After years in the political wilderness on Capitol Hill, Democrats will have the
power to push their
legislative agenda in Congress after winning the House majority
Tuesday. But faced with a Republican-controlled Senate and White House,
the Democrats are in for a series of showdowns that could leave the
party undertaking more modest legislative goals on issues
from prescription drug prices to infrastructure, while laying
the groundwork for a more ambitious national agenda ahead of the
2020 presidential race.
Meanwhile, President Trump's wide-ranging
wishlist, including his recently announced plan for a 10-percent
middle-class tax cut and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's
renewed call for an ObamaCare repeal, now requires significant
revisions. Compromise between Democrats and Republicans will surely
remain elusive as the midterm season is overtaken by presidential
election politics, though analysts say both sides may be forced to
strike some deals in pursuit of legislative wins.
Democrats' first
major initiative will likely be to enact rules changes that govern the
House, because those internal regulations do not require Senate passage.
In the wake of the dramatic arrest of Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., in
August on insider trading charges related to his role on the board of a
prominent biotechnology company, ethics reforms are set to be a marquee
area of focus.
DEMS RETAKE HOUSE, BUT GOP EXPANDS SENATE MAJORITY -- GIVING THEM CONTROL OVER JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS
Nancy
Pelosi, D-Calif., who has her eyes on the speaker's gavel, signaled as
much on Tuesday night, vowing that "we will have a Congress that is open
transparent and accountable to the American people."
“Tomorrow will be a new day in America,” Pelosi
declared.
"It's about restoring the Constitution's checks and balances to the
Trump administration. ... It's about ending wealthy special interests'
free rein over Washington."
She promised to "clean up corruption to make Washington work for all Americans."
Pelosi
similarly pledged to lead "the most ethical Congress in history"
when she first rose to the speakership in 2007 -- a boast that became
a liability when she placed then-Rep. William Jefferson on the
Homeland Security Committee, despite allegations he had stashed $90,000
in bribe money in his freezer. (Jefferson was later convicted on bribery
charges.)
"Members of Congress should not be sitting on boards of
companies, especially those whose are impacted by policies — policy
decisions and the government — so this is appalling, but it shows the
brazenness of it all," Pelosi said on MSNBC earlier this year.
More
substantive legislative changes are also possible on a series
of high-profile policy items on which both parties have signaled
they could ultimately have some common ground.
"The only legislative initiative that appears to be at stake is tax reform 2.0. Other than that, the same things happen."
— Fmr Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eaken
In
June, Trump supported a compromise immigration bill that would
have secured $25 billion for border wall construction while also
providing a pathway to citizenship for so-called Dreamers, or illegal
immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. But after the legislation
hit a wall of its own as moderate and conservative Republicans
splintered, Trump seemingly withdrew that support and said his party
should try again if a "red wave" materialized in November.
DEMS TO FLEX MUSCLE, AS HOUSE AFFORD THEM POWER TO SUBPOENA TRUMP ADMIN
Roosevelt
University politics professor David Faris, who has said that the GOP
likely wouldn't have made much legislative progress even it had retained
control of the House, told Fox News that Trump might revisit that
short-lived compromise effort in the coming months.
"If Democrats
are willing to fund the border wall in exchange for the Dreamers -- I
think that broad compromise has been there a long time," Faris said.
"The real question is whether the president is willing to let go on
restrictions on legal immigration. If he can let that go, I think the
compromise is there."
Leaders from both parties have also publicly
lamented soaring prescription drug costs. Trump has hammered Pfizer and
other pharmaceutical giants on the issue, saying in July that they
"should be ashamed that they have raised drug prices for no reason" and
"are merely taking advantage of the poor."
The president has
framed drug prices as an affront to his "America First" worldview,
writing on Twitter that the companies are "giving bargain basement
prices to other countries in Europe & elsewhere." Soon after his
election, he charged that drug companies were "getting away with
murder."
A 2015 Reuters study found that on average, prices for
the world's top-20 highest selling medicines are three times more
expensive in the U.S. than they are in Britain, owing to government
pricing controls there.
On Tuesday, Pelosi promised to take action in brief remarks as early election returns poured in.
"Democrats
will lower health care costs and prescription drug prices for seniors
and families across America," she said. "Instead Mitch McConnell and the
Republicans have put Medicare and Medicaid on the chopping block, and
will continue their cruel assault from the protections for people with
preexisting conditions.
But the issue of soaring drug prices may
be trickier to resolve than it appears. Trump already signed a
bipartisan bill in October that guaranteed pharmacists the right to tell
consumers when paying cash would be cheaper than using insurance for
their prescriptions, over the objection of insurance companies. And
Democrats, although united in their concern over soaring prices, are
split on how to resolve the underlying problem.
