Republicans about the impact that would have on consumer prices.
Trump said in mid-October at the Economic Club of Chicago that he hoped to implement tariffs on foreign-made products as high as 100% or 200%.
“The higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the United States, and build a factory in the United States so it doesn’t have to pay the tariff,” Trump said, rejecting the premise that high tariffs could harm Americans.
Mary Lovely, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told States Newsroom in an October interview that imposing tariffs could risk “starting a trade war with the entire world.”
Lovely’s research with economist Kimberly Clausing, also of PIIE, found that Trump’s threats to slap tariffs as high as 20% on all foreign products, combined with his threats of 60% tariffs on all Chinese goods, could cost the typical American household over $2,600 annually.
HEALTH CARE
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said repeatedly during the final weeks of the campaign that he wants to overhaul the 2010 health care law that most people refer to as the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.
He hasn’t shared details about what aspects of that law he wants to end or change, but said during a late October interview on Fox Business that he wants to address health outcomes.
“I said the ACA, unfortunately, is deeply ingrained in our health care system now,” Johnson said. “Do we need further improvements? Absolutely. We need to expand quality of care, access to care and obviously lower the cost of health care.”
Republicans used the budget reconciliation process to try to repeal and replace the ACA in 2017, but were unsuccessful, largely due to the late Arizona Sen. John McCain rejecting the bill.
Even with the budget reconciliation process to get Republicans around the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, it will be extremely difficult for leaders to get the party unified on any health care bill of that magnitude.
Republicans using the budget reconciliation process for tax policy and health care would take up two of the three opportunities they’ll have to adopt budget resolutions with reconciliation instructions during the 119th Congress.
GOP leaders could try for a round three, though once all is said and done with the first two reconciliation bills, Republicans might need to shift their attention toward the 2026 midterm campaigns.
VOTING
Republican lawmakers have argued legislation is needed to bar noncitizens from voting in federal elections, even though it is already illegal and rarely happens. The party is expected to try again next Congress, once it holds a majority in both chambers of Congress.
The GOP House passed a bill this summer that would have required proof of citizenship to register to vote, but the Democratic-controlled Senate never acted on it.
Trump wrote on social media that he would demand that voter ID laws and proof of citizenship be required for voting, something that Congress would have to pass, although it’s unclear if such legislation could overcome the 60-vote threshold in the Senate.
The issue is important to Trump, as Johnson traveled to the president-elect’s residence in Palm Beach, Florida, to unveil the House’s intention to pursue the issue.
SPENDING
Republicans campaigned this year on cutting government spending, but have rarely done so when they held the majority in both chambers of Congress.
The challenge lies in how government spending is approved and how much the various departments and agencies require to function.
During fiscal 2023, the federal government spent $6.1 trillion, with $3.4 trillion going to mandatory programs, like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Those programs run on autopilot, so lawmakers don’t need to negotiate the particulars every year the way they do other programs.
An additional $1.7 trillion was spent on so-called discretionary programs, which are funded through Congress’ annual appropriations process. That funding went to programs categorized as either nondefense, which received $917 billion, or defense, which got $805 billion.
The nondefense funding goes to several departments, including Agriculture, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Interior, Justice, State and Transportation. Smaller agencies, like NASA and the National Science Foundation, are also funded through nondefense accounts.
Republicans have proposed cuts in the past, but members of the party who understand the federal ledger often explain that if members really want to address the government spending more than it takes in, they’ll have to address Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
The math, otherwise, won’t work.
Republicans could make tweaks when they write their reconciliation bills, though they’ll need those to comply with the Byrd Rule and not have a “merely incidental” impact on the federal ledger.
EDUCATION
Having secured unified GOP control of government, Trump’s sweeping vision to “save American education” could set the stage for significant changes in U.S. education policy.
The president-elect has vowed to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education and said he wants to move education “back to the states.” States and local governments bear much of the responsibility for funding K-12 schools, but the Department of Education handles Pell Grants for college students who demonstrate financial need and enforces civil rights cases, among other things.
Congress going along with plans to eliminate the department could have profound impacts on the billions of dollars in funding the agency provides for low-income K-12 schools, special education and federal student aid.
Trump also vowed to roll back updated Title IX regulations on his first day back in office.
President Joe Biden unveiled the final rule for Title IX in April, which strengthens federal protections for LGBTQ+ students and “protects against discrimination based on sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics,” according to the Education Department.
GOP members on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce have criticized the new Title IX rules and are likely to fall in step with Trump’s wishes to roll back the regulations.
Trump has also criticized the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness efforts, dubbing them “not even legal.” He could discontinue the Biden administration’s new student loan repayment plan known as Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE. The plan is currently on pause due to legal challenges from Republican-led states.
Last year, Senate Republicans tried to strike down the rule.
Like Trump, Republicans have focused on “parental rights” in education. House Republicans passed their own bill on the issue last year.
Republicans are likely to continue scrutinizing higher education institutions from diversity initiatives to college students protesting the war in Gaza.
A GOP measure that would bar accrediting organizations from requiring colleges and universities to adopt diversity, equity and inclusion policies as a condition of accreditation passed the House in September.
Shauneen Miranda and Ashley Murray contributed to this report.
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