GOP trifecta could face obstacles in fulfilling agenda, similar to first Trump term

Republicans are touting big plans for the early days of the incoming Trump administration, saying their expected trifecta of power in the House, Senate and White House will allow them to fulfill a lengthy list of campaign promises.

But the GOP has been in this position before during the first Trump administration, and found the power of the trifecta has its limits. 

Democrats can use the filibuster to block most legislation in the Senate and, in the case of a filibuster-proof budget reconciliation package where they cannot, Republicans will need near-perfect unity.

President-elect Donald Trump said in his victory speech last week that Republicans plan to make voters “very proud” of their electoral choices as he promised the GOP is “going to fix everything about our country.”

“I will govern by a simple motto: ‘Promises made, promises kept,’” he said. “Nothing will stop me from keeping my word to you, the people. We will make America safe, strong, prosperous, powerful, and free again.”

But Mr. Trump needs only look back at his first term to learn that it is not easy to fulfill every promise. 

His 2016 campaign promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border faced resistance from Democrats in securing much of the necessary funding. When he left office, only part of the wall was constructed. 

Mr. Trump and Republicans also campaigned on promises to repeal and replace Obamacare, but were divided when it came time to write a new health care law. A bill eventually passed the House but failed in the Senate, even though Republicans were using the filibuster-proof reconciliation process to get around Democrats’ objections. 

A second Trump term will face similar obstacles, even if the policy choices are different this time around. 

Republicans will have a similarly sized Senate majority to the one they had during the first Trump administration. They will have 53 Senate seats next Congress. In the 115th Congress, they started with 52.

The expected House Republican majority — which has yet to be solidified as 16 races remain uncalled — will be significantly narrower than the one Mr. Trump had in his first term. 

The GOP is likely to have another slim majority where they cannot afford more than a handful of defections on party-line votes. Republicans have won 214 seats so far and are leading in eight other uncalled races, putting their potential majority around 222 seats, which would allow for up to four defections. 

The 115th Congress started with 241 House Republicans, which meant the GOP could afford up to 23 defections on party-line bills.

Even with their sizable majority in 2017, House Republicans struggled to coalesce around a health care plan. When the House finally passed its bill to repeal and replace Obamacare after months of negotiating, 20 Republicans voted against it. 

The bill faced more trouble in the Senate, where Republicans could not agree on the best replacement for Obamacare. Ultimately, the Senate voted on what was dubbed a “skinny repeal” bill to eliminate key portions of Obamacare, but it failed. Then Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain returned to the Senate after an absence due to his brain cancer diagnosis and cast a thumbs-down “no” vote.

Two other Republicans who joined McCain in voting down the measure, Sens. Susan M. Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, are still serving and are expected to remain moderate voices for Mr. Trump’s second-term agenda. But with a 53-seat majority, Republicans can afford up to three defections, with Vice President-elect J.D. Vance casting the tie-breaking vote as president of the Senate. 

Republicans’ second try at using the filibuster-proof reconciliation process during Mr. Trump’s first term was more successful. They were able to pass the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which enacted sweeping corporate and individual tax cuts, but not without intraparty divisions. 

Republicans included a provision to cap the state and local tax (SALT) deduction at $10,000 to raise revenue to help offset the cost of the tax cuts. But lawmakers from the high-tax states of New York, New Jersey and California balked. Ultimately 12 House Republicans voted against the bill.

Many of the 2017 tax cuts, as well as the SALT cap, are set to expire at the end of next year. Mr. Trump has said he plans to protect the SALT deduction in his second term, but it will be a tempting revenue source for Republicans, most of whom believe the deduction is a giveaway to the wealthy. 

If there is another fight over the SALT deduction, there will be half a dozen or more Republicans from New York, New Jersey and California ready to oppose any significant limitations. 

Republican leaders, within the first 100 days of the Trump administration, hope to pass a reconciliation package that extends the 2017 tax cuts and potentially adds more from what Mr. Trump promised on the campaign trail, like a tax exemption for tipped income. 

But they are eyeing a bigger reconciliation package that will also include spending cuts to roll back Biden administration programs, particularly on clean energy, as well as funding for the border wall and other priority GOP initiatives.

The Senate rules governing reconciliation — policy provisions must have more than a merely incidental impact on federal spending or revenues — may limit their ambitions, as well as concerns from fiscal hawks in the party worried about adding to the deficit. 

Whatever legislative goals Republicans cannot achieve through reconciliation will need bipartisan support to pass the Senate through regular order. It will take at least seven Democrats joining all 53 Republicans to meet the 60-vote threshold needed to clear a filibuster. 

Most notably, that includes passing annual spending bills. Republicans had ambitions during Mr. Trump’s first term to cut domestic spending but ran into resistance from Democrats. They also struggled to get their top funding priorities included in appropriations bills.

Republicans led a 35-day partial government shutdown from late December 2018 to late January 2019 over Mr. Trump’s insistence on border wall funding. The shutdown ended without an agreement on the wall funding and negotiations in the following weeks yielded just under $1.4 billion for the wall, far short of the $5.7 billion Mr. Trump requested. 

Democrats are likely again to put up roadblocks for Mr. Trump and Republicans as they try to use the appropriations process to enact parts of their agenda. 

Republicans will also need Democrats’ cooperation on any plan they come up with to raise or suspend the debt limit to avoid the government defaulting on its debt obligations early next year.