The Republican Congress' 2025 agenda
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This is On Point. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty. Today is the day the nation celebrates the civil rights legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,

And this year, it is also the day that supporters of President Donald Trump celebrate his return to the White House. I'm here in Washington, D.C., where this morning the temperature was in the mid-20s. Cold by D.C. standards, but not cold enough to dissuade tens of thousands of President Trump's most dedicated voters from lining up before dawn outside the Capital One Arena, hoping to get into the indoor location where the inaugural watch party and parade were moved.

NBC Washington spoke with one man who was near the front of the line. Is it first come, first serve? Is that your understanding? Yeah, and look at the line behind us. So if you're ahead of everybody else, I think we're going to get in. Where did you guys come from? California's Silicon Valley. Wow. You traveled literally across the country to get here. Yeah, I'm a data scientist, and I thought I'd... Here's a picture of me and Elon when we were a lot younger. Ha ha ha!

I'm a well-known mathematician. If you look up linear fractals, you'll be number one in Google. Well, I'll tell you what, the numbers aren't adding up this morning because it is very, very cold here in D.C. How is it here compared to California? Well, it's a lot colder, but I stood for 12, I mean, 12 years ago, I stood for Obama's inauguration, too, so I kind of got used to it.

More than 200,000 people were given tickets to the inauguration. Capital One Arena fits just 20,000, meaning 90% of the people who traveled from around the country to DC aren't seeing firsthand the festivities they came for.

This weekend, I visited Washington's Museum of the Bible, which was filled with Trump supporters. At the museum's Milk and Honey Cafe, I spoke with two women from Missouri. One wore a MAGA hat and Trump sweatshirt. The other, a t-shirt with the words, Daddy's back in town.

They both were frustrated with the change in plans. Quote, I've got friends flying in from Oregon, one of them told me. He, meaning Trump, is going to have a lot of unhappy people on his hands, she told me. But then her companion quickly added that not being able to see the inauguration in person didn't matter to her. She told me with a smile, we're all going to get what we want anyway.

And what she wants is the fulfillment of Trump's campaign promises. Last night, at a D.C. rally, Trump assured his voters he will remake America. We're going to stop the invasion of our borders. We're going to reclaim our wealth. We're going to unlock the liquid gold that's right under our feet. Liquid gold. We're going to bring back law and order to our cities.

We're going to restore patriotism to our schools, get radical left woke ideologies the hell out of our military and out of our government. And we are going to make America great again. President Trump is expected to quickly issue many executive orders along those lines. But in order to change the laws of the land, he will need Congress to act.

Republicans now control both the House and the Senate, though in the Senate, the GOP only has 53 seats, not enough to stop the filibuster. In the House, Republicans have a razor-thin majority, currently 219 to 215 seats, and that majority is likely to shrink further as President Trump has nominated two House Republicans to serve in his administration.

Speaker Mike Johnson will have to wrangle his caucus to prevent any vote defections which could scupper his legislative plans. And they are big plans. So today, we're actually going to take a close look at the Republican Congress, what laws they wish to pass, how they want to spend taxpayer money, whether they'll be able to successfully govern, and what impact it could have on you.

And to do that, Robert Jimison joins us. He's congressional reporter for The New York Times, and he's in Washington. Robert, welcome back to the show. It's good to be here. So can you tell me a little bit about what you've seen over the weekend on the Hill with members? What's the vibe?

The vibe is very much the boys are back in town. It's, you know, you've got Trump is back. All the Republicans who were in his good graces during his first term are over the moon and excited and kind of chomping at the bit to get underway with all their priorities that they've been holding on to for the last four years. A lot of the parties were, as you could expect, very celebratory, typical as is any inauguration weekend, no matter what party. But this weekend really did have a we did it vibe.

as in we didn't do it last time and we've managed to do it and overcome the obstacles and conquer it. So the celebrations and the energy were pretty high this weekend. Yeah, I would agree because over the weekend, as I

roamed around Washington, D.C., it's a starkly different feel than it was eight years ago during President Trump's first inauguration, right? Because then we had huge counter rallies, protest rallies against his presidency. This time around, there was a People's March, but it was just the numbers were paltry in comparison. Whereas the supporters of President Trump who have come to town are

are exuberant, like you said, which is very interesting because, I mean, Robert, as you well know, President Trump won the popular vote by just one and a half percent. It is not...

