Trump dithers on GOP legislative strategy

The party has big splits on priorities - and Trump isn't helping

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Trump’s presidency, which begins in just a few short weeks, is going to have two sides to it. One of those is the side that usually dominates the headlines - the chaos, the authoritarianism, the crudity. The other side unfolds in the background, in arcane Congressional proceedings and weighty articles in industry magazines. This side is Trump’s domestic agenda - the laws he wants to pass and that other people think they can get him to pass.

In his first term, Trump managed to notch up very few pieces of major legislation. Partly this was because he’s really bad at making deals. But it was also because he could never decide on what his own priorities were, or which parts of the Republican Party coalition he backed on key issues. His own knowledge of policy, government and politics is extremely limited, and he lapses easily into just agreeing with the last person he spoke to. It’s no coincidence that the one major piece of legislation that he did manage to pass - tax cuts for the wealthy - is the one thing that unites all parts of the GOP coalition, and which he himself benefits from as a rich businessman.

Now it’s time for his second term, and there is already a fierce disagreement unfolding in the Republican Party over priorities and legislative strategy. It will soon be the beginning of Trump’s “100 days”, the time when a new president’s political capital is at its height and he is most able to push his agenda through Congress. But Trump is already being hamstrung by his same old weaknesses - and the minuscule nature of his Congressional majority.

Republicans are heading into the new administration with five main priorities:

1. Firstly, they want to dramatically increase spending on border security and immigration enforcement, including funding for Trump’s promised wave of deportations.

2. Secondly, they want to extend the tax cuts that Trump passed in his first term, and which expire at the end of 2025.

3. Thirdly, they want to make some changes to energy policy and regulation - allowing more oil and gas drilling, unwinding some of the Biden administration’s green-energy investments, and rolling back regulation of the fossil fuel industry.

4. Fourthly, they want to make some spending cuts, whose scope is unclear but could range from some new means testing for welfare programs to sweeping cuts to the size of the federal government.

5. Finally, they need to fund the government and raise the debt limit - basic tasks of governing that they would rather avoid, but will be unable to.

That’s a lot, especially because all of these things divide the Republican Party in various ways. Congresspeople in swing districts are not as on board with Trump’s extreme immigration agenda as those in red states, and those in cities that have benefited from Biden’s green energy spending do not want to eliminate it. Even extending the tax cuts will be a painful and divisive process, involving trade-offs between different groups and industries which will take months to hash out.

To compound the problem, the way that Congress works means that the Republican Party will have at most two shots at passing any of this.

The nub of the problem is the Senate filibuster. Under the rules of the filibuster, any senator can block legislation unless it gets votes from 60 of his or her colleagues. Republicans have 53 seats in the Senate, so they need to win over seven Democrats in order to pass a piece of legislation. And that’s not going to happen. Instead, there’s a way around the filibuster called budget reconciliation, which allows a maximum of two bills to be passed per year with straight majorities. This means Republicans are going to have a maximum of two shots at major legislation this year.

This brings us to the party’s current disagreement, which boils down to whether to make use of these two opportunities or to instead try to jam everything into just a single bill. It’s a hugely consequential decision - and one which Trump has so far failed to make.