Happy New Year and Happy Swearing In Day! Congress is back today to usher in the 115th Congress and the inauguration is in 17 days.
First things first.
Both the full House and new members of the Senate were sworn in today initiating the 115th Congress. With the Republican party in charge of both chambers and President-elect Donald Trump in the White House, an ambitious agenda is in the works, which includes repealing Obamacare and rolling back regulations.
Those effort starts this week as the Senate is expected to start working on passing a budget that contains instructions for gutting Obamacare this week, with the House following up as soon as next week. That resolution includes instructions to repeal large parts of Obamacare through reconciliation. The measure would instruct relevant committees to write legislation that could undo provisions of the law. Republicans are framing this measure as an Obamacare transition solution, but nothing will actually happens to the ACA yet.
The process in the Senate will take several days of debate and there will be a “vote-a-rama,” a process that often takes several hours over the course of a day and night. The budget resolution and the reconciliation measure repealing the health care law avoids the normal Senate requirement of 60 votes to consider legislation. Any subsequent bills addressing replacement provisions for the health care coverage law will require new budget resolution maneuvering or the cooperation from some Senate Democrats. The legislative process for enacting health care coverage replacement legislation could take several years.
Republican leaders are setting up reserve funds in an otherwise bare-bones FY 2017 budget resolution as a way to allow savings from repealing the health care law to be applied to replacement legislation.
The House will vote shortly after on the budget resolution and that vote could happen by the time Trump is inaugurated. It is worth noting that the budget resolution is not law, but binding and instructing on the House and Senate Committees.
Rollback Regulations
Trump is expected to roll back nearly every major labor regulation enacted under President Barack Obama. Executive orders will be the easiest to reverse or cancel; that simply takes executive action. On the list could be an order that required prospective federal contractors to disclose previous labor law violations when bidding on large contracts.
The Department of Labor’s appeal of a federal injunction against the rule will almost certainly be dropped once Trump takes charge of the Justice Department. Another regulation to watch is the fiduciary rule, which requires broker dealers to consider only the client’s best interest when providing retirement advice. Trump may face difficulty squelching the rule before it takes effect in April, but his Labor Department can broaden exemptions and thereby weaken its effect substantially.
Also up for review are visas for guest worker programs. Bipartisan support exists already to scrutinize these programs because of highly publicized instances in recent years of mistreatment of guest workers, displacement of native-born workers, or both. Indeed, Democrats may push harder than Republicans to clean this Augean stable, given the reliance of Trump’s own various businesses on guest-worker visas. The Washington Post counts, 500 since 2013.
Trump’s first big decision on immigration will be what to do about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which grants deportation relief to more than 752,000 people brought to the US at a young age. Trump promised during the campaign to end the program, which was created by an Obama executive order. But in December, Trump said “we’re going to work something out that’s going to make people happy and proud.”
Looking Forward
As the Trump Administration takes office later this month, lawmakers are also gearing up for new fights. Efforts to undo many of the Obama Administration’s education policies, such as its teacher preparation regulations or rules aimed at cracking down on for-profit colleges, will likely prove contentious. Lawmakers will also likely clash over efforts to repeal the Obama Administration’s regulations under the Every Student Succeeds Act or scale back the power of the Office for Civil Rights.
Additionally, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the chairs of the congressional education committees, both plan to turn their attention to overhauling the Higher Education Act, which was last comprehensively reauthorized in 2008.
Decisions over the details for the Trump proposed infrastructure bill, including how to finance it, will probably come after Elaine Chao makes her way through the confirmation process. Trump’s pick for Transportation secretary is unlikely to face much resistance in the Senate.
Multiple Senate Committees will begin public vetting and hearings of dozens of Trump Administration political appointees, from Secretaries, deputies and administrators, all needing Senate confirmation. Hearings have already begun to be scheduled for next week.
But what will happen next? Stay Tuned. The Office of Federal Relations will continue to update.