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THE BUDGET

Reconciliation Times Two

ISSUE: Congressional leaders set an ambitious agenda for this year’s budget process when they asked the Budget committees to write and pass two separate budget resolutions. Work on the first — a rewritten, bare-bones fiscal 2017 budget that will set in motion a dismantling of the 2010 health care law — likely will be a somewhat easier lift for lawmakers than the fiscal 2018 budget. That second resolution will need to include agreed-to spending levels that may or may not signal a return of sequestration caps. It’s also expected to carry reconciliation instructions for a tax overhaul and, potentially, policy proposals that would keep mod-erate and conservative factions of the GOP caucus happy.

The fiscal 2017 resolution is viewed by most lawmakers as a vehicle to assist in dismantling parts of the 2010 health care law and therefore will not see the volume of spending and policy dis-putes that will crop up during work on the fiscal 2018 resolution.

“We anticipate doing two budget resolutions this year. The first will be the health care law repeal resolution and then we will do one later in the spring which will largely be dedicated to tax reform,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in December. “So it will be two this year, and they will set up reconciliation follow-on vehicles for us to address two very important issues the president-elect talked about and we all care about — repealing and replacing Obamacare and doing compre-hensive tax reform.”

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WHERE IT STANDS: The Senate began moving forward with the fiscal 2017 budget resolution as soon as the chamber returned to Washington. Senate Budget Chairman Michael B. Enzi, R-Wyo., introduced the legislative package on Jan. 3 and the bill passed its first procedural vote 51-48 the next day. The marathon voting session, known as a vote-a-rama, is expected to begin this week. Democrats plan to use every hour of debate they have to slow-walk the bill and force Republicans to vote on a myriad of the health care law’s policies.

The fiscal 2018 budget resolution should follow a more normal timetable. Lawmakers will likely try to agree to a spending topline before the customary April 15 deadline. It’s unclear if the process will include the normal hearings featuring the director of the Office of Management and Budget discussing the White House’s budget request. The Trump administration has not re-leased a timetable of when it expects to deliver its budget to Con-gress, but when President Barack Obama took office in January 2009 he released a $3.6 trillion overview of his budget on Feb. 26 and Congress agreed on its fiscal 2010 budget resolution in late April. Obama then sent a more detailed budget proposal to the Hill on May 7 with an update of summary tables on May 11.

OUTLOOK: Floor debate is expected to continue along partisan lines and mirror the arguments Enzi and Budget Committee ranking member Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. laid out during their opening remarks.

Republicans will continue calling the health care law a failed bill that has harmed numerous Americans, while Democrats will encourage the GOP to work with them to improve the parts of

PRESENT AND PAST: Enzi, left, continues as Senate Budget chairman, but Price is moving on.

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the law that are not working well. “Nobody here thinks that the Affordable Care Act is perfect. The goal is how we repair it, how we improve it. How we expand health care to more Americans,” Sanders said during his opening remarks on the budget debate.

The House appears poised to take up debate quickly after the Senate passes the resolution. A memo from House Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore, indicates the House also will also vote on the fiscal 2017 budget this week.

The Senate floor vote is expected to be close, following Sen. Rand Paul’s announcement that he will not vote for the bud-get resolution because it does not balance within 10 years and increases the debt by $9.7 trillion. With his defection, Senate Republicans cannot lose another member without gaining some Democratic support. Paul met with a group of House conserva-tives to explain his position and try to sway some to his side, but it is unlikely he can peel off enough conservatives in the House to block the resolution from passing.

While the Senate vote will be close, the House floor vote should not be, with 241 Republicans outnumbering 194 Dem-ocrats. If the two chambers pass different versions of the bill, they would need to head to conference. But if leadership could pre-conference the fiscal 2017 budget resolution, minimizing the additions that need to be made by either chamber, a conference might not be necessary. That would give the Republicans a faster route to their first legislative victory of the 115th Congress. Both the Senate and the House are on track to pass the budget resolu-tion before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The outlook for the unwritten fiscal 2018 budget resolution will begin to take shape in the weeks and months following votes on the fiscal 2017 resolution.

— Jennifer Shutt

APPROPRIATIONS

Seeking Regular Order

THE ISSUE: Republicans start a new Congress deliberately saddled with last year’s unfinished spending business. Only one of the 12 fiscal 2017 spending bills — a measure funding military construction and veterans’ programs — was enacted by the time fiscal 2017 began Oct. 1.

The reason? Lawmakers say President-elect Donald Trump wanted oversight of the spending process, which began with outgoing President Barack Obama’s final budget request. So they passed a continuing resolution that keeps the government running through April 28, when Trump will be president.

But it also means Congress now will have to slam two spend-ing seasons into one year, both fiscal 2017 and fiscal 2018, if it wants to achieve the GOP leadership’s goal of returning to “reg-ular order,” in which there’s an orderly procession of spending bills through the House and Senate before the start of a new fiscal year.

WHERE IT STANDS: There are enough Democrats in the Senate to block procedural advancement of appropriations bills if the 60-vote cloture threshold remains in force.

They want to cut a deal to raise the sequester-level spending caps that return in fiscal 2018. Current budget law places over-all discretionary spending under the sequester at $1.06 trillion overall: $549 billion for defense and $515 billion for nondefense, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That’s a nearly $5.2 billion cut from the overall discretionary spending figure for fiscal 2017, $1.07 trillion, in the expiring two-year bipartisan agreement.

Meanwhile, appropriations floor action in the House will be overshadowed by the push to adopt two budget resolutions, the first expected to be a bare-bones vehicle mainly for the repeal of the 2010 health care law and the second a fuller and more traditional measure in which a tax overhaul figures to be the central element. Trump’s budget could also come late, which in turn could delay floor action on spending bills. Obama submitted his first full budget, which typically rolls out in February, months late.

This combination of factors means work on spending bills that carry out the budget could start late too. “The Appropriations Committee will get back to work to write that bill to replace the April 28 deadline, and then we’ll be back in regular order,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin said, referring to a bill that would replace the current stopgap continuing resolution.

If lawmakers don’t enact fiscal 2017 spending legislation be-fore the current resolution’s April 28 deadline, the fiscal year will be more than halfway over before final decisions on spending are made.

OUTLOOK: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is eyeing Democrats suspiciously as he looks to the 2017 appropriations season. When asked if he expects fiscal 2018 to go more smooth-ly for appropriators than fiscal 2017, the Kentucky Republican said: “Well, I hope so. I mean, there will be enough Senate Dem-ocrats to ball the process up again if they choose to.”

Rep. David E. Price, the ranking Democrat on the House Transportation-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee, says it won’t go well if Republicans insist on sticking to sequester spending levels that Democrats find too confining. The North Carolinian says he could see a repeat of the fiscal 2016 season, when House lawmakers marked up appropriations bills to the sequester level, an exercise that ultimately pushed them to hash out a budget deal.

“We mess around for the better part of the year and then finally realize we’re going to shut the government down and so at that point we get a budget patch — I mean, it’s such a terrible way to govern I would hope that we could avoid that,” Price says.

He adds: “I think most of the bills cannot have bipartisan sup-port if they’re written to sequestration levels, which is where we are headed right now unless somebody does something to adjust the budget numbers.”

— Kellie Mejdrich

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DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION

Russia, Torture May Cause FrictionISSUE: After failing to reach a compromise on the massive Pentagon policy bill early last fall, Congress returned for the lame-duck session with the fate of the fiscal 2017 defense autho-rization bill — and the power of the Armed Services committees — hanging in the balance.

