Congress won’t be leaping into action to pass many of President Donald Trump’s second-year priorities, with the filibuster and quiet GOP opposition standing in the way of bills he requested at his Tuesday State of the Union address.
In a nearly two-hour speech, Trump called on lawmakers to codify several policies he’s so far pursued via executive order, including drug pricing reforms and a ban on institutional investors buying up single-family homes. Others have been proposed or advanced in Congress but have not yet made their way to his desk.
In particular, Trump repeated his call for Republicans to send him the House-passed SAVE America Act, a bill mandating national voter ID and proof of citizenship when registering to vote. He also wants to ban immigrants who arrived in the United States illegally from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses and called for a crackdown on “sanctuary” jurisdictions that won’t cooperate on immigration enforcement.
“They’re blocking the removal of these people out of our country, and you should be ashamed of yourselves,” Trump said at one point, taking a dig at Democrats in the audience.
READ IN FULL: PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH
Heeding those calls is complicated by the 60-vote Senate filibuster threshold. Republicans only have a 53-seat majority — nowhere near what is needed to overcome Democratic opposition to partisan legislation such as the voting bill.
There are also disagreements over how far to go on priorities that enjoy bipartisan support. On Tuesday, Trump received Democratic applause when he asked lawmakers to pass a ban on insider trading, but Democrats want to expand the bill favored by GOP leadership to apply to the White House, not just members of Congress. The White House has previously opposed having the ban extend to the administration, citing existing laws against insider trading.
In other cases, it’s Trump’s congressional allies who are the holdup to legislative action, with Republicans viewing proposals that intervene in the free market with skepticism. The Senate will begin debating this week a proposal meant to make housing more affordable, but Republicans have excluded the language on institutional investors.
“Those are issues that, on our side, obviously are — they’re not unanimous,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told the Washington Examiner.
Even a push to skirt the filibuster has run into a GOP split, meaning any bills Republicans do bring to the floor are messaging exercises without Democratic backing. Thune has been discussing with GOP colleagues whether to use a talking filibuster, which only requires 51 votes and forces Democrats to hold the Senate floor, but reiterated on Wednesday that it lacks the needed support.
“Our conference is not unified on an approach on that yet,” he said.
Trump pleads softly
The congressional resistance won’t be a surprise to Trump, who has floated many of the proposals before Tuesday’s address. And in a sign of the light touch he’s taking with Congress, Trump did not mention the filibuster, as he has in the past, when he brought up the SAVE America Act. The closest he came was a nudge at Thune to send the bill to his desk.
“We have to stop it, John. We have to stop it,” Trump said as he alleged mass voter fraud.
On drug pricing, Trump mused that a future president won’t roll back the “most favored nation” deals he’s struck, yet still threw in a half-hearted call to give it the weight of law.
“I’m not sure it matters, because it’s going to be very hard for somebody that comes along after me to say, ‘Let’s raise drug prices by 700 or 800%,’” Trump said. “But John and Mike, if you don’t mind, codify it anyway.”
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Part of Trump’s attitude comes down to the fact that Republicans already passed his signature tax law last summer, stuffing into one large bill money for the border, reforms to energy policy, and other policies pursued by the administration.
His allies on Capitol Hill want to help codify the tariffs the Supreme Court nixed last week, but even there, Trump believes he has the authority to impose them on his own.
“Congressional action will not be necessary,” Trump said in his speech. “It’s already time-tested and approved.”
Midterm messaging
The heavy focus on illegal immigration will help reorient Republicans on an issue that helped them win the 2024 election, with Democrats catching them off-balance after the shooting of two U.S. citizens at the hands of federal immigration agents last month.
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-WY) sidestepped what proposals could actually be signed into law before voters head to the polls again in November but used the question to hammer home the same message as Trump.
“The president’s positions on the economy and immigration are what the American people support,” he said.
Trump’s proposals are similarly geared toward blunting Democrats’ attacks on affordability — a problem he has previously called a “hoax” but on Tuesday took seriously with a populist appeal that claimed the economy was rigged against voters.
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“We want homes for people, not for corporations,” Trump said of his housing crackdown. “Corporations are doing just fine.”
In his speech, Trump sprinkled in steps the administration would take on its own to further that message. He mentioned expanding retirement accounts under a Biden-era program and promised to keep energy costs affordable by imposing pricing restrictions on utilities in areas where data centers are being built.
Ramsey Touchberry contributed to this report.