Elections, Debt, and Taxes: Here’s What to Expect in the 119th Congress

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) talks to reporters at the Capitol on Dec. 20, 2024. Richard Pierrin/AFP via Getty Images

WASHINGTON—The 119th Congress of the United States will take office on Jan. 3, 2025, for a two-year term extending until Jan. 3, 2027. Republicans will hold a slim majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

With a Republican administration leading the executive branch, it is expected that Congress will attempt to enact conservative policies into law.

These efforts will not be unfettered. Obstacles include the Senate’s cloture vote requirement—the support of 60 senators is necessary to overcome a filibuster—and divisions in the House Republican Conference amid its single-digit majority.

Key reforms are likely to be enacted using the “budget reconciliation” process, whereby bills affecting only spending, taxes, and debt can avoid the 60-vote cloture threshold in the Senate, though their effects must be limited to 10 years.

Congress will have several major legislative tasks during the first several months of 2025, which we list below.

Election of a Speaker of the House

The U.S. Constitution requires that the House of Representatives choose a speaker to preside over the body. Customarily, no legislative business is conducted in the House until the speaker is chosen. The rules of the House vest the speaker with considerable powers.

The speaker, who is usually the leader of the majority party’s conference or caucus, is the highest-ranking member of Congress and is second, behind the vice president, in the presidential line of succession.

Electing a speaker requires a majority vote of the House, which means that the majority party, if unified, can select him or her. Historically, this has been the case, whereby the winner of internal elections in the conference or caucus won unanimous support of his or her party on the floor.

However, in the 118th Congress, deep divisions in the Republican conference prevented the election of a speaker—with House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy winning the gavel after 15 rounds of voting, making it the longest such election since 1859. McCarthy was later ousted in October 2023 because of similar divisions in the Republican conference.

Those concerns appear resurgent as regards McCarthy’s successor, House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana. Despite his winning the conference leadership election and speakership nomination for the new Congress on Nov. 13, as well as his getting President-elect Donald Trump’s endorsement, some members of the Republican Conference have publicly said they may not vote for him on the floor. The conference’s two-seat majority on Jan. 3 means that the opposition of just two members could prevent Johnson’s election.

“I remain undecided, as do a number of my colleagues, because we saw so many of the failures last year that we are concerned,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said in a statement to The Epoch Times.

The policy chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, Roy has frequently dissented from the party on fiscal policy legislation implicating the deficit, such as the passage of omnibus government funding bills every year.

On May 8, 2024, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) filed a “motion to vacate the chair” that would remove Johnson from the speakership—the second such resolution, after McCarthy’s removal using the same procedure. She cited his support for two government funding bills without spending cuts favored by conservatives. The resolution was “tabled” (i.e., rejected) by a wide bipartisan majority on the floor but received the support of 11 House Republicans.

Hence, barring significant concessions, it’s questionable whether Johnson can win the speakership on the first ballot, which would reignite controversy at the outset of the Congress.

Certification of the 2024 Presidential Election

On Jan. 6, 2025, Congress will convene in a joint session to certify the results of the 2024 presidential election by counting and approving the Electoral College votes of each state. The U.S. Constitution’s 12th Amendment requires this last procedural step.

As her final major act in office, Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost the election to Trump, will preside over the count.

The event will receive heightened security given the events on Jan. 6, 2021, and it has been designated as a National Special Security Event—the highest level of security. This is akin to presidential inaugurations and State of the Union addresses when all federal leaders convene at one location.

No disruptions or objections from members of Congress are expected, particularly following the passage of the Electoral Count Reform Act in 2022, which significantly raised the thresholds for objecting to election results on the floor of the joint session. Still, the event must be held, by law, on Jan. 6. Should a speaker of the House not be elected by then, the process may become complicated.

Tax Cuts and Reforms

The biggest policy item that Republicans seek to address is taxation. In 2017, the party passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017, which reduced personal income tax brackets and corporate taxes. It was Trump’s first major legislative accomplishment during his first term.

Because the bill was passed using the budget reconciliation process, many key provisions of the TCJA will expire in 2025. Republicans are seeking to renew them and prevent raising taxes to previous levels.

Additionally, some in the GOP will seek to renew a deal to expand the Child Tax Credit (CTC) negotiated in 2024 by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

The bill would expand the CTC to $2,000 by 2025, grant parents and individual credit per child, and make it fully refundable to taxpayers. The House passed the bill by a large bipartisan majority in early 2024, though the Senate, over Republican objections, did not advance it.

Republicans opposed provisions in the deal that would enable illegal immigrant parents of natural-born U.S. citizen children to claim the credit. They also have objected to a “lookback” provision that would allow unemployed parents to claim a credit based on the prior year’s income, which they said would disincentivize them from looking for employment.

Though Wyden agreed to remove that provision, GOP opposition persisted, which led some Democrats to accuse the party of thwarting the bill so President Joe Biden could not claim credit for signing it during the 2024 election.

Immigration and Border Security

The principal theme of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, apart from perhaps the economy, was border security. During the Biden administration, over 7 million foreign nationals illegally crossed the U.S. border with Mexico. Trump, in response, promised to launch the “largest deportation operation in American history” and reform asylum laws that enable illegal immigrants to remain in the country while their asylum claims are being processed.

Some border security initiatives, such as forcing asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their claims are being processed, will not require legislation. However, the funding for mass deportations as well as changes to the asylum process will require Congress to pass new spending and administrative laws.

Most significantly, if Trump is going to fulfill his long-expressed desire to construct a wall along the length of the southern border, Congress will have to approve the funds.

Bills related to spending could be passed without the 60-vote cloture requirement in the Senate using a process known as budget reconciliation. However, changes to immigration and asylum laws will likely be deemed improper in such a bill by the Senate Parliamentarian, whose rulings have often constrained Democrats and Republicans in the past.

Theoretically, the Senate could vote to change its rules of procedure and either expand reconciliation or constrain cloture by a simple majority, thus overcoming this limitation. However, party leaders—particularly former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell—previously have opposed doing so.

The Debt Limit

The U.S. government’s fiscal stability depends on borrowing new money to service spending as well as repay existing debts. By law, the federal government’s debt nominally cannot exceed $14.29 trillion, though repeated extensions have led the actual sovereign debt to balloon to $36 trillion at present. The last such measure, which suspended the debt limit until Jan. 1, 2025, was the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) of 2023.

Despite its expiration, the U.S. government will not immediately default on its debt and spending obligations on Jan. 1. Temporary measures allowed by statute, as well as currency reserves, will enable the Treasury to meet obligations for several months. However, Congress will need to act in the first few months of 2025 to prevent a default whose effects on the global economy could be highly negative, given the U.S. dollar’s status as the world reserve currency.

Raising the debt limit has always been uncomfortable for fiscal conservatives, who seek to limit spending and indebtedness. Their opposition in 2023 led to protracted negotiations between McCarthy and Biden on the compromise FRA bill, which passed 314-117, drawing “nays” from 71 House Republicans, along with 46 Democrats.

Trump recently attempted to include another suspension of the debt limit in the recent Continuing Resolution passed by Congress to avoid a government shutdown on Dec. 20.

That effort failed after many Republicans, as well as Democrats, objected.