But as they’ve done every year for the past 54 years, the two committees managed to reach a compromise and pass a final measure by wide bipartisan majorities after eliminating some of the language most egregious to Democrats.

With their unprecedented legislative streak still intact, the House and Senate Armed Services committees go into the 115th Congress maintaining tremendous authority over Penta-gon policy and spending priorities. Expect them to continue a much more muscular approach to oversight compared to other congressional committees. Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, in particular, is already signaling that he plans to use his perch atop the panel to keep the incoming Trump administra-tion’s national security priorities and ambitions in check.

WHERE IT STANDS: The House and Senate Armed Services committees will get to work on the annual defense bill once the Trump administration delivers its fiscal 2018 request to Capi-tol Hill. After a round of hearings with Pentagon and military services leaders, as well as the individual combatant commands, they will mark up their legislation this spring. The House Armed Services’ bill is typically the first of the four defense measures (including appropriations) to make its way through either cham-ber, usually in late spring.

The bill contains dozens of new and renewed authorities affecting everything from military pay and bonuses to construc-tion programs to weapons contracts. Both McCain and his House counterpart, Republican Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas, have made revisions to the Pentagon’s arcane buying policies a top priority in the past several years, and it will likely continue with the 2018 bill.

McCain has also signaled that cybersecurity will be a signifi-cant focus of his panel this year.

With spending caps still in place, at least for now, the topline will almost certainly be a source of debate. Last year, the House bill underfunded operations overseas by $18 billion to pay for more fighter jets, ships, personnel and other pet projects that did not make the cut for the Pentagon’s capped base budget. The Senate measure did not follow suit, and the final bill took a compromise approach.

OUTLOOK: Many of the perennial battles with the Obama ad-ministration — such as over the future of the military’s detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — will subside as Republicans maintain control of both chambers and take control of the White

House. But there is always some friction between the House and Senate over both policy and spending priorities, and that will continue this year.

What will be particularly interesting is whether the bill high-lights tensions between McCain and the Trump administration. The Arizona Republican has made no bones about his disagree-ments with Trump over Russia, torture and other issues. How-ever, McCain has praised Trump’s pick for Defense secretary, retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, who may help smooth tensions between the committee and the administration.

— Megan Scully

DEFENSE SPENDING

Budget Caps Remain

ISSUE: The incoming Republican president and Congress want to increase defense spending. But the 2011 Budget Control Act must be altered to accommodate that.

Many Democrats will support a bigger Pentagon budget. Most of them will continue to insist that nondefense programs get equal treatment, but Democrats’ reduced political clout in Washington will weaken their hand. Still, boosts to the Pentagon budget might not go as high as many hawks would like, partly because a sizable number of Republicans are wary of increasing federal spending in any category, including defense.

WHERE IT STANDS: The government is operating through April 28 on a stopgap spending bill, or continuing resolution, that keeps programs running in fiscal 2017 at the prior year’s level, with certain exceptions.

In the first few months of 2017, politicians in Washington will have several decisions to make on defense spending. They must either replace the continuing resolution with a new one covering the second half of fiscal 2017 or, more likely, send the president a new Pentagon spending bill.

Second, GOP hawks want a supplemental fiscal 2017 package that could add tens of billions of dollars in new spending. What’s more, the new president’s first budget, for fiscal 2018, will proba-bly arrive sometime around April.

OUTLOOK: Since the Budget Control Act was enacted in 2011, Washington has repeatedly found ways to provide the Pentagon relief from the law’s spending limits.

Assuming the law stays in place — a safe bet — that pattern of relief for the Pentagon is all but sure to continue, except with even larger increases likely given Republicans’ majorities in the Capitol.

President-elect Donald Trump has sketched proposals for “rebuilding” the military that independent experts believe could cost tens of billions of dollars more per year than current plans.

Achieving that will not be easy, but he may get close. A key tension will arise between growing the size of the armed forces

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and paying for more modern equipment — doing both at the levels Trump wants is probably not politically feasible.

— John M. Donnelly

FISA

Surveillance Battle Expected

ISSUE: Section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act is set to expire Dec. 31, 2017. The law authorizes the National Security Agency to collect and review, without a warrant, the content of emails and phone calls of foreigners or non-U.S. residents rea-sonably believed to be outside the United States, including their communications with Americans.

WHERE IT STANDS: Civil liberties and privacy advocates as well as some members of Congress are calling for the program to be overhauled or scrapped entirely.

They also want more answers to basic questions about the current program, such as how many Americans have had their private information collected under Section 702, and what is the full set of rules governing how the NSA, CIA and FBI use the measure in investigations of Americans or U.S. residents.

The intelligence community and some members of Congress say the program is an essential tool to protect the nation.

OUTLOOK: The reauthorization process looks set to go through

the Judiciary committees with significant input from their col-leagues on the Intelligence panels.

The leaders of both the Senate and House Intelligence com-mittees support Section 702, arguing that it plays an important role in investigations, particularly in counterterrorism cases. But the process is likely to be highly contentious, with liberal law-makers on the left and libertarians on the right finding common cause in what they argue is government overreach.

A possible middle ground might be narrowing the law to make sure Americans’ data cannot be searched without a warrant.

— Ryan Lucas

IRAN SANCTIONS

Questions Loom Over Nuclear DealISSUE: President-elect Donald Trump has yet to clarify wheth-er he intends to unilaterally withdraw the United States from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran or merely try to force Tehran to accept a new set of stricter terms for the agreement. If it’s the latter path, he may turn to Congress for help in the form of new sanctions targeting Iran’s ballistic missile and regionally destabi-lizing activities.

WHERE IT STANDS: Key to any successful Iran sanctions bill will be overcoming the likely Democratic Senate filibuster. If Demo-crats view any new sanctions as a poison pill designed to kill the

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FOREIGN LEADER: Cardin is at the center of Democratic efforts on international policy.

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Iran deal, they are likely to mobilize to block the legislation, as they did repeatedly in the 114th Congress.

If, however, Tehran were to carry out new provocations, spe-cifically testing longer-range ballistic missiles, bipartisan support for new sanctions is more likely.

OUTLOOK: Multiple Iran sanctions measures from the 114th Congress could be reintroduced in this session. With lots of ideas in this area, no clear sanctions vehicle has yet to emerge with no-table bipartisan support.

Senate Foreign Relations ranking member Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland is still trying to attract Republican support for his bill that would give Congress more oversight of executive branch ac-tions on Iran. Meanwhile, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., introduced a bill in December that would impose harsh sanctions on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps and the country’s airline, Mahan Air.

— Rachel Oswald

RUSSIA SANCTIONS

A Drumbeat for Tougher SanctionsISSUE: There is significant bipartisan appetite for new legislative sanctions on Russia as punishment for its military campaign in Syria and computer hacking ahead of the U.S. presidential election.

President-elect Donald Trump’s insistence that Moscow played no part in his electoral victory and his push to join forces with the Kremlin to fight Islamic State terrorists does not appear to have notably dulled long-standing GOP animosity toward Rus-sia, but that could change.

WHERE IT STANDS: President Barack Obama’s imposition of sanctions in late December on nine Russian entities, including two intelligence services, appears to have only whetted the appe-tites of congressional Democrats for further economic penalties on Moscow.

Ideas are percolating about how to retaliate against Rus-sia, but measures related to its Syria campaign are much further developed than any that would penalize Moscow for its election-hacking activities.

