Within the first weeks, lawmakers should elect a speaker and certify the 2024 election. The GOP additionally needs payments on taxes, border safety, and debt.
WASHINGTON—The 119th Congress of america will take workplace on Jan. 3, 2025, and final for 2 years, till Jan. 3, 2027. Republicans will maintain a slim majority in each the Senate and Home of Representatives.
With a Republican administration main the Government Department, it’s anticipated that Congress will try to enact conservative insurance policies into legislation.
These efforts is not going to be unfettered. There’s the Senate’s cloture vote requirement—the place the assist of 60 senators is important to beat a filibuster—in addition to divisions within the Home Republican Convention amid its single-digit majority.
Key reforms are more likely to be enacted utilizing the “finances reconciliation” course of, whereby a restricted variety of payments affecting spending, taxes, and debt can keep away from a 60-vote cloture threshold within the Senate, although their results have to be restricted to 10 years.
Congress may have a number of main legislative engagements for the primary a number of months of 2025, which we listing beneath.
Election of a Speaker of the Home
The U.S. Structure requires that the Home of Representatives select a speaker to preside over the physique. Typically, no legislative enterprise is performed within the Home till the Speaker is chosen. The foundations of the Home vest the speaker with appreciable powers.
The speaker, who’s often the chief of the bulk occasion’s convention or caucus, is the highest-ranking member of Congress and is second, behind the Vice President, within the presidential line of succession.
Electing a speaker requires a majority vote of the Home, which suggests that almost all occasion, if unified, can choose her or him. Traditionally, this was the case, whereby the winner of inner elections within the convention or caucus received unanimous assist of their occasion on the ground.
Nonetheless, within the 118th Congress, deep divisions within the Republican Convention prevented the election of a speaker—with Home Republican Chief Kevin McCarthy profitable the gavel after 15 rounds of voting, making it the longest such election since 1859. McCarthy was later ousted in October 2023 because of comparable divisions within the Republican Convention.
“I stay undecided, as do a lot of my colleagues, as a result of we noticed so most of the failures final yr that we’re involved,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) stated in an announcement to The Epoch Instances.
The coverage chairman of the Home Freedom Caucus, Roy has incessantly dissented from the occasion on fiscal coverage laws implicating the deficit, such because the passage of omnibus authorities funding payments yearly.
Therefore, barring important concessions, it’s questionable whether or not Johnson can win the speakership on the primary poll, which might re-ignite controversy on the outset of the Congress.
Certification of the 2024 Presidential Election
On Jan. 6, 2025, Congress will convene in a joint session to certify the outcomes of the 2024 presidential election by counting and approving the Electoral Faculty votes of every state. The U.S. Structure’s twelfth Modification requires this final procedural step.
As her ultimate main act in workplace, Vice President Kamala Harris, who misplaced the election to Trump, will preside over the rely.
The occasion will obtain heightened safety given the occasions on Jan. 6, 2021, and it has been designated as a Nationwide Particular Safety Occasion (NSSE) — the very best stage of safety. That is akin to presidential inaugurations and State of the Union Addresses when all federal leaders convene at one location.
Tax Cuts and Reforms
The most important coverage merchandise that Republicans search to handle is taxation. In 2017, the occasion handed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017, which decreased private earnings tax brackets and company taxes. It was Trump’s first main legislative accomplishment throughout his first time period.
Moreover, some within the GOP will search to resume a deal to broaden the Youngster Tax Credit score (CTC) negotiated in 2024 by Home Methods and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
Republicans have opposed provisions within the deal that may allow unlawful immigrant mother and father of natural-born U.S. citizen kids to assert the credit score. Additionally they have objected to a “lookback” provision that may permit unemployed mother and father to assert a credit score primarily based on a previous yr’s earnings, which they stated would disincentivize them from searching for employment.
Immigration and Border Safety
The principal theme of Trump’s 2024 presidential marketing campaign, aside from maybe the economic system, was border safety. Throughout the Biden administration, over 7 million international nationals illegally crossed the U.S. border with Mexico. Trump, in response, promised to launch the “largest deportation operation in American historical past” and reform asylum legal guidelines that allow unlawful immigrants to stay within the nation whereas their asylum claims are being processed.
Some border safety initiatives, equivalent to forcing asylum seekers to stay in Mexico whereas their claims are processed, is not going to require laws. Nonetheless, the funding for mass deportations in addition to modifications to the asylum course of would require Congress to move new spending and administrative legal guidelines.
Most importantly, Trump’s longstanding want to assemble a wall alongside the size of the southern border would require Congress to approve the funds.
Payments associated to spending could possibly be handed with out the 60-vote cloture requirement within the Senate utilizing a course of generally known as finances reconciliation. Nonetheless, modifications to immigration and asylum legal guidelines will seemingly be deemed improper in such a invoice by the Senate Parliamentarian, whose rulings have typically constrained Democrats and Republicans previously.
The Debt Restrict
The U.S. Authorities’s fiscal stability will depend on borrowing new cash to service spending in addition to repay current money owed. By legislation, the federal authorities’s debt nominally can not exceed $14.29 trillion, although repeated extensions have led the precise sovereign debt to balloon to $36 trillion at current. The final such measure, which suspended the debt restrict till Jan. 1, 2025, was the Fiscal Accountability Act (FRA) of 2023.
Regardless of its expiration, the U.S. authorities is not going to instantly default on its debt and spending obligations on Jan. 1. Non permanent measures allowed by statute, in addition to forex reserves, will allow the Treasury to fulfill obligations for a number of months. Nonetheless, Congress might want to act within the first few months of 2025 to stop a default, whose results on the worldwide economic system could possibly be extremely unfavourable, given the U.S. greenback’s standing because the world reserve forex.
That effort failed after many Republicans, in addition to Democrats, objected.