by numerical, any numerical standards, a sweeping mandate. In fact, I think you have to go back to a quarter century, back to 2000, before you find a president who won by a smaller vote count, right? Like every president from 2000 to 2025 now has won by larger margins. But that's not how Trump supporters feel. And I wonder if the same thing is happening with members on the Hill, that they are

somehow feeling this massive cultural shift, which they think they can leverage into a political and lawmaking shift on behalf of Republicans. I think that's right. You've got a lot of what happened this election cycle was a bit of a

a MAGA coming out party where a lot of people who had quietly been supporting Trump over the past eight years, but maybe didn't talk about it in friend groups or didn't share posts on social media. When we talk about, you know, his supporters becoming more emboldened, that's one of the things that we're talking about is people becoming more emboldened and empowered to say, yes, I am a Trump supporter and putting a bumper sticker on their car. And so just those small cues and that exuberance of celebration that you saw, you know,

signals to members on the Hill, oh, there's a lot more support and a lot more energy behind it. And that is what emboldens this big legislative agenda that they're going to go after, because now they're feeling the wave of energy coming from all over the country, even though, like you said, it wasn't a landslide of a victory, but there's a different vibe to it.

And so I think that's going to play a lot into the conversations that we hear about policy and the permission, in a sense, that members feel when they talk about having this sort of mandate to pursue this policy agenda.

Oh, that's interesting. So I'm going to hold on to that notion of the permission that members feel and come back to it. So this legislative agenda, let's talk about it in detail because earlier this month, President Trump said very clearly he wants the whole thing in one giant, massive bill, all parts of it. First of all, tell me, broadly speaking, what would those parts be and is it necessary?

legislatively realistic that it could get all pushed through in one package. So in broad strokes, you're talking about immigration, the massive immigration, you know, effort to deport millions of people undocumented in the United States. You're talking about taxes, the 2017 Trump tax cuts that want to be either extended or, you know, the most expensive

the highest version of that wish list is to make them permanent. And then you're talking about a bunch of other things like increasing the debt ceiling, changes to government spending, a lot of fiscal policy priorities. And then you also, just keeping with the broad themes here,

A big focus of Republicans, both in the administration and on Capitol Hill, circles around energy and this idea of unleashing the energy stores in the United States, whether that be on protected lands, federal lands. So I would say in broad strokes, that's really what we're talking about in these in this first 100 days of policy agenda. And how would they do that? I mean, what's the process to get all so many big policy changes through Congress at once?

Well, if you've got your notebook down, we can start a civics lesson in reconciliation. And it's just basically what a reconciliation bill is when you do have a trifecta, when you do have narrow control of government. It's one form. It's what there's a lot of procedures and terms in Congress. But the basic way of understanding this is reconciliation is a process by which you can eliminate some of the roadblocks in passing a bill.

And so a reconciliation bill, a budget bill where you can jam all these priorities in and then that directs the rest of the committees in Congress on how to allocate spending, you can pass it with 51 votes in the Senate. So that protects you against the filibuster, which if there is a filibuster that requires 60 votes and it protects against any potential defections of Republicans in the Senate because there's only 53 of them.

And so it just lowers that threshold. And so you're going to see you've already seen, like you mentioned, a lot of talk about a reconciliation bill, whether it'll be one reconciliation package or will it be split up into two? Because Republicans are going to try, you know, carry this momentum early in the in the new Congress, early in the Trump administration to put as many of the priorities as they can right into place.

that bill while they still have this momentum. Because as we saw with the last Congress, the longer you go on, it gets harder and harder and harder to keep your conference together and keep Republicans on the same page to get things done.

Right. So I was going to ask you about that because, OK, whether it's one bill or two, it's still a long and complicated process. And I'm seeing here that Republicans themselves are dubious about whether House Speaker Johnson can control the chaos. Right. There's a quote from Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, a Republican from Oklahoma, who is, as I understand, fairly close to Speaker Johnson, who says that.

the house is very thoughtful, but a dysfunctional body right now. Yes, and he's a former house member, so he would know it pretty well.

And so, yeah, go ahead.

There was disaster relief spending in there. President Trump also wanted a measure thrown in there to suspend the debt ceiling limit. So what happened was when you crack open a bill, when Republicans or any member, when you open up a very simple bill that says, hey, we're gonna do X, Y, and Z and say, all right, what else can we put into this? Because we know this is our best chance of getting things done. You add in one thing for a member in Oklahoma, one thing from a member in North Carolina, one thing from a member in Florida,

You look at the fires in California, disaster relief that's also going to require funding. You start to add in these pieces which drive up the cost and then suddenly you lose the ability to keep your conference together on what was agreement for that first small, pretty simple bill. And that's where Republicans have seemed to get in trouble. And that's what tanked the debt relief bill earlier this, well, a couple months ago, and is something we're paying close attention to on this reconciliation bill.