Some Democrats
want to allow the federal government to negotiate Medicare drug prices,
even though similar efforts in the past may have made the problem worse.
On Tuesday night, Pelosi hinted at taking "very strong legislative
action to negotiate down the price control of prescription drugs that is
burdening seniors and families across America."
"I think it deserves some hearings, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. It’s not a magic bullet."
— Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif., on Dems' plan for prescription drug prices
In
1990, Congress mandated that federal Medicaid programs either receive a
15 percent discount on drugs off their list prices, or the most
competitive price offered to private payers -- an initiative that
ultimately led drug companies to
slash private discounts to roughly 15 percent off list prices.
But
some in her party are skeptical. “It’s a great talking point,” Rep.
Scott Peters, D-Calif., told Roll Call, referring to the idea of having
the federal government negotiate with drug companies. “I think it
deserves some hearings, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. It’s not a
magic bullet.”
Infrastructure reform could also be an area of bipartisan consensus, as
Democrats have vowed to use the committee process to build agreement on
any proposal to improve the nation's roads, bridges, sewer systems, and
schools.
On Tuesday, Pelosi specifically touted her plans to
"deliver a transformational investment in America's infrastructure,"
including broadband networks, housing, schools, and sewers.
"Infrastructure has never been partisan," she claimed.
In
October, Trump signed a bipartisan bill to provide several billions of
dollars to fund drinking-water initiatives and Army Corps of Engineers
projects, just one day after he signed a similarly bipartisan bill to
combat the opioid epidemic and just two months after he signed a massive
defense spending bill into law.
"If you want to know about
bipartisan accomplishments, look no further than this Congress,"
Stephanie Penn, press secretary for Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell, R-Ky., told Fox News. "Water infrastructure, opioids,
defense, etc. All passed with overwhelming bipartisan support."
Trump's
own infrastructure proposal, which called for a $200 billion federal
investment in the hopes of spurring $1.5 trillion in additional funding
from states and private investors, stalled in Congress earlier this
year. Democrats balked at further spending cuts to pay for the measue,
and instead suggested rolling back the GOP's recent tax overhaul.
Republicans, meanwhile, split on whether to fund the plan with a gas tax
or other mechanism.
RED-STATE DEMS WHO OPPOSED KAVANAUGH DROP LIKE FLIES IN MIDTERMS
Another
potential showdown looms over Trump's recently renegotiated trade
agreement with Mexico and Canada, which is slated to replace the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The new
United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) secures greater U.S.
access to Canadian dairy markets and changes regulations to bring back
more auto manufacturing to the U.S. and is considered one of the White
House's crowning foreign policy achievements -- but it requires
congressional authorization.
"The bar for supporting a new NAFTA
will be high,” Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., who is poised to become the
chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, told Politico. And Trump
himself has similarly sounded a note of caution: "Anything you submit
to Congress is trouble," he said.
But other analysts have warned
that Democrats, by fighting Trump on trade, would risk drawing attention
to his accomplishments -- and play into his critiques that they are
only interested in obstruction. One of the only major concessions by the
U.S. in the USMCA is that it preserves a tariff-dispute regulatory
regime that Canada had insisted was a sine qua non.
"Given the
modest nature of the revisions he pursued with these trade agreements, I
don't see Democrats dying on that hill," Faris told Fox News. "I think
the opinion within Congress is broadly supportive of these agreements.
... You could argue that's an area where the president has succeeded,
and I don't think Democrats want to highlight that success by trying to
stop it."
Still, Faris added, if Trump decides to escalate the ongoing trade conflict with China, a congressional clash could be imminent.
"The
collision course possible here is with China," Faris said. "If we get
to the point where we're talking aboutmost-favored-nation status, I
could see a potentially significant battle with Congress over
that." (The U.S. has afforded China permanent normal trade relations
since 2000, an arrangement that afforded China the same trade advantages
as other countries with that designation.)
While more partisan
fireworks are likely in the next two years, Faris said, the actual
impact of divided government may not be as significant as it might
appear, owing to the lack of pending, articulated GOP policy proposals
that actually hang in the balance.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who
previously directed the Congressional Budget Office and now heads the
conservative American Action Forum think tank, agreed, telling Fox News
that the Democratic takeover of the House won't actually "change much."
"The
only legislative initiative that appears to be at stake is tax reform
2.0," Holtz-Eaken said. "Other than that, the same things happen -- with
[Democrats] doing a lot more oversight."