How Republicans are planning to sidestep Democrats and expedite Trump’s agenda in 2025

EXCLUSIVE — Republican lawmakers are already looking past the 2024 election and exploring ways they can circumvent their Democratic foes to expedite former President Donald Trump’s agenda should they control the White House and Congress.

House GOP leaders have already begun discussions about how Republicans can use certain legislative tools to advance key pieces of Trump’s agenda without any Democratic support and while avoiding a filibuster in the Senate. Those conversations began “more than a month ago,” according to Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN), who said House leaders are planning to educate rank-and-file members in the coming weeks on budget reconciliation and how it can be used to sidestep Democratic opposition. 

“We’re going to have a meeting for all members — well, more than one but the first one is next week — where we’re going to have people like [former House Ways and Means Chairman] Kevin Brady come in and try to educate members on the reconciliation process … [and to] try to get them into a place where they have an expectation that’s reasonable about what we can do and what we can’t do,” Emmer told the Washington Examiner. “I think that’ll be the first order of business, and what’s in there, we’ll see.”

Reconciliation is a tool that allows the majority party in the Senate to prevent the usage of a filibuster in order to expedite passage of certain legislation. There are limits to how many times the tool can be used and what types of legislation it can be used for, but reconciliation is often viewed as a hack for lawmakers to go around the minority party and enact key pieces of their agenda with a simple majority.

President Joe Biden and Democrats managed to use reconciliation to pass items such as the Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan Act, two bills that Republicans largely opposed. Trump had also used the process when he was in office to pass his Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

While it’s still “too early to go into detail,” Emmer said there are a number of policy items that Republicans can expect to be at the top of the list. 

“But I think you’re going to be talking about making the Trump tax cuts permanent. I think Trump has made that clear already,” Emmer said. “I see our border bill being the next thing. You got to reform parole, got to reform the broken asylum system, got to build the rest of the wall, you got to restore ‘Remain in Mexico,’ and you got to have catch and release.”

House Republican leaders have long suggested they would push for an aggressive agenda during the first 100 days of a possible Trump administration that would include reforms to policies ranging from energy to the economy to border security. 

“With President Trump in office, if we have a Republican House and Senate, I think we can have an incredibly bold agenda,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) told the Washington Examiner earlier this month. “President Trump has laid out an agenda that’s going to help those families [and] there are a lot of things that we can achieve in the first 100 days.”

One such idea is a proposal floated by Trump to eliminate taxes on tips, an idea that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) says has been “favorably received” across the country and would be a priority for Republicans should they hold control over both chambers of Congress next year. 

Johnson said that proposal, along with others, would be included in the speaker’s own ambitious agenda for the first 100 days of the 119th Congress — when he said he expects to have a GOP majority larger than his current four-vote advantage. 

“We’re going to be working on a very aggressive first 100 days agenda, as you’ve heard me speak about before, and lots of Trump ideas will be included in that,” Johnson told reporters last month.