Among the Syria-related sanctions that could be reintroduced this session is a House-passed bill sponsored by Foreign Affairs ranking member Eliot L. Engel of New York that would require sanctioning anyone who provides financial services or does busi-ness with Bashar al-Assad’s government, including its security services.

A similar measure to the Engel bill was introduced in Decem-ber with bipartisan support from Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Bob Casey, D-Pa., suggesting the ideas behind the bill will have legs in the 115th Congress.

OUTLOOK: If the various congressional committees that have vowed to probe Russian interference in the U.S. elections come back with strong evidence, expect bipartisan support for sanc-tions to grow.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of the senators leading calls for a special committee to investigate Russian hacking, said on Twitter, “My goal is to put on President Trump’s desk crippling sanctions against Russia. They need to pay a price.”

Graham and Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain of Arizona promised to lead an effort in the new Congress to im-pose stronger sanctions.

Senate Foreign Relations ranking member Benjamin L. Car-din, D-Md., plans to introduce a “comprehensive” Russia sanc-tions bill that will encompass not only its election hacking but also its interference in Ukraine and Syria.

Alongside of that, watch for a legislative debate on whether to pass mandatory or nonmandatory sanctions on Russia, given evidence that Trump is already disinclined to maintain current sanctions on Russia.

— Rachel Oswald

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CYBERSECURITY

Hacking to Be Targeted

ISSUE: The Department of Homeland Security has sought greater authority to lead the U.S. government’s cybersecurity efforts in safeguarding critical infrastructure and private compa-nies, as well as aiding state and local governments.

Its request assumes greater importance in the context of state-sponsored hacking, particularly by Russia, as well as cyber-attacks on state governments and private infrastructure.

The debate over encryption and law enforcement access to electronic communications of citizens still remains an issue.

WHERE IT STANDS: The House Homeland Security Committee in June passed a cybersecurity and infrastructure protection measure that would put DHS in charge of all nonmilitary U.S. cybersecurity efforts.

The bill also would have created the Office of Director of National Cybersecurity under a new Cyber and Infrastruc-ture Protection Agency. If reintroduced, the bill would have to

navigate multiple committees in both chambers before it could become law.

Lawmakers also have pressed the Department of Homeland Security to make available more information on cyber-threats to state and local governments.

Rep. Dan Donovan, R-N.Y., introduced a bill in June that would put cybersecurity threat information on par with terrorism threats shared with state and local governments. The bill also would require the department to make more cyber-threat infor-mation available in an unclassified form.

The 114th Congress passed the cybersecurity information sharing law, making it easier for the Department of Homeland Security and private companies to share threat information with each other. The department has said about 145 organizations, including private and public entities, now get cyber-threat information from DHS and also share their information with the government. Lawmakers want to see this expand to more participants.

House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and the Senate Intelligence Committee’s top Dem-ocrat, Virginia’s Mark Warner, hope to set up a commission to examine how to help law enforcement get around encryption issues without harming citizens’ privacy.

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chair-man Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has pushed legislation that would require DHS to assess how to monitor the use of social media by terrorist groups.

OUTLOOK: Committees in both chambers are likely to take up and pass legislation authorizing DHS to create a new agency and appoint a director of national cybersecurity.

Congress also is likely to revisit the debate between privacy and encryption as law enforcement agencies seek greater access to communications of potential offenders and consider ways to monitor internet activities of terrorist groups.

— Gopal Ratnam

HOMELAND SECURITY

A Push to Consolidate Oversight

ISSUE: The Department of Homeland Security is overseen by more than 100 committees and subcommittees in Congress. Simplifying oversight of the department is the only 9/11 Com-mission recommendation yet to be implemented.

WHERE IT STANDS: Fifteen years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and 12 years since the 9/11 Commission issued its report, lawmakers have failed to adhere to one of the key recommen-dations: “Congress should create a single, principal point of oversight and review for homeland security.”

The bipartisan panel went on to say: “Congressional leaders are best able to judge what committee should have jurisdiction

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LEFT-HANDED GUNS: McCain and Graham intend to press Trump hard on Russia.

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over this department and its duties. But we believe that Congress does have the obligation to choose one in the House and one in the Senate, and that this committee should be a permanent standing committee with a nonpartisan staff.”

Lawmakers in both chambers have talked for years about oversight changes without making progress. The practical effect of overlapping committee supervision means DHS has to seek approval from various committees for the 16 different agencies and offices under its umbrella.

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairs the House Homeland Security Committee and says he is in talks with Speaker Paul D. Ryan to write a rules package that would give his committee au-thority over all of DHS. To win approval, heads of more than half a dozen powerful committees have to agree to give up oversight of various parts of the department.

OUTLOOK: Leaders of the authorizing committees in both chambers have expressed a desire to redo the way Congress oversees the department.

There could be an effort to streamline the oversight, if not to just one committee each in the House and the Senate, then at least to fewer committees. But legislative priorities set by the leadership in both chambers to match with the Trump adminis-tration’s agenda could derail such an effort.

— Gopal Ratnam

TRADE

Tariff Reductions in the Works

ISSUE: The Senate Finance and House Ways and Means com-mittees will undertake a new procedure in the 115th Congress to produce a package of temporary tariff reductions or suspensions on imported chemicals, appliance parts and other items U.S. manufacturers say meet their essential business needs. In the past, synthetic staple fibers, chemicals for dyes and solvents, and elements for toasters and toaster ovens won temporary breaks on tariffs.

Manufacturers argue that U.S. tariffs make their imported ma-terials costly, essentially taxing them for doing business.

The raw materials and products are not produced or available in the United States so the companies say foreign sources are nec-essary to keep supplies ready for use.

Lawmakers will address the import taxes in a miscellaneous tariff bill. The most recent tariff bill expired Dec. 31, 2012.

WHERE IT STANDS: The International Trade Commission took petitions from U.S. companies seeking tariff reductions through Dec. 12. Under legislation enacted in 2016, the agency is responsible for vetting those petitions. It is expected to send recommendations to the trade committees about which petitions should be acted on.

Companies in the past sought relief from lawmakers, who filed

legislation to address specific needs, but the committees were reluctant to produce a package of temporary tariff reductions or suspensions based on lawmakers’ recommendations for fear the targeted breaks would violate earmark bans, since specific tem-porary tariff cuts often benefit just a handful of businesses.

OUTLOOK: The panels will use the trade commission’s recom-mendations to write legislation for committee approval and floor votes. Lawmakers can exclude products on the commission’s list, but cannot add any product not reviewed by the agency.

House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, a Texas Re-publican, told the National Foreign Trade Council in December that the legislation remains a priority, even as his panel is expect-ed to produce a major overhaul of the tax code. In addition to the tax overhaul, the Senate Finance Committee will also be busy with agency confirmation hearings.

Meanwhile, the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact negotiated by the Obama administration is dead. President-elect Donald Trump, who made his opposition to trade deals a major part of his campaign, has said that after he takes office he will withdraw from the agreement between the United States and 11 nations. He’ll also likely place on the back burner the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union. And Trump is promising to reopen and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

— Ellyn Ferguson

OBAMACARE

Divisions on Health Care Repeal

ISSUE: After six years of disparaging President Barack Obama’s signature health care law, Republicans finally have the control of Congress and the presidency they need to repeal at least some of the law.