Okay. So Robert Jimmison, congressional reporter with the New York Times. Hang on for just a second. When we come back, I want to talk to you in detail about the different parts of these bills. This is On Point. Support for On Point comes from Indeed. You just realized that your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. There's no need to wait. You can speed up your hiring with Indeed. And On

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There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here and maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's On the Media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.

You're back with On Point. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty. And today, Robert Jimison joins us. He's the congressional reporter for The New York Times. And we're going deep into the legislative priorities of the Republican Congress, because while President Donald Trump may be issuing many executive orders in order to change the law of the land, as I mentioned earlier, he's going to need Congress to pass legislation.

Robert, let's talk about what is one of the main priorities of not just President Trump, but the entire Republican Party, and that's immigration and the border. Now, from what I understand, on the Senate side, for example, we have senators like Senator Thune who wants to follow that two-bill strategy.

reconciliation strategy that you talked about earlier. The first one would be focused on energy and immigration issues, which is quite interesting. So let's listen to Senate Majority Leader John Thune on an interview he gave to Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation,

saying that his top priority is indeed border security. We need physical barriers. We need technological barriers. We need more ICE agents. We need more Border Patrol agents. And yes, we're going to need ways of deporting people that are on that list that you mentioned. And so it's going to take some resources to do that.

So this strikes at the heart of what the Trump White House's agenda is. Listen to Stephen Miller. He is obviously a close advisor to President Trump and will be a top Homeland Security advisor and deputy White House chief of staff.

overseeing policy. Just yesterday at that big rally at the Capital One Arena in Washington, here's what Miller said about immigration and that President Trump would move on it as soon as Monday. It's going to mean an executive order ending the border invasion, sending the illegals home, and taking America back. It's going to mean the eradication of the criminal cartels and the foreign gangs who are preying on our people.

And on the House side, here's House Speaker Mike Johnson, who was on NBC's Meet the Press this weekend, and he basically said he believes it's worth any cost to enact President Trump's mass deportation plans.

The number one job of the federal government is protecting the citizenry. And when you have a wide open border, you don't have safety, security or even sovereignty for that matter. President Trump is going to follow through on his campaign promises and the promises that we all made on the campaign trail. It costs money to do that. But that is a small investment in terms of what it cost us. What this staggering cost that the lack of resources in our local communities that has been pulled to handle this, the sanctuary cities nonsense that these Democrat cities brought about.

and all their policies, and then the crime wave that it's brought upon the country, the untold humanitarian cost in terms of trafficking and fentanyl deaths, the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 49 for the last few years. We have to get on top of this. And so getting rid of that criminal element, that dangerous element, is something the American people want us to do.

Okay. So, Robert, I mean, what do we know or do we know more specifics about what would be in a legislative package from Congress on immigration? We don't know exactly, but I've spoken to several senior Republicans who focus on homeland security and are on the homeland security agenda.

subcommittee for appropriations, which that's a big part of this is money. How much is this going to cost? How is Congress going to give money to these agencies to be able to carry out this agenda? And what I'm being told is that the first six months of this are really going to focus on, and Speaker Johnson touched on it there, are the

is this criminal element that they're talking about. One, people who have been through the asylum process have, have run through, have evaded a D illegal deportation previously, um, have very clearly overstayed their welcome in the United States. They say that that's an easy group to go after. It's not going to be costly bureaucratically. And that's just going to be like the first wave of folks that they're going to go after. And then also looking at, um,

you know, the Lake and Riley bill that is on the cusp of passing through the Senate, probably maybe this afternoon or sometime early this week is, you know, getting, getting better track of the, the criminal justice system and the immigration system and allowing those systems to talk to each other and requiring the

that any undocumented migrant in the United States who has committed a crime is detained by ICE and different agencies or federal agencies, and then they're able to make a decision on whether or not that person stays in the country. And so the first couple months, I'm being told by a lot of Republicans, is go for a very clear-cut parameter of undocumented immigrant, if migrant, if that makes sense.

Yeah, but of course, as you know, the fact that we don't have details makes it difficult to scrutinize the devil that might be in those details. Of course. Right? I mean, I know you're hearing the same thing, that there's a lot of critics out there who say, okay, well, yes, people who have invaded or evaded, I should say, court dates in dealing with their immigration process, you can quote unquote...

