Trump speech to Congress likely to be ‘imperial,’ say analysts
U.S. President Donald Trump will address a joint session of Congress for the first time in his new term.
Reuters
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump laid out a familiar vision of vast domestic policy changes in his joint address to Congress Tuesday night along with some resurrected campaign plans, including a “Golden Dome” missile defense system and tax-deductible interest payments on American-made cars.
It came at a crucial moment for lawmakers: They’ve cleared the first hurdle to kickstart his expansive legislative agenda, but the route to finalizing it is already being complicated by disagreements within the party and between the House and Senate.
Next, the House and Senate must reconcile their plans, navigate the political minefield of hashing out the policy details, and pass it into law. They’re hoping to get it done as quickly as they can.
Trump added another demand in his speech that Congress send him additional funding for border security “without delay.”
“I have sent Congress a detailed funding request laying out exactly how we will eliminate these threats to protect our homeland and complete the largest deportation operation in American history,” he said, after a section discussing fentanyl coming into the U.S. from Mexico and Canada.
Senate Budget Committee chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has been making that argument – that border funding is desperately needed as fast as possible – as he advocates for a two-bill approach that would allow lawmakers to quickly send border and defense funding to the administration while leaving lawmakers more time to craft complicated tax policy. Trump has endorsed the House’s opposing plan, which would instead roll all of Trump’s priorities into one package.
Trump called for Congress to pass his tax policies – including no taxes on tips, overtime, or Social Security payments – and resurrected the idea of making interest payments on car loans for American-made vehicles tax deductible.
“I’m sure you’ll vote for those tax cuts, because otherwise, I don’t believe the people will ever vote you into office,” Trump said to the Democratic members of Congress, who are likely to reject the GOP-led plan, which would reduce government revenues.
And Trump called upon Congress to fund a missile defense system he called the “Golden Dome,” inspired by Israel’s Iron Dome and by former President Ronald Regan’s Strategic Defense Initiative sometimes referred to as “Star Wars.”
“My focus is on building the most powerful military of the future,” he said.
Missile defense and the car-payment tax break add to a long list of priorities Congressional Republicans will attempt to tackle in a massive policy bill aiming to deliver on several of Trump’s campaign promises on the southern border, domestic energy and taxes – and may complicate them further by adding more expensive priorities that could necessitate cuts elsewhere to meet conservative demands.
The status of Trump’s agenda in Congress
The House and Senate both approved their own versions of a budget blueprint that would be the building block for the final package.
The House’s plan – which wraps all of Trump’s priorities into one “big, beautiful bill,” as the president as dubbed it – is likely to be the foundation for whatever comes next, given the chamber’s extremely narrow margins. Republicans control the House 218 -215, leaving them only one vote to spare in any party line vote, while Republicans control the Senate 53-47.
Both sides will need to pass the same budget blueprint in order to unlock the reconciliation process, which allows Republicans to pass a party-line bill with only a majority vote in the Senate rather than the typical 60-vote threshold to overcome the filibuster.
But Republican senators have already said they’d like to see changes to the plan, starting with making Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent.
The House-approved budget blueprint gives lawmakers room to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and implement new ones at a cost of $4.5 trillion over 10 years. It would also allocate $300 billion for spending on defense and border security and would raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion over two years.
It would also require at least $2 trillion in federal cost savings over 10 years. That includes $880 billion from the House Energy and Commerce Committee – an amount that tax policy experts say would likely necessitate cuts to Medicaid, the program that provides health insurance to 72 million low-income Americans.
The Senate framework would allow Congress to spend around $340 billion, including at $175 billion for border security and $150 billion for defense. The Senate has argued that a two-bill approach would allow lawmakers to send Trump critical border funding quickly while they work on a more complicated tax package.
But it’s not just inter-chamber disagreements that may complicate the package’s future.
Several fiscal conservatives in both the House and Senate have raised concerns that it does not reduce spending enough.
And several Republicans in both chambers have raised concerns about the potential for cuts to Medicaid. They say they’ll be advocating in their conference to avoid cuts. House Speaker Mike Johnson has said Republicans do not want to hit benefits but rather root out “waste, fraud and abuse” of the entitlement program, which Trump has echoed.
“Congress doesn’t have the guts to make the cuts that are needed to make the reductions in spending,” said Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., who has frequently been one of the Republican members raising concerns about the price tag of GOP priorities. “We’re going to attack fraud in Medicaid and Medicare and some Republicans are going to have heartburn about it because it looks like they’re cutting Medicaid and Medicare, when in fact they’re making it more efficient so more people can get those needed funds.”