Untangling the landmark legislation, however, will not be easy. The law expanded health coverage to about 20 million people through public exchanges like HealthCare.gov and by allowing states to broaden the Medicaid program for low-income Amer-icans. It overhauled insurance for people who buy coverage on their own and changed how hospitals are compensated for care.

Despite the historic gains in health care access through the leg-islation, the law nevertheless remains a partisan lightning rod. An average of 45 percent of Americans viewed the law unfavorably over the course of 2016, compared to 41 percent who saw it favor-ably, a Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll shows.

WHERE IT STANDS: Republicans in Congress have coalesced around a plan to repeal the health care law using the budget process known as reconciliation that allows consideration of legislation with just 51 Senate votes. With Republicans holding 52 Senate seats, the process allows them to circumvent the 60-vote threshold that typically governs the chamber’s procedural

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process.Republicans in both chambers remain divided, however, on

how quickly the law should disappear and how to structure its replacement. Some conservatives, including many in the House Freedom Caucus, have pressed for especially quick action and as complete a repeal as possible.

Many others, including some key committee chairmen and leaders like Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, have commit-ted to including some type of transition period in any repeal measure, to ensure that Americans covered under the law aren’t kicked off their coverage.

There is even less consensus on how to replace the law. Many Republican leaders, including Ryan and Senate Finance Chair-man Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, have proposed a range of policies that could serve as a replacement.

But the plans all differ from one another and from the policies that President-elect Donald Trump outlined on the campaign trail. Moreover, none includes details about funding levels or offsets that often stall congressional negotiations.

OUTLOOK: Although action to repeal at least some of the health care law is all but certain, there are no clear answers about what might replace it.

The Senate is taking the initial steps to repeal the law. Sen-ate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said on the floor during the first week of the new Congress that repeal of Obamacare was the chamber’s top priority. He also committed to including a transition period in that effort.

Republicans in Congress already drafted and passed a recon-ciliation package that included instructions to repeal much of Obamacare. The president vetoed that package in 2016, but it presents a roadmap for repeal.

The rest of the debate about how to replace the law will follow. Though McConnell said the party hopes to work “expeditiously” on that replacement, it could take months or even years to build consensus on a replacement. Finalizing the 2010 health care law took nearly two years and was fraught with partisan and logistical fights.

— Erin Mershon

FDA

Uncharted Territory on Fees

ISSUE: The 21st Century Cures Act signed into law in December will make changes to how the Food and Drug Administration approves certain drugs and devices.

This session, Congress will have another chance to make FDA policy changes in a bill that’s meant to help provide the agency with more resources.

Nearly half of the FDA’s $5 billion budget comes from fees paid by pharmaceutical companies and device-makers. Con-gress must renew the FDA’s authority to collect those fees by the

end of September. Since the user fee program began in 1992, the bills often also include language to tweak FDA policy.

The drug and device industry is happy to pay these fees be-cause the funding comes with commitments from the FDA that it will finish product reviews within a certain time frame, which is currently 10 months or fewer for new drugs. The user fee bills have also established priority approval pathways for special classes of drugs and devices.

WHERE IT STANDS: The user fee funding can only be used for activities related to the approvals, which also means that if the authorization expires, drug and device approvals could come to a halt and the jobs of some FDA employees could be in limbo. So like spending bills, the user fee authorizations are typically con-sidered must-pass measures before the summer recess begins in August.

Congress will start with agreements negotiated between the FDA and industry, which mainly revolve around application timelines and the meetings FDA must hold with drug- and device-makers during the application process.

For the first time, the industry money also would be able to be spent on human resource programs that would enhance the FDA’s ability to recruit and retain the best scientists.

Lawmakers may choose to tweak the agreements, and are even considering adding a new user fee to enhance the FDA’s regulation of the cosmetics industry.

OUTLOOK: In another first, the user fee deals were negotiated by one presidential administration and will go into effect under a different one.

This uncharted territory is creating some angst within the phar-maceutical industry, because it just doesn’t know if the Trump ad-ministration will want to redo the agreement.

While most observers consider that unlikely, any changes sought by the new administration risk slowing down the process as the clock ticks toward Sept. 30.

Then there’s Congress. The user fee legislation will be taken up by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee, whose mem-bers and staff will also be busy negotiating an overhaul of the broader health care system.

— Andrew Siddons

CHIP

Rollbacks in Store for Children’s Insurance ISSUE: Funding for the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program expires at the end of fiscal 2017, making it a high- priority agenda item for the 115th Congress.

The program, which often enjoys bipartisan support, provides health coverage to 8.4 million low-income Americans under the

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age of 18, according to the latest federal data.Despite the program’s traditional popularity, however, the

funding discussion could become partisan. The 2010 health care overhaul that Republicans plan to repeal boosted funding for the program by 23 percentage points in every state — and many Re-publicans are eager to restore CHIP funding to its earlier levels.

Republicans also have pushed to roll back changes that made it harder for states to kick children off the program.

WHERE IT STANDS: Children’s advocates and governors want Congress to act early to extend funding to give state legislatures, many of which adjourn in the spring or summer, time to incorpo-rate that into their budgets. Many state fiscal years begin July 1.

Although Congress could pass a simple two-year extension, Democrats are likely to press for a longer period. Republicans might also seek to tie the legislation to a much broader discus-sion about their efforts to repeal and replace the 2010 health care law and overhaul the Medicaid program.

But anything more than a two-year continuation of funds will be complicated: The Children’s Health Insurance Program’s entire legislative authority expires in 2019, as does the enhanced federal funding and other controversial rules.

Not only would a longer funding package require more offsets, but it would also force lawmakers to open up those more compli-cated issues for debate.

OUTLOOK: Republicans remain committed to returning CHIP funding to the lower levels that were in place before the health care law and to undoing some of that law’s other changes to CHIP. Democrats are expected to push back on any effort to limit the popular program.

The measure is a priority that will be debated as Republicans seek to repeal and replace the health care law. That could make it an attractive bargaining chip for lawmakers in both parties.

— Erin Mershon

TAXES

Overhaul Tops the Agenda

ISSUE: President-elect Donald Trump and GOP leaders aim to overhaul the tax code to lower rates for individuals and corpo-rations and to simplify tax returns. Republicans remain divided on certain rate targets and whether to attach infrastructure incentives sought by Trump. Democrats want to ease the tax burden on middle-class families and place a bigger burden on the wealthy.

WHERE IT STANDS: A fiscal 2018 budget resolution is expected to include reconciliation instructions for a tax overhaul. The budget reconciliation process would protect the tax rewrite from a filibuster since legislation would only need 51 votes for passage.

House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas,

plans to move by spring on a measure based largely on the GOP’s “Better Way” agenda introduced ahead of the 2016 elections. It would set three tax rates (instead of seven) for individuals: 12 percent, 25 percent and 33 percent. The corporate rate would be 20 percent (instead of 35 percent), with a new 25 percent rate for owners of pass-through businesses that now pay individual rates on their profits.

While plans by the House GOP and Trump have the same in-dividual tax rates, they differ on corporate rates and issues such as standard and itemized deductions.

They both agree that the estate tax, marriage penalty and alternative minimum tax should be repealed.

Trump has given mixed signals on whether he will insist on signature elements of his tax plan, such as a 15 percent business tax rate and an itemized deduction cap of $100,000 for individ-uals and $200,000 for married couples.

Senate Finance Chairman Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, says he wants to hear from Trump before developing a Senate measure.

Brady and other key players say they will write a revenue- neutral measure based on dynamic, or macroeconomic, scoring, but it remains unclear whether the final package will be tailored to meet this goal.