You know, law enforcement can, quote unquote, go after them. But who would that be? I mean, which law enforcement would that be? Would that be ICE? Would it be local law enforcement? We don't we don't have any clarity on that, do we?

We don't have a lot of clarity. And both of Trump's two big policy folks on this, Tom Homans and Stephen Miller, have been on the Hill a couple of times, each talking to Republicans. And even some of the Republicans are still struggling to get a crystal clear picture of what this is going to look like and how much it's going to cost. But every time they leave these meetings, Republicans say they're confident in their ability to work with the Trump administration to achieve this agenda. But I am struggling to get more details on

Every time I ask exactly, Congressman, tell me how this is going to happen. It's a well, just wait and see. We've got a plan. We'll figure it out. But a lot of the details either haven't come together yet or they're just keeping them close to the chest. I think we'll start to see some of this kind of play out and we'll start to see some of these questions like what you mentioned about which agencies are involved, you know,

As early as tomorrow, with the president's promise to start conducting raids beginning in Chicago, and we'll see which federal agencies are involved, which local law enforcement agencies are involved, and how something like that plays out, will give us some clues into how they're hoping to replicate those same actions in other parts of the country.

Right. And I'm grateful that you mentioned the Lake and Riley bill, because that also, as you said, it's virtually any touchpoint that an unauthorized immigrant might have with law enforcement in this country now, even, you know, let's say an act of shoplifting could basically land them in the position of being rounded up by law enforcement and facing deportation. Do I have that right? Yes, yes.

Yeah. And so so there's a lot of pieces working here. There's that bill. There's whatever the Republican Congress wants to pass. And of course, the executive orders that President Trump says he's going to sign. Now, you mentioned earlier that they don't no one's really talking about how much this would cost just yet.

Yeah, there's a lot of conversation. You have a – and this comes back to the tricky part of keeping the GOP conference together. A huge portion of – and a huge priority for a lot of Republican members in Congress is to decrease spending, decrease how much money the government is spending. And an operation like this is going to cost –

unknowns billions of dollars. And so they're trying to get a picture of exactly how much is this stuff going to cost and where are we going to save money? And there's some reporting out there by me and others who are, there's some Republicans who are trying to urge President Trump to

take a holistic look at his executive order strategy, not only the executive orders that he will issue, but the ones that he is hoping to undo from the Biden administration, because Congress wants to legislate these things. And again, this is a bit of a wonky civics lesson, but Congress is trying to, Congress has a rule, the Republicans have a rule that new spending must be accounted for with cuts somewhere. And so what Republicans are in conversations with in the Biden and the Trump administration right now is,

hey, President Trump, will you maybe save some of these things that you're hoping to cut from the Biden administration on day one and let us cut them through legislation? That way we can say this change, this change, and this change is going to save us, let's say, $10 billion. And that will give us space to increase spending by $10 billion on some of these immigration priorities. And so, again, a little bit wonky there, but something to pay really close attention to as we watch how Congress and the Trump administration work hand in hand to achieve these things.

Robert, wonky is not a bad word at On Point. Okay? Oh, I love wonky. I love wonky. Get in the loop. Well, it's...

But it's important what you're saying because not only if these things are passed legislatively, as you said, that the Republicans can say, and here's how much money we say we're going to save. But in addition, as we've seen, legislation that gets passed and signed into law is much, much harder to undo or virtually impossible to unwind versus executive orders, which the next president who comes in, whenever that person comes in, could with the sweep of a pen on his or her own executive order undo.

the previous administration. So your point is really well taken on that. We keep talking about that slim House majority and whether Speaker Johnson can hold his caucus together. Well, Speaker Johnson was actually asked that on Meet the Press this weekend. Here's

where Kristen Welker said if dismissing, for example, Representative Mike Turner as chair of the powerful House Intelligence Committee, Turner was not happy about that, by the way, whether that could cost the GOP a moderate vote in a House with that razor-thin margin.

Mike Turner and I are good friends, trusted friends and colleagues. He will still be one of the top leaders in the House. In fact, I reappointed him, asked him to serve again, and he graciously agreed. He is the face of the House with NATO. But do you think you can count on his vote, Mr. Speaker? Oh, sure. Look, Mike is a team player. He's going to help us enact the American First agenda. No question about that.

Well, just quickly, Robert, I'm going to bring another guest in here, but is Speaker Johnson right in his confidence there? I mean, I was getting a sense that Representative Turner was very unhappy.

