WASHINGTON – The new Congress will begin on Friday, ushering in a slim Republican majority in the House of Representatives to tackle enormous tasks in the first year of Donald Trump’s second term, from keeping the government open to avoiding a calamitous debt default and promote the president-elect’s immigration and tax policies. ambitions.
Republicans won a majority of 220-215 seats in the 2024 elections, but will start with 219 members since former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., has already resigned and vowed not to take his seat back.
That means House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, cannot afford more than one defection to be re-elected as speaker in a public vote on Friday. But keeping his job is the easy part: What comes next will present the biggest test of the Louisiana Republican’s political career.
Johnson’s majority is poised to shrink even further in the coming weeks, as Trump announced he will name two House Republicans to serve in his administration: Florida’s Michael Waltz as national security adviser and New York’s Elise Stefanik. as ambassador of the United Nations. Replacing them will likely take months.
If both leave before Gaetz is replaced, that would reduce the majority to an even slimmer 217-215, meaning a single Republican defection could derail a bill unless Democrats vote for it.
In other words, House Republicans will have a zero vote margin for defection in the crucial first months of Trump’s presidency. Even when the party regains full strength, the House majority could have trouble passing legislation along the party line if a handful of members get sick, have scheduling conflicts, or experience weather delays that prevent them from reaching Washington. in time for key votes. Republicans will have a slightly larger majority in the Senate, 53-47, when senators are sworn in on Friday and begin work on scheduling hearings for Trump’s Cabinet nominees.
And they have a long list of pending tasks. This is what’s on the 2025 agenda.
Fund the government before March 14
Last month’s protracted fight over a short-term bill to avoid a government shutdown just pushed the deadline back to March 14, less than two months after Trump is sworn in. That means Republicans still need to reach a deal with Democrats on how to fund the government, which routinely sparks clashes between GOP moderates, military hawks and hardline conservatives.
If history is any guide, House Republicans are unlikely to find enough votes to pass a bill without Democrats, as they always lose some votes from the right. But even if they manage to unify their House conference, they will need 60 Senate votes to make a law, meaning House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and incoming House Minority Leader Senate Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., will need to sign any deal to avoid a shutdown.
That means Johnson will ultimately have to sell another compromise package to members who routinely rage against such bills.
Pass Trump’s agenda on immigration, energy and taxes
Republicans hope to move quickly on legislation to advance core components of Trump’s agenda. They have made it clear that they will use the budget “reconciliation” process to bypass the Senate’s 60-vote rule and pass a bill with only Republican votes.
That process has limitations. It begins with passing a budget resolution to set fiscal parameters and instruct committees, and then the final bill can only make changes to tax and spending policy, which will require compromises that conservatives would prefer not to accept. Democrats can challenge and eliminate any provision that is not related to taxes or spending and therefore does not qualify for the 50-vote path.
The disagreements have already come to light. Incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., is pushing to split it into two bills in hopes of scoring a quick victory by giving Trump more funding for border security before introducing another measure. supporter later this year to extend Trump’s tax. cuts before they expire on the last day of 2025. But the chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., warns Republicans that delaying the tax bill could put it in danger and risk a multi-million dollar tax increase.
Whatever strategy they pursue, Republicans will also have to achieve near unanimity on divisive issues such as how much to add to the deficit and which parts of outgoing President Joe Biden’s inherited achievements to repeal in order to pay for his new policies. The latter is more complicated than it seems: Most of Biden’s clean energy programs that Republican leaders seek to repeal benefit conservative districts represented by Republicans.
Expand the debt ceiling
Under a bipartisan law signed last year, the United States is about to hit the debt ceiling this month and will begin using “extraordinary measures” to pay the bills and avoid a default that could have catastrophic consequences for the U.S. economy ( and global). That likely buys Congress a few months, but members will invariably have to extend the debt ceiling at some point this year.
Last month, Trump’s last-minute demand that Congress lift the debt ceiling was widely rejected by both parties. Despite Trump’s threat to file primary challenges against Republicans who voted for a funding bill without resolving the debt limit, 170 members of the GOP supported such a move.
Many Republicans routinely vote against lifting or expanding the debt ceiling. But Democrats, who typically fill the void, may be reluctant to help Republicans raise the debt ceiling just as the GOP is passing a partisan tax bill that the opposition says would primarily benefit the wealthy.
So will Republicans reach a deal with Democrats? Will they find a way to raise the debt limit with just GOP votes, perhaps in a reconciliation bill?
Last month, behind closed doors, Republicans reached a deal to deliver $2.5 trillion in spending cuts in 2025 along with an increase in the debt limit, a way to appease hardline conservatives. But some say that agreement is not worth the paper it is printed on.
“They call it a gentlemen’s agreement,” Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., who has opposed previous bills to lift the debt limit, told NBC News. “And there are no knights up here, friend.”