A potential sticking point remains Trump’s demand for infra-structure incentives. Some of his advisers want to focus solely on business taxes that would be paired with incentives to boost improvements in roads, bridges and other infrastructure.

Some Republicans want to use all funds raised from curbing tax breaks to lower rates, not to finance new sweeteners for infra-structure or other uses.

If Trump insists on attaching infrastructure financing, he

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LEADING THE WAYS: Brady wants to move on a tax overhaul by spring.

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could force Republicans to pivot to an incremental tax package, or perhaps to smaller tax cuts.

OUTLOOK: There hasn’t been a sweeping tax overhaul since 1986, in part because it’s hard to achieve compromise on some-thing so big. GOP leaders have made clear they plan to deliver a tax trophy during Trump’s first year in office.

If Brady can win House passage on his timeline, the focus would then shift to the Senate, where Hatch and other GOP lead-ers would need to build consensus for a package that can pass the Senate by a simple majority vote under reconciliation rules.

— Alan K. Ota

IMMIGRATION

A Wall of Uncertainty

ISSUE: Immigration became a hallmark of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign — especially his plans to build a wall on the Mexican border, to deport unauthorized immigrants inside the country and to temporarily bar Muslims from coming to the United States. Some of his pledges, like stopping the flow of refugees from Syria, won’t require congressional action, but he’ll need help from lawmakers to bring his broader vision to fruition.

Many Republicans in Congress are eager to assist, but the leg-islative math — and Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis. — could com-plicate their efforts. Even if all Senate Republicans were on board, hardly a likely scenario, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McCon-nell, R-Ky., would still need at least eight Democrats to pass any legislation, a tall order.

Meanwhile, House conservatives still worry that Ryan, who has supported a path to legal status for unauthorized immigrants in the past, may not be fully on board with Trump’s proposals.

WHERE IT STANDS: Trump said in October that during his first 100 days he would introduce an “End Illegal Immigration Act” that would fund the border wall, establish mandatory minimum prison sentences for those who illegally re-enter the country after being deported and punish those who overstay their visas. He hasn’t offered much detail about such a proposal, or about his plan to deport as many as 3 million immigrants with criminal records, but at least some of his plans already exist on paper.

For instance, Texas Republican Ted Cruz has proposed a Sen-ate bill to establish mandatory minimum prison sentences for some unauthorized immigrants caught trying to re-enter the country after being deported.

Meanwhile, Democrats and some moderate Republicans want to protect from deportation the more than 740,000 unauthorized ‘Dreamers’ — young adults brought to the country illegally as chil-dren — who are enrolled in President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.

Two senators, Republican Lindsey Graham of South Caroli-na and Democrat Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, fear Trump may

use a federal database of the Dreamers’ names and addresses to deport them, and they introduced a bill to grant the young adults three years of protected status. A compromise Senate measure offered by Republican Jeff Flake of Arizona would have paired the reprieve envisioned by Graham and Durbin with stepped-up de-portations of unauthorized immigrants convicted of crimes.

OUTLOOK: The question for Trump is, how far will congres-sional Republicans allow him to go? He’ll need to contend with fiscal hawks reluctant to spend the money it would require to build a wall, moderates who still favor a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants inside the country, and a House speak-er whose position on the issue is less than clear. — Dean DeChiaro

ENERGY-ENVIRONMENT

Assaults Against Environmental Regs Likely to Make HeadwayISSUE: The GOP has spent much of the past eight years re-proaching President Barack Obama for his aggressive climate agenda. Obama advanced regulations to cut greenhouse gas emissions, bolster renewable energy production and reduce the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels. Congressional Republicans plan to invoke the Congressional Review Act to revise or elimi-nate some of those regulations.

That will only work, though, for rules completed at the very end of Obama’s presidency. The law allows Congress to revoke rules, under expedited rules that forbid Senate filibusters, provided they were finalized on or after June 13, 2016.

Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee says that the GOP’s regulato-ry hit list includes the Interior Department’s stream buffer rule, which aims to mitigate environmental impacts on streams from surface mining operations, and the EPA’s regulations to control methane emissions from new and modified sources in the oil and gas sector. Republicans have already attempted to hamper the stream rule, passing legislation in January 2016 to preclude Inte-rior from making the rule final, even as the Obama White House threatened a veto.

The GOP has also persistently opposed the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of Obama’s climate agenda, which set the nation’s first-ever limits on carbon emissions from power plants and re-quires states to craft plans to start cutting their emissions by 2022. The Waters of the United States rule, which seeks to expand the federal government’s jurisdiction over streams and waterways, will also be on the chopping block.

WHERE IT STANDS: Most of Obama’s environmental and clean energy rules face legal challenges, cases brought by conserva-tive state leaders with the support of like-minded congressional lawmakers who say the rules hurt businesses, kill jobs and usurp states’ authority. Finalized rules, especially those that cannot be

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revisited under the Congressional Review Act, may be hard to undo. But Republicans could — as they have tried before — with-hold funding for the agencies that enforce rules, or pass legisla-tion to weaken portions of them.

Environmental groups fear that the GOP could attempt to re-vise decades-old statutes like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act to scale back the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector and to take steps to mitigate climate change.

OUTLOOK: With a Republican majority in both chambers and an ally in the White House, GOP lawmakers will have an easier time passing and getting the president to sign legislation undoing or weakening rules. That is, after all, the promise Trump ran on.

Senate leaders have indicated they intend to convene confir-mation proceedings in early January for Trump’s nominees to lead the EPA and the Interior and Energy departments, who will be instrumental in culling Obama’s legacy. Montana GOP Rep. Ryan Zinke, who has been tapped for Interior secretary, will likely have a less bumpy confirmation process than his counterparts.

Senate Democrats are promising to try to block Oklahoma At-torney General Scott Pruitt from leading the EPA, an agency he has repeatedly sued, and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry at the En-ergy Department, which he once said he would eliminate.

Republicans can expect Democrats, especially in the Senate, to put up a tough fight to protect the work of the past eight years and uphold Obama’s climate, energy and environmental legacy.

— Elvina Nawaguna

CAMPAIGN FINANCE

GOP Hopes to Reduce Regulations, Expand DonationsISSUE: Most Americans, no matter their party affiliation, say the nation’s campaign finance laws don’t work. President-elect Don-ald Trump similarly railed against the political money system during his campaign.

Changes the Trump administration and Republicans in Con-gress may have in the works are likely to result in fewer regula-tions and bigger donation limits. Democrats in Congress and their allies say they, too, are gearing up for what they view as a major attack on a system they’d like to overhaul, but in a completely different way. Most Democrats say they would curb big-money super PACs and require more disclosure of corporate money that goes to political nonprofit organizations.

WHERE IT STANDS: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky fought, unsuccessfully, all the way to the Supreme Court a 2002 campaign finance law that banned unlimited contributions to political parties, known as soft money. He may well come out the victor — repealing the law, or at least parts of it, with new legislation.

Two Republicans, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and the chairman of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, Mark Meadows of North Carolina, unveiled a bill late last year that would undo contri-bution limits, currently at $2,700 per election. It was aimed as a way for candidates to better compete with super PACs, which can accept unlimited contributions.

They plan to reintroduce the measure early this year. “We’ve gotten a lot of feedback, some of it is obviously just an excite-ment about the fact that we’re dealing with super PACs,” Mead-ows says.

Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon says such “massive contributions are deeply corrupting” and pledges to fight the effort.

OUTLOOK: Even if the Cruz-Meadows measure doesn’t ad-vance, lawmakers are expected to consider increasing contri-bution limits and undoing coordination restrictions between parties and candidates.

Trump could also appoint five new commissioners to the Federal Election Commission, which enforces campaign finance laws. Trump’s pick for White House counsel, Donald McGahn, is a former commissioner who promotes campaign finance deregu-lation as a matter of free speech.

— Kate Ackley

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NO LIMITS: Cruz would eliminate current caps on campaign contributions.

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LOBBYING-ETHICS

Lobby Limit Overhaul Unlikely

ISSUE: President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on a series of overhauls to ethics and lobbying laws — part of what he called an agenda to “drain the swamp” of political Washington.

He said he would urge Congress to pass legislation prevent-ing registered foreign lobbyists from raising campaign money. Trump also sought to close the so-called 20 percent loophole, which allows former government officials to avoid registering as lobbyists so long as they spend less than 20 percent of their time on lobbying activities.

Additionally, Trump pledged to ask Congress to institute a five-year ban on lobbying by former members and their aides. Senators are currently subject to a two-year lobbying ban, while House members and most senior congressional aides face a one-year cooling-off period.

WHERE IT STANDS: Republicans who control Congress have not embraced Trump’s agenda on ethics and lobbying overhauls, and it is unlikely lawmakers will impose a five-year lobbying ban on themselves and their aides.

OUTLOOK: Absent some major scandal involving ethics and lobbying, Congress is unlikely to champion an overhaul. The last time lawmakers updated lobbying and ethics laws came in 2007 after the scandal involving Jack Abramoff, who defrauded Indian tribes. Offering a glimpse at how they view the issue, House Republicans voted just before the new Congress convened to neuter a post-Abramoff watchdog known as the Office of Con-gressional Ethics. They reversed course the following day after a public relations backlash, including criticism from Trump.

Even lawmakers who advocate new measures say they’re readjusting their goals for this Congress.

“I don’t think it’s about creating new standards. It’s about making sure people are adhering to the standards we have right now,” says Democratic Rep. John Sarbanes of Maryland. “If we can be successful in just making sure that we hold this president [Trump] and all of us collectively to those standards, I think that will be a big win.”

— Kate Ackley

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Overhaul Still a Grassley Priority

ISSUE: Lawmakers from both political parties want to make “smart-on-crime” changes to the nation’s criminal justice system to reduce crime rates and treat Americans more fairly — as well as reduce the $7 billion annual cost for housing prisoners.

House and Senate bills aim to change sentencing laws and improve the way the system rehabilitates prisoners so they don’t become repeat offenders. Major provisions would give feder-al judges more discretion in sentencing, reduce some of the mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug crimes and allow low-risk prisoners to qualify for earlier release.

WHERE IT STANDS: Both chambers are poised to push anew on legislation that made it through committees last Congress, but never got a floor vote.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles E. Grassley of Iowa tells CQ that a criminal justice overhaul will remain a committee pri-ority in the 115th Congress. Last year, he helped broker bipartisan compromise legislation that garnered 36 co-sponsors.

In the House, Judiciary Chairman Robert W. Goodlatte of Virginia is set to press numerous bills in six areas on the topic — some with provisions similar to the Senate measure and some that take different steps.

OUTLOOK: There are few reasons to be optimistic, despite support off Capitol Hill from a varied coalition of interest groups. Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin has supported House votes for the effort, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky faces a serious split among Republicans — including vocal opposition from Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama. It’s unclear whether the president- elect will support the effort, as President Barack Obama did in the last Congress.

GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, a backer of the effort, says the Senate version would have to be changed to keep momentum, such as adding a provision to establish mens rea, or a “guilty mind” standard, for some federal crimes. That measure was in-cluded in the House bill, but opposed by Senate Democrats who said it would make it easier for white collar criminals to get off, and it’s unlikely to fully address concerns from tough-on-crime Republican senators.

— Todd Ruger

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JUDICIAL NOMINATIONS

Rocky Path Expected for High Court NomineeISSUE: Donald Trump inherits a vacancy on the Supreme Court to fill, thanks to a highly controversial decision by Senate Repub-licans last year to block President Barack Obama’s nominee.

Trump’s pick to fill the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia likely will face a bruising Senate confirmation process, particu-larly because the ideological balance of the Supreme Court is at stake. Trump also will inherit about 100 vacancies to fill on the nation’s federal district and appeals courts.

WHERE IT STANDS: Trump pledged to make a Supreme Court pick from a list of 21 judges he released during the campaign that was developed with help from the conservative Federalist Soci-ety and the Heritage Foundation. These names have generally met with approval from conservative lawmakers. Trump has said he has narrowed the list to three or four, but he has not yet announced a nominee.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles E. Grassley of Iowa plans to swiftly hold hearings for whomever Trump names, which likely means they would take place early in 2017. Democrats are unlikely to forget the GOP’s historic stonewalling of Obama’s choice, Judge Merrick Garland, who was tapped in March 2016 and never got a hearing. Democrats are equally unlikely to help confirm a nominee they fear could undo court rulings on key is-sues such as abortion rights, since Trump has pledged to appoint jurists who would undo Roe v. Wade.

A group of 41 Democratic senators could filibuster a nomi-

nee, but Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the new ranking member of the committee, called that “unprecedented and disrespectful.” The California Democrat said “the committee will pay very close attention to proposed nominees” in the confirmation process.

OUTLOOK: Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York and his fellow Democrats have some political calculations to make about how vigorously to oppose Trump’s nominee. Schum-er told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Jan. 3 that he would “abso-lutely” hold open the Supreme Court seat if the nominee was not mainstream enough for Democrats.

But if they try to block the Supreme Court nomination with a filibuster, McConnell and Republicans could use the so-called nuclear option to change Senate rules and eliminate the filibus-ter for the high court. That would mean it would take a simple majority instead of 60 votes to allow for a confirmation vote.

Democrats, however, eliminated the filibuster rules in 2013 for lower court picks. Some of Trump’s choices are sure to draw immense opposition from Democrats over their judicial approach, their job qualifications or their history of opinions on social issues such as abortion or civil rights. But for the first time in modern history, Democrats won’t have the Senate’s most powerful procedural tool to keep them off the bench.

— Todd Ruger

DODD-FRANK

Multiple Strategies for AssaultISSUE: Republicans assert that the economy’s tepid recovery can be traced to regulatory overload that followed the financial

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STREET FIGHTERS: Schumer and Warren, with former Sen. Chris Dodd in 2015.

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crisis, particularly the myriad new rules required by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law. The 848-page landmark legislation is blamed for a decline in lending to small businesses, an evaporation of applications to start new banks and liquidity problems on Wall Street.

But Democrats point to evidence that the economy is safer than any time since before the crisis, that consumers now have a champion in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to protect them from financial scams, and that the government is better equipped to regulate Wall Street elites.

Many bankers say the greatest constraint on business stems from the risk of falling afoul of the CFPB. Rules about mortgage lending, in particular, have restrained that market, they say.

WHERE IT STANDS: House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, has offered to reduce the regulatory requirements for banks in exchange for higher capital standards that would reduce the potential need for a public sector bailout.

Hensarling’s Dodd-Frank repeal plan is built around that idea. His bill would also make the penalties tougher for financial fraud and would bring some Dodd-Frank agencies under congressio-nal oversight, rein in the Federal Reserve’s maneuverability and derail proposed consumer protection rules.