Speaker Johnson hopes he's right. And what he what he's saying there is is a glimpse into the window of the wheeling and dealing on Capitol Hill. Congress and especially the job of the speaker is just constantly, you know, making deals, trying to make one group happy, trying to make another group happy, trying to keep people from being unhappy, even if you're not able to give them everything they want so that when those

pivotal moments come where you do need to rely on your caucus to come together, you hope it works. And so we'll find out along with Speaker Johnson if, you know, the kind words that he's been saying about Congressman Turner really do pan out. But, you know, it's not just Congressman Turner. There are so many people in his entire conference who

have small grudges that can turn into larger issues. And like we saw during the last Congress, with this slim majority, any one member pretty much has the ability to just slam on the brakes for the Republican agenda.

So, Robert Jimmison, congressional reporter with The New York Times, hang on here for just a quick second because I want to bring Michael Ricci into the conversation. He's a Republican strategist and former director of communications for House Speaker Paul Ryan. He was also former deputy director of communications for House Speaker John Boehner. Michael Ricci, welcome to On Point. Thank you for having me.

So your insight in terms of how a House speaker operates will be invaluable right now. We keep talking about this thin margin that House Speaker Johnson has, which kind of calls into his question, like his ability and power to hold that caucus together. But do you have a different view on this? Is he maybe in a better position than it seems?

He's in the best position he can be in at this point because he has, at this moment, the unconditional backing of the president and he is leveraging it. You just referenced what happened with Chairman Turner. He's leveraging it left and right to his best of his ability. He

swapped in more friendly members to him on the rules committee, which controls what bills make it to the House floor. He was able to push through rules changes that will make it harder to eliminate the Speaker. So he is maximizing and leveraging the power he has while he has it.

The challenge is that even in a bigger majority, you don't just need their votes, Meghna, you need their buy-in. These members, they want to be heard. Robert was exactly right when he said that these small grudges can turn into big things and that everybody wants to be part of the process. It's almost like camp. And so the speaker has to spend a lot of time talking to members. It's a lot of, I think he has described, at least to my knowledge, that it's like being a therapist. And

He has to have a lot of conversations, a lot of talking. And just to reference an earlier conversation about one bill versus two bills, when I hear that, what I hear is one bill, one big reconciliation bill, that's at least three votes on the House floor. So two bills means six votes. And so what a lot of people who favor the one bill strategy say is –

At the very minimum, you need to get three bills across the House floor. Johnson has to do that. So when I hear one bill and two bill, I hear that's a lot of votes to have to get through this majority.

Understood. Now, you know, to be fair, House Speaker Johnson also just recently went through what for what a day seemed to be potentially a bruising speakership battle. But it turned out I mean, it didn't definitely did not last as long as Kevin McCarthy's trial by fire there. And I'm wondering if you think actually Speaker Johnson may have come out of that in a better position than definitely McCarthy did.

Absolutely, because he didn't have to make any deals. What ended up bringing Speaker McCarthy down was all those little deals he was making to keep the speakership. And in the weeks after, it's like ancient history now, two years ago, but in the weeks after, reporters kept asking, what deals did you make? Did you write them down? Are they somewhere we can look at them? And nobody knew.

And it was sort of the seed that was planted. Whereas here, the only seeds here really are that there are members who, especially on the right in the Freedom Caucus, who will be watching him closely. But there's nothing tying him down right now institutionally or structurally to keep him from enacting President Trump's agenda. And that, of course, is the main thing that, you know, their agenda is his agenda. They await his orders, essentially. Yeah.

Okay. Robert, I know we have to let you go in just two minutes here. So give me your insights on what we know about another major priority of not just President Trump, but the Republican Party. And that is, you know, keeping those 2017 tax cuts going and reducing spending. What do we know about legislative plans there?

Oh, you're giving me all the juicy topics today. The tax cuts are really, they're going to be a hard sell. And I think Republicans are starting, at least the Republicans that I'm talking to, they're concerned about how to sell this tax package to the American people and to make people understand the degrees of connection between tax cuts and what they're going to be

feeling in terms of savings. And so while these tax cuts might not exactly, you know, if you look at your pay stub from before tax cuts or after tax cuts, a lot of middle America is not going to look at their pay stub and go, wow, this is the tax, the Trump tax cut

really impacting my paycheck. I'm seeing X number of dollars back into my pocket. The way that the math and the economics of this work is that you loosen taxes and restrictions on larger corporations, on wealthier Americans, and the hope is this trickle-down economics concept that that will lessen the cost of goods to be made, increase investment in different sectors, which will then in turn lower prices and alleviate some of the financial burden for lower and middle class Americans across the country.

