House and Senate Republican lawmakers are hoping to unite their fractious conference around a 2016 agenda when they gather for a joint retreat in Baltimore that begins on Thursday.
The “Congress of Tomorrow,” event, as it has been labeled, isn’t likely to produce an agenda that will be signed into law by President Obama in 2016. Instead, party lawmakers want to to come to agreement on a master plan of sorts that they can show voters ahead of the November elections, when Republicans have a shot at regaining the White House.
“This is a year where we are going to on offense and ideas,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., before the event. “This is a year where we are going to give the country a bold pro-growth agenda so that they can choose the direction this country will head. That way, next year, when it’s a Republican president coming to address Congress, we will have a mandate to do the big things that we need to do to get the country back on track.”
Ryan said rank-and-file lawmakers are going to start developing the agenda Thursday. Likely issues include tax reform, reducing the cost of entitlements and coming up with a GOP alternative to Obamacare.
Republicans have held preliminary meetings in the Capitol on an alternative to the healthcare law, which they hope to repeal if Republicans win the White House.
The GOP conference may also include welfare reform, a Ryan priority that took center stage at a poverty summit he hosted last weekend with Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.
“What I want to accomplish at our retreat is the beginnings of the conversation of assembling an agenda to take to the country and the launching of a process under which we put that agenda together,” Ryan said.
Republican senators will be part of the discussion, but it’s not clear how aggressively they plan to move a GOP agenda. The normally slow-moving Senate often lags behind the House on passing key legislation and this year will likely be no different.
For example, a House-passed, bipartisan bill sanctioning North Korea hasn’t even moved beyond a Senate committee. And there are no immediate plans to take up House legislation that would keep sanctions on Iran in response to the country’s missile testing and terrorism activity.
So far, McConnell has indicated the Senate would focus on passing appropriations legislation after years of stalled efforts that have resulted in giant “omnibus” spending packages.
“If we were able to do that, it would be the first time since 1994,” McConnell said. “So we do intend to give that a lot of floor time and priority, and we’ll see if we can accomplish it.”
Congressional Republicans are eager to show a unified front following years of infighting sparked by their most conservative faction. Ryan is taking a hands-off approach, and figures more inclusion is the key to making it work.
“We’re going to have an organic, participatory process where all of our members have a say-so in helping determine the direction of our Conference going forward,” he said.
Despite these broad goals, party lawmakers are unlikely to come up with a plan to tackle immigration reform, which is the topic that most deeply divides Republicans.
Ahead of the departure of lawmakers on Wednesday, the Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., two of the staunchest immigration opponents in Congress, sent a letter to fellow GOP lawmakers warning them against devising a plan to increase immigration.
“If we want to lay out a ‘bold, conservative agenda,’ and demonstrate that we serve the voters and not the special interests, we should begin by advancing bills to reduce out-of-control immigration,” Sessions and Brat wrote. “That is the reform our voters want, and that is what we must deliver.”
