BY JORDAIN
CARNEY - 01/02/20 06:00 AM EST 95
Congress
is set to return to a laundry list of divisive fights looming over its 2020
agenda when both chambers reconvene in the coming days.
Lawmakers
will have to balance the Trump impeachment trial, which will suck up much of
the oxygen in January, with several key legislative deadlines.
The
balancing act will also take place amid the run-up to the 2020 election, with
presidential politics increasingly seeping into congressional negotiations.
Here
are five fights to watch in 2020.
Impeachment
The
months-long impeachment fight is shifting to the Senate, where the chamber left
for the holiday recess without a deal on rules for the trial, including a start
date and whether any witnesses will be called.
Speaker Nancy
Pelosi (D-Calif.) threw a curveball into the timeline by
declining to say when she will send over the two articles of impeachment,
though senators say they nonetheless expect the trial to commence in January.
Once
impeachment is on the Senate floor, all other legislative business will likely
be put on hold. Senators are expected to conduct trial proceedings six days a
week, a schedule that promises to consume much if not all of January’s floor
calendar.
With 67
votes needed to convict Trump, the outcome of the proceeding is all but
guaranteed in the GOP-controlled chamber, where Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-Ky.) has pledged to be in “total coordination”
with the White House.
But
Democrats are hoping to win over a handful of Republicans on their request for
Ukraine-related documents and witnesses at the trial. They would need four GOP
senators to break ranks to successfully call a witness for trial testimony.
“So far,
neither Sen. McConnell, nor any Republican senator, has articulated a single
good reason why the trial shouldn’t have these witnesses or these documents,”
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters
this week during a press conference.
USMCA
President
Trump’s trade deal — the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) —
passed the House in mid-December but is stuck in a holding pattern in the
Senate until after the impeachment trial wraps up.
Ratification
of the deal, meant to replace the Clinton-era North American Free Trade
Agreement, would hand Trump an early election year win after months of
closed-door negotiations with Pelosi initially made it unlikely the deal would
move forward.
But
Democrats were able to include tougher labor provisions that won over the
support of unions and progressives, while also giving a major legislative win
for vulnerable Democrats to tout back in their districts.
The
Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to mark up the trade deal on Tuesday, and
Senate GOP leaders expect they’ll ultimately be able to pass the USMCA early
this year. The measure requires only a simple majority, instead of the 60 votes
normally needed for advancing legislation.
Still,
the deal unveiled in December initially prompted pushback from GOP senators who
were largely cut out of the negotiations and worry the White House made too
many concessions to House Democrats.
Sen. Pat
Toomey (R-Pa.) has emerged as one of the most vocal GOP
critics. He pledged in a Wall Street Journal opinion last month to
vote against the deal, calling it the “only trade pact ever meant to diminish
trade.”
Surveillance
reform
Lawmakers
are eyeing changes to surveillance authorities and the warrant application
process in 2020.
Congress
faces a mid-March deadline on expiring surveillance authorities under the USA
Freedom Act after lawmakers extended the programs in mid-December for 90 days
to give themselves more time to work out a larger agreement.
The
sunset provisions include a controversial records program, known as Section
215, that gathers metadata on domestic text messages and phone calls. The Trump
administration has urged Congress to reauthorize the program even though the
National Security Agency shuttered it, with the White House arguing the
authority should be retained in case it’s needed at a later date.
Two
other provisions — one authorizing “roving” wiretaps, the other on lone wolf
surveillance authority — are also set to expire.
In
addition to the surveillance authorities, lawmakers are also homing in on
reforms to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court and the
warrant application process in the wake of a scathing report by Justice
Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz on applications to surveil Trump
campaign aide Carter Page.
One
idea that has bipartisan support would be to allow the Justice Department
inspector general to investigate misconduct by attorneys within the department,
which current law prohibits.
Senate
Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey
Graham (R-S.C.) has pledged that FISA reforms “will be a top
priority for the Judiciary Committee in 2020.”
Drug
pricing
House
Democrats are making a renewed effort to get legislation to
lower drug prices across the finish line this year after legislative action ran
into partisan roadblocks and lobbying from outside groups in 2019.
Pelosi
wants drug pricing legislation to be included in a package of expiring health
care programs that face a May 22 deadline, with the hope that House passage
could put pressure on the Republican-controlled Senate.
“When
we return to Washington, our priority will be to continue a drumbeat across
America to press the President and the GOP Senate to pass the Lower Drug Costs
Now Act into law,” Pelosi wrote in a "Dear Colleague" letter that was
sent to House Democrats this week.
The House passed Pelosi’s drug pricing bill last
month but it ran into fierce criticism from Senate Republicans, including
McConnell, who have declared the House bill dead on arrival and pledged that
they will not take it up.
In the
Senate, Finance Committee Chairman Chuck
Grassley (R-Iowa) has negotiated a narrower bill with
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the Finance
Committee's ranking member, but that too has garnered Republican pushback
because of a provision that would limit Medicare drug price hikes to the rate
of inflation.
Grassley has accused McConnell of urging
Republicans not to support his bill, marking a rare high-profile clash between
the Republican leader and a GOP committee chairman.
“Leadership
doesn’t want it to come up,” Grassley told reporters last month.
Government
funding
Though
Congress just passed a two-bill package that funds the government through Sept.
30, appropriators are already turning their attention to the fiscal 2021
funding process, which they expect to start within the first few months of
2020.
Lawmakers
will need to juggle policy battles, including Trump’s expected request for
border wall funding, with the growing influence of the 2020 presidential race,
all under a truncated election-year congressional schedule.
House
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) outlined an ambitious
timeline, saying he hoped Congress will pass all 12 of the fiscal 2021 funding
bills before Oct. 1. Unlike last year, lawmakers already have the top-line
spending figures for both defense and non-defense as part of the two-year
budget agreement, giving them a head start of sorts.
Senate
Republicans, while saying they agreed with the spirit of Hoyer’s goal, said
Congress was unlikely to meet the timeline. Sen. John
Cornyn (R-Texas) said he was “skeptical.”
“I
think the election will decide a lot of that,” he added.
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