And the trouble that, you know, a lot of Republicans that I've spoken to said they haven't fully come up with how do you sell that to the average American who voted for President Trump on a big economic policy agenda? They're optimistic that it will happen. But that's the conversations that I'm hearing right now are really just how do we communicate this in a way that doesn't make it look like we're trying to give a break to the rich and we really are trying to find our way to alleviating the financial burden of middle class Americans.

The problem with trickle down, though, is that I think, look, all the way back with Reagan, there was a very clear means of communicating it, but the numbers never quite worked out. For example, wages didn't necessarily rise commensurate with the loosening of taxes for the wealthiest of Americans. But Robert, I know you've got to get going because it is a busy as heck day for you. So Robert Jimison, congressional reporter for The New York Times, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you for having me. Okay, Michael Ricci, stand by for a moment because I've got a lot of questions. I'd love your insight again on the machinations of Congress at the beginning of a new administration. So we'll do that when we come back. This is On Point.

You're back with On Point. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty. And today, on the day of President Donald Trump's inauguration as the 47th president of the United States, we are taking a look at Republican legislative priorities. On the White House side, here's Stephen Miller, again, a top advisor to President Donald Trump. He spoke at a major rally at the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C. yesterday.

And he alluded to President Trump's threats to reimpose an executive order that would reshape the federal government, giving Trump more power to fire government employees. The whole federal bureaucracy is about to learn that they don't work for themselves. They work for you. They work for President Trump and they work for the American people.

That was Stephen Miller yesterday. Returning back to Congress, as we've been talking about this hour, there are some differing priorities and perhaps more importantly, differing operational norms in the House and the Senate, which could stand in the way of the Republican legislative agenda. Here is Senate Majority Leader Republican John Thune. He was on Face the Nation, and he said that finding a balance between

between the House and the Senate will be dependent on acknowledging the different roles of the governing bodies. We want to get to the same destination, but I think at times there will be differences in how we get there. And I think I have to spell out as clearly as I can to anybody who asks what the challenges are in the Senate. The Senate's a very different institution, clearly functions different than the House of Representatives.

Well, joining us today is Michael Ricci. He's a Republican strategist and served as former director of communications to then House Speaker Paul Ryan and also former deputy director of communications for then House Speaker John Boehner. Now, Michael, I

We have to talk about the question of cost, right? Because you heard Robert earlier say Republicans have promised that any new spending would come along with matching cuts, essentially. So when it comes to extending those 2017 tax cuts, I mean, what we saw was an actual significant increase in the deficit. And I'd love you to take us back into time a little bit here, because I was under the understanding that

Republicans were very, very keen on a major point in the legislative process, which is when a bill would get scored by the Congressional Budget Office to say, how much is this going to cost? Can you tell us about that a little bit and whether you think that matters as much to members now? Yeah, I would say that, you know, when you think about going back 10, 15 years,

CBO, whether it was Obamacare or the tax cuts or any major legislation, the most important point in the process was when the CBO would announce its scoring because it affected not just that bill, but the government funding bills and everything around it. So

The issue is that, and part of this is obviously Republicans have begun in the last four or five years to cast more doubt on how the CBO has its process and have called for reform of the CBO and opening up the books at the CBO and how it works. But Republicans believe that in a more dynamic scoring that these tax cuts essentially pay for themselves through growth.

And one of the differences is that the Bush tax cuts, for instance, at the beginning of this century, I guess, those were much simpler to figure out because they were just sort of affecting rates, whereas the 2017 tax cuts, they did have revenue measures in it like state and local tax deduction. So this is a much more complicated web approach.

to unravel. That's why you've even seen some senators, including the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, basically say that if you're extending current tax policy, it doesn't count against the deficit at all. Basically, it's zero, that it doesn't affect the math at all. So we've seen, you know, CBO used to be basically the one dominant voice, and now

Republicans have tried to make it so that CBO is either discredited or just one in a sort of a lineup. But yes, there was when we came into the majority in 2011 with Speaker Boehner, there was a big push for pay go, right? Pay as you go. Yes. And basically, that basically became one of these things that you refer to in a bill, but you can waive. And so over the last, you know, 10, 15 years, we've waived it. I can't even count how many times, but that's definitely become more of a talking point.