Hensarling got his bill through committee, but leadership didn’t bring it to the floor. The House did pass a bill by Repub-lican Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri that eased regulatory oversight of about 27 big banks.

Twenty Democrats joined the majority in that vote, which left only the eight biggest banks under the most stringent oversight.

OUTLOOK: Hensarling’s repeal bill will be the starting point for the assault on Dodd-Frank, but a piecemeal approach may be the more likely scenario to win enactment, even with a Republican entering the White House. The Republicans’ Senate majority will be smaller in the 115th Congress and the piecemeal approach is more likely to attract Democratic votes.

Even some in the financial industry would like to see a deep review of what’s working in the new regulatory regime and what’s not before taking it apart. They’re interested in looking for tweaks that can spur financial activity.

The new player in the mix is Sen. Michael D. Crapo, the Idaho Republican expected to become chairman of the Senate Bank-ing, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. Crapo will have vo-cal Democrats to deal with, including ranking member Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who was instrumental in the establishment of the CFPB.

Incoming Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York will have to balance his party’s political ambitions in 2018 with the interests of one of his own big constituencies: Wall Street.

Designated Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has indicated the administration will be an ally for change. Shortly after being chosen, Mnuchin said during an interview: “We want to strip back parts of Dodd-Frank that prevent banks from lending, and that will be the No. 1 priority on the regulatory side.”

— Doug Sword

LABOR

Fights Over Rollbacks Ahead

ISSUE: The Obama administration issued a number of contro-versial rules and regulations dealing with wages, sick days and union activity. Republicans oppose most of the policies, saying they will harm businesses and, ultimately, workers.

Lawmakers have tried to undo many of the rules through leg-islation and the appropriations process, but even legislation that passed both chambers was met with a White House veto.

Now, with President-elect Donald Trump calling for a decrease in regulations, GOP lawmakers have a shot to undo a significant chunk of President Barack Obama’s successes. WHERE IT STANDS: Different rules face different paths to being overturned. One of the most contentious rules dealing with overtime pay is in the cross hairs of both the Senate Republican Policy Committee and the House Freedom Caucus, a group composed of the most conservative faction of GOP lawmakers. The rule would expand overtime pay to an estimated 4.2 million qualified workers who earn up to $47,476, double the previous amount of $23,660.

The rule was finalized in mid-May, too long ago for lawmakers to use the Congressional Review Act to overturn it, according to the Congressional Research Service. Under the act, lawmakers can overturn a regulation with a simple majority vote within 60 legislative days of its delivery to Congress or publication in the Federal Register.

But lawmakers don’t need to rush. A federal court temporarily halted the rule in November, days before its Dec. 1 start date. The Labor Department appealed to the 5th Circuit, where a hear-ing is scheduled in late January.

Other labor rules are tied up in the courts as well, giving Republicans more time to act on them. One such rule requires companies bidding on certain federal contracts to disclose past labor law violations. A Texas federal judge issued a preliminary injunction on the rule in October, but it hasn’t stopped Senate Republicans from considering using the CRA to repeal it.

The House Freedom Caucus also wants to end the so-called fiduciary rule, which would expand criteria for requiring finan-cial advisers to act in the best interests of their clients. The rule, set to go into effect in April, is facing several legal challenges.

OUTLOOK: Overturning labor regulations is the top priority for House Education and the Workforce Chairwoman Virginia Foxx. The North Carolina Republican already has a list of policies she wants to see go. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Lamar Alexander of Tennessee has sponsored legisla-tion to block various rules.

Senate Democrats could try to protect some of them, like overtime, but only if they aren’t subject to the CRA.

— Emily Wilkins

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EDUCATION

Power to the States Is the Goal

ISSUE: Even though Congress passed a bipartisan K-12 educa-tion bill last session repealing sections of the 2002 No Child Left Behind law that had given the federal government more control of local education, Republicans in Congress would like to do more to delegate power to the states.

Republicans may place a number of rules and regulations on the chopping block and rewrite standards for how states must hold schools accountable for student performance, as well as how they evaluate teacher training.WHERE IT STANDS: The final rule on preparing teachers for the classroom was released in October 2016, one month before new state accountability measures were finalized. That makes both likely contenders to be repealed using the Congressional Review Act, which requires just a simple majority in each chamber. Using that law, lawmakers can repeal rules within 60 legislative days of their delivery to Congress.

Regulations that are more than 60 legislative days old will be more difficult to overturn. That includes the gainful employment rule, which requires vocational programs to show that graduates paid no more than 8 percent of discretionary income or 20 percent of total income toward student loans in order for the programs to remain eligible for federal financial aid.

Conservatives also want to end some federal loan programs and repeal a rule allowing student borrowers to discharge their federal loans if they were misled or defrauded.

Republican lawmakers could try again to block funding for the gainful employment rule in the Labor-HHS-Education spending bill, as they attempted to do unsuccessfully last session.

OUTLOOK: President-elect Donald Trump has had little to say about congressional Republicans’ plans, and they are unlikely to be among his top priorities. Still, the two Republicans in charge of the Education committees, Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Caro-lina and Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, will press ahead.

— Emily Wilkins

INFRASTRUCTURE

Big Promises, Few Details

ISSUE: President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to fund up to $1 trillion in infrastructure projects over 10 years, but he hasn’t provided many details. His campaign said private financing, spurred by tax credits, could deliver most of that package, mak-ing it deficit neutral. But private investors are likely to fund only projects in which they see potential for profit. That reality raises all kinds of questions about the legislative path to Trump’s goal.

Congress included a provision in the 2015 surface transporta-

tion bill that requires infusions to the Highway Trust Fund be al-located to states and local governments under current formulas. To deliver on Trump’s pledge, lawmakers would have to not only agree to tax credits, but also to mechanisms that would open the door to private investors and provide a method to choose the eli-gible projects.

WHERE IT STANDS: Congress passed a five-year surface transportation bill in December 2015 and isn’t likely to take up another infrastructure package early in 2017. Other high-profile battles will dominate the new Congress.

The new administration is likely to find support for infrastruc-ture spending on the Hill, particularly among Democrats. But Re-publicans may be reluctant to sign on to a measure unless they are confident it can be deficit neutral. The administration and lawmakers would also want to differentiate it from Obama’s 2009 stimulus package, which critics said did little to improve the na-tion’s infrastructure.

OUTLOOK: Trump’s proposal therefore depends on finding a way to pay for it without adding to the government debt. One funding solution could involve a tax overhaul. An idea that has circulated on the Hill is a tax on repatriated corporate profits. In that scenario, the tax-writing committees would need to deliver legislation that is always a heavy lift.

The authorization committees set priorities for spending, but Trump’s infrastructure proposal has been so sweeping that it’s unclear how many committees would have a hand in drafting the legislation. He has pledged to spend not only on roads, bridges, tunnels and airports, but also on drinking water, broadband and even schools and hospitals.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee au-thorizes highway, aviation and maritime programs. House En-ergy and Commerce has oversight of drinking water and broad-band, and Financial Services has oversight of an infrastructure bank. The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation; Bank-ing, Housing and Urban Affairs; Energy and Natural Resources; and Environment and Public Works committees have authority in that chamber.

With around 10 committees — including appropriators and tax-writers — possibly involved in writing such a package, lead-ership would have to mediate jurisdictional fights and help forge a consensus, says Jim Tymon, the director of policy and manage-ment at the American Association of State Highway and Trans-portation Officials.

