Trump meets with GOP on Capitol Hill
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump is meeting privately on Capitol Hill late Wednesday with Republican senators as House and Senate GOP leaders are straining to come up with a strategy for tackling his legislative priorities as the party takes power in Washington.
Trump said it “feels great” to be back inside the U.S. Capitol for the first time since he left office four years ago, after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot by his supporters. With his wife, Melania, he also paid tribute to the late President Jimmy Carter lying in state in the Rotunda ahead of funeral services today.
With Trump taking the oath of office on Jan. 20, Republicans have no time to waste.
“We’re looking at the one bill versus two bills, and whatever it is, it doesn’t matter,” Trump said about the conflicting strategies as he arrived. “We’re going to get the result.”
Trump’s return to Capitol Hill marked a changed era in Washington as he strode through the corridors where four years ago a mob of his supporters had laid siege to the U.S. Capitol as senators fled to safety in a failed attempt to salvage Trump’s election defeat to President Joe Biden.
Inside the lengthy meeting, Trump received applause and bursts of laughter from the Republican senators staying late into the evening to confer with him behind closed doors. The session stretched past an hour. He also met with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and is also expected to huddle over the weekend with House GOP lawmakers at his private club Mar-a-Lago.
Political capital is almost always at its peak at the start of a new presidential term, even more so because this is Trump’s second and he is prevented under the Constitution from a third. Moving swiftly is all the more important because the GOP majorities are slim, particularly in the House, where House Speaker Mike Johnson can’t afford to lose hardly any votes.
Johnson, who greeted Trump at the Capitol, has said he sees himself operating as the GOP quarterback with Trump as their coach calling plays. But Republicans are quickly finding themselves in a dilemma: What happens when the coach changes his mind?
Trump has given Republicans on Capitol Hill mixed signals, flip-flopping over what is the best approach. Over the weekend, he said he wanted “one big, beautiful bill.” By Monday, he had reopened the door to two. House Republicans want a single package. Senate GOP leaders are proposing at least two.
At stake are tax cuts, border security, money to deport immigrants and efforts to boost oil and gas energy production — priorities for Republicans coming to the White House, House and Senate.
“You all heard me say over the last year we were developing — using my football metaphors — we were developing a playbook,” Johnson, R-La., said Tuesday.
“We have very well-designed plays. Now we are working out the sequence of those plays, working with a new head coach, in that metaphor, President Trump,” he said. “We are excited about how all of that is rolling out.”
Republicans are relying on perhaps the most complicated legislative tool at their disposal, the budget reconciliation process, as the vehicle to advance Trump’s priorities.
It’s a strategy with high risk, but also potentially high reward.
Reconciliation allows Congress to pass bills on a majority basis, without the threat of a filibuster in the Senate that could delay or kill action. But it is also a difficult, strict and time-consuming process that can fall apart at any moment.