Well, so if we're in a world where, let's say, very critical Republicans are ignoring or, let's say, putting less faith in a bill score that comes from the CBO, that doesn't mean that the reality of the cost of the legislation actually goes away. And there are other places in which the impact of those costs will be felt. I mean, I'm thinking...

The markets, for example. And if we know anything about President Trump is that he pays very close attention to the markets.

Yeah, so even as the Fed has begun to cut interest rates, the bond markets have continued to surge and interest rates remain high. It's like the second time since the 1980s this has happened, where the Fed has tried to cut rates and the bond markets aren't reacting the way they might like. And you're seeing more and more chatter around members and maybe Trump himself paying close attention to the bond markets.

And one of the problems, Meghna, is that we've gotten to the point where Congress has given so much power to the executive branch and to the Fed with monetary policy that these bond markets may be the only sort of check or action-forcing entity in this process that can keep members of Congress honest here on the fiscal responsibility piece. It's just the reality of it. Oh, that's interesting. Well, so in that case, then, if...

So you said earlier that Speaker Johnson is doing a lot of kind of therapy, right? Listening sessions with various members of his caucus. I wonder if those members are also using those sessions or other means by which to communicate these concerns to President Trump. Yeah, I think that, you know, you just saw a procession of meetings yesterday.

recently at Mar-a-Lago with different caucuses of members, different factions, including, you know, in all these big fights, you always want to look for the proxy fight, so to speak. And in this case, it's what the, I referenced it earlier, the SALT members, the members concerned about

from blue states with state and local tax deduction because right now it's capped and if you lift the cap, it's very costly. But if somehow Trump can wrangle these blue state members and make a deal, it kind of unlocks the rest of the process.

And usually, as you know, in these debates, it's the conservatives who get the deals early on and then the blue state members who kind of get left behind and get. That's actually why, believe it or not, I know it's hard to believe, but in 2017, Elise Stefanik, about to be the U.N. ambassador, voted against the Trump tax cuts because of the SALT issue.

So it's it's there's a lot of scar tissue there. So what Trump is what Trump was hoping, I think, to do, but hasn't done yet is make deals within the deal to try to create a sense of momentum. But I don't I don't sense any any of that happening yet.

Okay, can you take us back to your time working for Speaker Ryan there? Because that obviously overlapped with the first Trump administration. What was it like to be in the room during some of these negotiations? Were actually were White House representatives there? Oh, absolutely. They're in everything. And that's by design. Members want them there. They want the White House to be involved. And it got to the point that

My mother was an elementary school teacher, and she used to stress about that one week each year that her principal was coming in to observe her, where, as here, the White House staff is with you almost every day, almost watching and reporting back on what's happening. So sometimes you don't know if they're there to help or not, and that was certainly the case eight years ago. What I sensed eight years ago, what we sensed eight years ago was just not –

obviously not as much understanding of how the process worked. There's a famous or infamous story about one meeting where they asked if we could essentially not use committees or just get rid of committees altogether and not use them as part of the legislative process because we were stressing everything had to go through committees. And so it just shows you that there was, and Speaker Ryan sort of made an off-quoted remark about this in a press conference about how there was a learning curve for the new president and his administration, and that didn't go over so well, obviously.

Whereas here, eight years later, obviously, they've been through this. They've prepared hundreds of executive actions. I think eight years ago, I think he signed one executive order on day one, just to give you a sense of the difference. So they were learning as they went, and it made it hard for them to exert influence over the process because the learning curve wasn't there. And

And he had Mike Pence, who – remember, Mike Pence had been in the House, but then he was also a governor for a time. So his congressional connections weren't as strong as they probably could have been, as you'll see maybe with J.D. Vance, who just came out of the Senate. So what I just remember was a lot of learning on the job, but also remember it was sort of a cast of strange bedfellows.

You only really heard from the White House staff when there were stories about the White House staff. Can you give a nice quote about me? Can you let me know if the Washington Post calls are doing a story about me? Whereas now Trump and his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, have enforced much more loyalty and zero tolerance for leaks. And so a lot of that matters to the leaders on the Hill. They want to see a White House that has its act together.

