In a presidential election year, can anything get done in Congress?
Republicans are planning on it, even though their ideas will likely face presidential vetoes.
The House and Senate gavel into session on Jan. 4, but business does not start in earnest until a week later on Jan. 11, a day before Congress hears President Obama’s final State of the Union address.
While Obama is expected to outline plans for the last months of his second term, the Republican-led Congress will to pursue an agenda aimed at helping their party secure the White House in 2016, GOP leaders said.
“I want to make sure that we have an agenda that we take to the American people that is rooted in our founding principles, this is what conservatives believe, to give the country a very clear choice and that’s what we’re excited to looking forward to in 2016,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The Democratic minority, meanwhile, will put forward its agenda, even though Democrats have little chance of getting it on the floor of the House or Senate.
“I hope we’ll do something to help the middle class, like raise the minimum wage, do something to take care of the tremendous burden that people have, students and their parents, with student debt,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. “And of course, we want to make sure that my daughter and my granddaughters get paid the same as a man for doing the same work.”
While Democrats will use the podium to push their priorities, Republicans who control both chambers will be able to make their case to voters by debating and passing legislation.
House Republicans plan to devise their agenda at a GOP retreat that will be held in Baltimore at the end of the month.
Ryan, who was elected speaker on Oct. 30, told reporters that under his new leadership, Republican lawmakers will abandon a top-down management style and build an agenda from the ground up.
“The members together are going to come together and assemble the agenda that we are going to present to the country,” Ryan said in a recent interview. “We are going to decide exactly how and what shape and form and timing that takes. It’s not something I’m going to make a sole decision on.”
Republicans have already hinted at their agenda. Lawmakers are likely to offer an alternative to Obamacare, which the GOP has sought to repeal dozens of times.
The president won’t sign such a bill, Ryan has acknowledged, but by passing a plan out of Congress, voters in 2016 will have a better idea of what the GOP wants to accomplish if a Republican wins the White House.
The Obamacare alternative would likely include a plan to allow health insurance companies to compete across state lines and it will probably offer tax credits to purchase health insurance.
“There are a lot of other ideas out there,” Ryan said in a recent address outlining the GOP’s 2016 agenda. “We think government should encourage personal responsibility, not replace it. We think prices are going up because people have too few choices, not because they have too many. And we think this problem is so urgent that, next year, we are going to unveil a plan to replace every word of Obamacare.”
Obama is also unlikely to sign a tax reform bill, but the GOP plans to write one anyway, Ryan said. The plan would likely focus on lowering corporate tax rates and broadening the tax base.
There are also smaller items on the congressional agenda that are likely to happen shortly after the session convenes.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has pledged to take up a House-passed bill that would significantly increase the scrutiny of incoming Syrian and Iraqi refugees. The legislation passed the House in December with significant bipartisan support, but Democrats resisted including the provision in the end-of-year fiscal 2016 spending bill.
In the House, Ryan promised Democrats immediate action on how to address Puerto Rico’s debt crisis. Democrats were angry the fiscal 2016 spending bill excluded language permitting the U.S. territory from claiming Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection.
Instead, lawmakers will hold hearings in January on the matter, with a course of action due on Ryan’s desk by March.
In the meantime, Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have sponsored bills that would prevent Puerto Rico’s creditors from taking action until after Ryan’s March deadline for legislative action.
“These citizens need and deserve the support of their government to get through this difficult period, and it is Congress’ responsibility to give them the same tools available to all the states,” Reid said.
