President-elect Donald Trump (PEOTUS) met with President Barack Obama this morning in the Oval Office at the White House (in what may be the most interesting meeting there in a long while). Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence also met with House Speaker Paul Ryan after the White House meeting, and Pence met with Vice President Joe Biden, too. Other intel, Pence has already called at discussed the transition with the presumptive Democratic Senate Leader, Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and has reached out to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
What can we expect in the First 100 days of a Trump Administration? While many details are still unclear, there are some areas where we can expect both the White House and Congress to act. Congress next year will need to take on must-do items such as funding the government and raising the nation’s debt limit. Also to be expected are some sort of tax reform (likely cuts), Obamacare repeal and replacement, and immigration reform.
The slimmer House Republican majority will skew more conservative. We should expect elements of Ryan’s “Better Way” agenda that encompasses tax and health care overhauls, as well as national security and economic measures. could easily rise to the top of the agenda.
The tight margin in the Senate — where Republicans are in control but still are far from the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster — means that the party’s leaders are most likely to use the budget reconciliation process to move their agenda. That procedure would only require a simple majority to cut off debate and proceed to a final vote.
Ryan has already said that he would seek to use reconciliation to pass tax cuts, which incidentally is deploying the same procedural tool that Democrats used in 2010 to pass the health care law.
On the campaign trail, Trump championed infrastructure spending and paid family leave during his campaign, which could attract Democratic support. Trump’s economic plan — a combination of tax cuts, new spending on immigration enforcement and tariffs on foreign goods — would explode the deficit, even if Congress were to scale back somewhat the $4.4 trillion tax cut that Trump rolled out Sept. 15 at the Economic Club of New York.