Well, so about that loyalty part, I mean, we just saw just over the past couple of days how much public praise of President Trump works, right? With the whole TikTok debacle, with Trump claiming that he's going to let TikTok have another 90 days over the ruling of both the Supreme Court and the Congress of the United States, and then TikTok...

coming out of the darkness and putting on their screens of 170 million Americans that, thanks to President Trump, were back for a little bit of a while. So I personally, I see that as currying favor directly with the president. And I wonder if, in a sense, in order to get their legislative priorities through, by having those White House staffers in the room, is it a way for members of Congress to...

to communicate their loyalty to the president and thereby perhaps make him more amenable to any changes they might want to make in the complicated billmaking process. Yes, and by 2018, that was the second year of that administration, members had figured this out. And so in our conference meetings where you basically have

Two aisles with microphones, as you would at a town hall. Members were basically directing their remarks to the White House staff in the room, not to each other, hoping that these White House staffers would go back and report to Trump. This person praised you. This person wants this.

Another big thing, if you think about, we talked earlier about the speaker election recently where Trump himself got on the phone with these reluctant members. Eight years ago, we really only brought in Trump as the closer. He got into this infamous fight with his future White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, in front of the speaker and all the members. So Trump was kept at a distance from the Hill, whereas now...

both of these sort of sides are meeting more in the middle where Trump doesn't want to go through emissaries as much. And he wants to be involved in every step of the process and members would rather just, and that's why, you know, if you see a, if you see a house Republican on Fox and friends, or you see them on, you know, CNN, maybe, or, you know, Newsmax, whatever it is, a lot of times that's who they're trying to communicate with. You know, it's an, it's definitely an, we, we talk, it's an overused phrase now in Washington, but it's very much an audience of one person.

Yeah. Well, a couple of the other major priorities are energy production, which the president and actually members of Congress, Republican members have talked about quite a bit in terms of drilling, opening up the Alaskan wilderness, et cetera. And also the perpetual fight we seem to have in this country over the debt ceiling. I just wanted to give note to those because they are important issues.

But going back to the promises that Republican members of Congress have made to themselves and to the American people about no new spending without cuts. So let us presume for a moment that that promise will be fulfilled.

Then comes another huge round of finagling and fights over where those cuts will be. I mean, it seems like there's uniform agreement that it's not going to be from Social Security, not going to be directly from Medicare, not going to be from the defense budget. I mean, that's the majority of federal spending. Where would the cuts come from? And that can't be an easy battle.

Yeah, so there's different menus of options. Everybody has their own menu of sorts. A lot of menus floating around Washington right now. Robert referenced earlier that there are things that they want

Congress doesn't want the White House to do yet because they want to use them as for savings. You know, in some cases, you're repealing Biden era tax credits, things in the Inflation Reduction Act, like the electric vehicle tax credit, employee retention tax credit. In other cases, you may be trying to find little ways to raise fees as savings.

sensitive as that may be. In other cases, you might be trying to expand, you know, there was one, broaden the base is one thing they like to say. So, you know, maybe extend certain, extend certain provisions on individuals to businesses like the state and local tax deduction we referenced earlier. So it's, it's a, and the part that you, you know, at the beginning is,

Having Doge come in, for instance, and find all these cuts, even Elon Musk has scaled back how much they'll be able to do that and find cuts because for as many people who want to be fiscally responsible, there's a big appropriations committee. In this era, they've reinstated earmarks, individual projects for members of Congress. A lot of times, obviously, the

That's why governing, you know, you kind of run into reality and there's only so much the traffic can bear. That's why you're going to see these weird debates about scoring where it's like, well, maybe we only have to do $3 trillion, not $4 trillion. Maybe we can do $2 trillion. So the first discussion is going to be over the number they keep calling it, like what the sort of savings needs to be. And, you know, maybe they can push the decisions down the road. But it's true. There's only so much savings you can find. And obviously, you know,

I think the one thing that works in that is that it creates a lot of, like you talk about energy, it's a lot of lobbying. It gets Washington fired up. Everybody's kind of fighting for their own interests. And it'll be a bit like the Hunger Games to see what kind of gets, what ends up on the table to get cut. Yeah. We've got about 15 seconds left, Michael. I'm just curious. Do you miss being in the thick of things, given how Congress works now?

I miss the people I serve with. Absolutely. You know, obviously it's an honor to get to do these jobs and no matter what era you're in, you know, only so many people get to do this. What I always wanted to do. I don't think I miss the level of exhaustion and not, you know, and getting home and being too tired to play with my kids, to be honest. But absolutely. I miss the feeling of being in the arena, of course. Yeah.

Well, Michael Ricci, Republican strategist and former director of communications for then House Speaker Paul Ryan and former deputy director of communications for then House Speaker John Boehner. Michael, it's been a great pleasure having you today. Thank you so much. Thank you. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty in Washington, D.C. today. This is On Point.