— Jacob Fischler

AVIATION

Air Traffic Control SpinoffStill Awaiting TakeoffISSUE: The 15-month extension to authorization for the Federal

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Aviation Administration expires Sept. 30, 2017, giving House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Pa., another chance this year to secure a long-term priority: spinning off the air traffic control system into a nonprofit corporation.

Democrats, including Transportation and Infrastructure rank-ing member Peter A. DeFazio of Oregon, agree the FAA needs fundamental change, but they oppose the spinoff plan as “pri-vatization.” Even some Republicans, especially those concerned about small, noncommercial aviation, opposed Shuster’s mea-sure in the 114th Congress. WHERE IT STANDS: Shuster isn’t likely to find that views in Congress have changed since his spinoff went nowhere in 2016. Republicans and Democrats in both chambers weren’t interest-ed. He faces the additional hurdle of a big legislative agenda this year that may leave little room for such an initiative.

But the unconventional Republican in the White House — not to mention the presence of so many business executives in the Cabinet — could open a path to a surprise outcome. Spinning off the air traffic control operation could remove a spending head-ache for lawmakers trying to overhaul taxes without boosting the deficit and a president wanting to boost spending.

Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Chairman John Thune, who didn’t back the provision in reauthorization talks last year, has seemed more open to the idea since the 2016 elections.

“Congress has different options, and we will continue to ex-plore them, but the case for changing the FAA’s approach to air traffic control modernization has become stronger,” the South Dakota Republican said in November.

OUTLOOK: The Trump administration would almost certainly have to be on board to give Shuster’s idea legs. Shuster says Trump is open to the idea, but the president-elect hasn’t said so publicly.

Shuster is entering his final two years as Transportation and Infrastructure chairman and may also have leverage because other lawmakers want to pass popular changes to the FAA’s pro-cess for certifying airworthiness of planes and parts.

The 2017 aviation bill would also likely make more changes to laws regarding drones. The FAA has moved to allow more uses of the devices, but foot-dragging from the agency could push Congress to legislate the ability to fly drones at night or beyond a users’ line of sight.

— Jacob Fischler

AGRICULTURE

Will Fiscal Hawks Do Battle With Farm Advocates? ISSUE: The House and Senate Agriculture committees are expected to lay the groundwork for a 2018 farm bill with the goal

of moving final legislation through the 115th Congress before the current farm law expires Sept. 30, 2018.

It is unclear if either committee plans to write a farm bill in 2017, but interest groups have started preparing for what could be a series of testy debates over elements of the law. The Heritage Foundation, which is influential with Republican conservatives, began arguing in 2016 that the next farm bill should end federal subsidies to farmers for crop insurance premiums and commod-ity crop support programs. It argues that the programs now guar-antee income for farmers rather than aiding in times of major crop losses.

Anti-hunger groups are preparing to defend the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as the food stamp program, which provides food aid to more than 43 million people a month.

WHERE IT STANDS: Senate Agriculture Chairman Pat Roberts has said he wants his panel to get off to a fast start with hearings. The Kansas Republican and the ranking Democrat, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, will have their work on the farm bill interrupted from time to time with confirmation hearings for Agriculture Department nominees.

The wide-ranging farm law sets priorities and policies for agri-culture, nutrition, conservation, crop insurance and rural develop-ment. It took nearly three years for the Senate and House Agricul-ture committees to get a final product through Congress the last time around. During the process, the 2008 farm bill expired at the end of fiscal 2012, but got a one-year extension through fiscal 2013.

The current farm bill was written in a time of strong prices for commodity crops with expectations that farmers would rely more on markets than government assistance, but market prices have fallen for crops and livestock since 2013.

Cotton growers saw their export market shrink after China built up a cotton surplus.

Dairy producers caught in a global surplus have seen prices fall 40 percent over the past two years. To help dairy farmers, USDA spent $40 million in fiscal 2016 and early fiscal 2017 to buy sur-plus cheese to reduce supply and stabilize prices.

OUTLOOK: The current farm bill created the dairy margin pro-tection program to address periods of declining milk prices and rising animal feed costs. But in the present downturn, feed costs have remained low so payments to farmers have been limited.

Many who follow the farm bill are bracing for an arduous reau-thorization process in which the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program comes under fire again. It accounts for about 70 percent of farm bill spending and was a major point of contention during the last farm bill debate as fiscal hawks cited its cost and their con-cern that it fosters dependence on the federal government.

Fights are also expected over proposals to reduce big farmers’ federal crop insurance premiums and the effectiveness of volun-tary conservation programs in reducing agricultural pollution of watersheds.

— Ellyn Ferguson

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Republican Control Threatens School Meal StandardsISSUE: Democrats, aided by President Barack Obama, prevented congressional critics of school meal nutrition standards from scrapping requirements in a 2010 law that ordered schools to in-crease fresh fruits and vegetables, while reducing calories and salt.

Republicans who have derided the standards as federal over-reach see an opening with Obama’s departure. The Freedom Cau-cus, the most conservative group of House Republicans, took aim at the child nutrition standards in its Dec. 15 wish list of Obama ad-ministration regulations it says the GOP-controlled Congress and White House should repeal during the first 100 days of President- elect Donald Trump’s term. The wish list repeats criticism by some school meal providers that the standards for school break-fasts, lunches and snacks are costly and burdensome.

WHERE IT STANDS: Even before the Freedom Caucus released its list, 12 anti-hunger and anti-poverty groups wrote an open letter in defense of the school meal standards and other key fed-eral food programs including the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps.

They called on Trump “to recommit America to one of its most important and widely agreed-upon beliefs, one that has deep and long-standing bipartisan support: Nobody in this country should go hungry.”

Renewing the child nutrition law slipped off the to-do list for the 114th Congress despite reauthorization legislation advanced by the Senate Agriculture and the House Education and the Workforce committees.

The bills differed sharply in some areas. The Senate bill would largely continue the nutrition changes in the 2010 law while pro-viding school meal providers with flexibility in meeting whole grain food requirements and delaying another reduction in meal sodium levels. The legislation also would change the way schools evaluate children’s eligibility for free or reduced-price meals. The changes spurred objections from some Democrats.

Congress continues to fund the programs, and the nutrition policies will remain in force even though the 2010 law expired Sept. 30, 2015.

OUTLOOK: Senate Agriculture Chairman Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, and ranking Democrat Debbie Stabenow of Michi-gan say their panel will revisit child nutrition in the new Con-gress, but they set no timetable. The committee’s 2017 schedule may be busy with confirmation hearings for Agriculture Depart-ment nominees and fact-gathering for a 2018 farm bill.

Rep. Virginia Foxx, poised to become chairwoman of the Ed-ucation and the Workforce Committee, is still setting the panel’s schedule for the upcoming session and may have little time for a child nutrition reauthorization. The North Carolina Republican, a believer in limited government, backed the committee’s 2016 child nutrition bill that included provisions that would give three to-be-named states block grants to operate school lunch and breakfast programs with minimal federal oversight. The legisla-tion also would raise the threshold high-poverty schools would have to meet in order to declare all students eligible for free or reduced-priced meals.

During the committee markup of the bill, Foxx voted for a broader proposal to convert all funding for the school lunch and breakfast programs to block grants.

— Ellyn Ferguson

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PRE-ELECTION SUMMIT: Foxx, second from left, and other GOP lawmakers met last fall with Ivanka Trump.