When President Joe Biden hands the keys to the White House back to Donald Trump on Jan. 20, he will leave office with some significant legislative successes. But he was never able to get his larger transformative plans through Congress.
Still, with just a few votes to spare in both the House and Senate, Biden was able to get major legislation approved: the $1.2 trillion infrastructure law; the CHIPS Act, which spurred domestic investments in semiconductor production; an array of clean energy programs; and a limited gun control law.
Trump will face some of the same challenges Biden dealt with. The GOP holds basically the same narrow advantage on Capitol Hill that Democrats had under Biden.
Trump can also chalk up major wins by embracing bipartisanship or by keeping his party unified. But he may not have much time to do it.
No president has enjoyed large majorities in Congress since early in Barack Obama’s first term. The 60 Democratic votes in the Senate paved the way for passage of the Obama health law.
Trump, Biden and Obama all have one thing in common — their parties lost full control of Congress in their first midterm elections in 2010, 2018 and 2022, throwing a wet blanket over their legislative plans.
That means Republicans might want to look at 2026 as a deadline — get as much done as possible by then in case the voters turn fickle.
By far, Trump’s biggest legislative success in his first term was his 2017 tax cut package. But it wasn’t permanent, and the individual tax cuts expire at the end of this year.
Republicans say they will act quickly to extend those cuts.
“We must prioritize protecting Trump’s tax cuts as part of our 2025 agenda,” said U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, R-St. Simons Island.
A second GOP goal is to cut spending. But even as Trump has vowed to cut the size of government, this week he was proposing the creation of a brand-new federal agency to collect tariffs on imports — even though there are already federal offices which do exactly that.
On Sunday, Biden will travel to South Carolina on his last full day in office. It was in the Palmetto State that voters gave new life to his struggling campaign in 2020, vaulting him to the Democratic nomination, leading to his victory over Trump.
Four years ago on Jan. 20, Trump left Washington, D.C., in disgrace in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters. He was the first president to skip his successor’s inauguration since 1869.
This time, both men will be together for the transfer of power ceremony. We’ll find out over the next four years if Trump can get the better of Biden when it comes to advancing the GOP agenda.
Jamie Dupree has covered national politics and Congress from Washington, D.C., since the Reagan administration. His column appears weekly in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. For more, check out his Capitol Hill newsletter at jamiedupree.substack.com.
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