Congress is back from Easter break, and it has a lot of heavy lifting to do

Congress is back from its two-week Easter break, and it has a lot of heavy lifting to do if it's to pass President Trump's America First agenda. The president's program bears a remarkable resemblance to the Project 2025 agenda orchestrated by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation—something he disavowed during the campaign.

Before leaving on the break, Congress managed to pass a budget resolution that Trump signed. It marked the first critical step in the passage of "The One Beautiful Bill," which the president and House Speaker Johnson are so fond of talking about. Still, the Senate has significant qualms in terms of parliamentary politics.

The resolution's passage was considered a major victory for the House speaker and the opening gambit of the budget reconciliation process. It had been thought that Johnson (R-LA) couldn't keep all his Republicans in line. With a 220 to 213 split between House Republicans and Democrats (with 2 vacancies), the speaker has a majority of only 3 with which to work. (Assuming a total of 433 votes cast.) Margins are so tight that Trump found it necessary to retract his nomination of Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) as UN Ambassador.

Notwithstanding the passage of the budget resolution, getting from there to a final reconciliation bill is still a long way off, and significant differences among the Republicans in and between the chambers still exist. The way forward will be characterized by trickery – beginning with how the Senate chose to cost-account the resolution.

Rather than relying on actual budget numbers, the Senate conveniently decided that extending the president's 2017 tax credits for the wealthy wouldn't cost anything under a "current policy baseline." The gimmick was good enough to pass the resolution but is unlikely to satisfy Republican conservatives or moderates in either chamber when it comes time to pass the final legislation.

Moreover, the gimmickry isn't likely to satisfy the Senate Parliamentarian, who historically has had the last say in what can be included in a reconciliation bill. The budget reconciliation process allows the Senate to avoid filibusters and enact legislation with a simple majority. It takes a 60 vote super-majority to close a filibuster.

So far, House budget hawks have caved to the exhortations of the speaker. However, many promises have been made about budget reductions that are unlikely to be kept, given other promises made by the president.

Leading those promises was Trump’s pinky-swearing that Medicaid and Medicare benefits wouldn’t be reduced. However, “among the directed cuts [in the budget resolution] is an instruction to the Energy and Commerce Committee to reduce deficits by $880 billion over the 10-year budget window.”

Although the resolution doesn’t identify Medicaid or Medicare, a Congressional Budget Office report indicates that Medicaid and Medicare would likely need to be reduced by the projected $880 billion. With $581 billion from Medicaid and the remainder from Medicare. It would be the biggest cuts to those programs in history.

Medicare and Medicaid are the largest potential funding sources for Trump's tax extensions. They’re not the only possibilities. The House Energy and Commerce Committee will consider ways to claw back funds from the IRA and other Biden climate-related programs.

The state of the US economy will have a significant bearing on what members of Congress will be willing to do in terms of tax extensions for the wealthy and accepting the draconian cuts in agency budgets wrought by the DOGE cabal. Predictions of recession will pressure Congress to maintain social safety net programs, which are a priority for the Democrats and many Republicans.

The states with the highest proportion of poor are generally red. In West Virginia, Mississippi, and Louisiana, arguably the reddest states in the Union, around 30 percent of their populations are on Medicaid and the additional 18 to 25 percent on Medicare.

Ironically, red states are also those that have benefitted most from the IRA. The president has indicated disdain for all three major Biden-era climate-related programs – the Inflation Reduction, infrastructure and jobs, and CHIPS and Science Acts.

All three acts are responsible for billions of private and public investments. Moreover, they are the types of projects the president says he wants – US-based and shovel-ready.

Whether these programs can garner the support needed to keep them in the final budget package is unclear. Even if the bulk of the programs, including tax credits, are included in the legislation, there’s a significant question about the federal government’s ability to disperse the funds.

Elon Musk’s hack job on key departments, including EPA and the Departments of Energy, Interior, Agriculture, and Commerce, leaves gaping holes in the agency offices normally responsible for contracting and program implementation, including rulemaking.

As reported by the Washington Examiner, “more than 3,500 employees — about a fifth of the department — are expected to leave in the near future, E&E News reported this week. In addition to those accepting resignation offers, 280 staffers who work in the US EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights are on the chopping block.”

The DOE’s Loan Programs Office is anticipated to lose half its staff. These and other personnel cuts are as likely to hamper Trump’s efforts to support fossil and nuclear energy as much as they will for renewables, efficiency, and battery storage. Love it or hate it, governments need a functioning bureaucracy to implement congressional and presidential directives.

The nearness of the US to its allowed debt ceiling is also complicating things for Trump and Hill Republicans. The ceiling is expected to be reached within the next several months. Once there, the nation can no longer deficit spend. For some on Capitol Hill, that's how it should be. For others, raising the ceiling is critical to passing Trump's agenda. Under any circumstances, it creates tensions within and between Republicans in both the House and Senate.

As Republicans have shown no interest in working with the Democrats and chosen the reconciliation process, this a GOP-only show — not unlike the IRA, which was a Democratic-only affair.

The attack on Biden’s climate-related legacy exceeds the budgeting process. With Republicans in control of Congress and the White House, a series of joint House and Senate resolutions disapproving a final proposed regulation under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) are likely to be enacted.

The CRA has rarely been used (20 times since its enactment in 1996). A CRA resolution can be passed by a simple majority vote in both chambers and cannot be filibustered in the Senate. It's hardly been used because it requires one-party control of both the Hill and the White House.

What will prove a complicating matter should the next president be a Democrat wanting to reinstate the rule is that once a rule is disapproved under the CRA, “a rule may not be issued in ‘substantially the same form’ as the disapproved rule unless a subsequent law specifically authorizes it. The CRA does not define what would constitute a rule that is "substantially the same" as a nullified rule.” the statute prohibits judicial review of any "determination, finding, action, or omission under" the CRA.

Currently, the following CRA bills have been enrolled and will be voted on over the next several weeks:

• H.J. Res. 87: A resolution to undo an EPA waiver that allows California to require manufacturers to seek to increase sales of zero-emission trucks

• H.J. Res. 88: A bill overturning California's Clean Air Act waiver, allowing the state to boost the electric vehicle industry and ban gas-powered vehicles by 2035

• H.J. Res. 89: A bill aimed at undoing a state's regulation implementing nitrogen-oxide-engine-emission standards for heavy-duty vehicles

• H.J. Res. 78: A bill that would remove longfin smelt from the endangered species list

• H.J. Res. 60: The resolution would undo a rule prohibiting off-road vehicles and ATVs on 24 miles of park roads in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area

Trump’s tariffs and "flood the zone" on every imaginable strategy are losing him support. People are worried that his chaotic actions will tank the economy into recession. On the 100^th day of his second presidency, Trump will be trying to spin voter attention away from the economy, emphasizing instead how he's cut government and dealing with immigration. It may not prove an easy spin to pull off.

This article is also published on Civil Notion. illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.