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WASHINGTON — With his political standing at an all-time high, President-elect Donald Trump will take the oath of office Monday amid a growing feud among congressional Republicans over how to deliver on his policy agenda.
GOP leaders on Capitol Hill say they will advance Trump’s sweeping plans for immigration, domestic energy and the tax code on party lines. That means squeezing them through the party’s wafer-thin House majority and complying with the arcane Senate budget process, in which cutting out Democrats and bypassing filibusters will require limiting the policies to spending and taxes.
“Very soon we’ll begin the largest deportation operation in American history,” Trump said Sunday at a victory rally in Washington, where he alluded to the GOP’s narrow House majority. “And we’re going to end the Biden war on energy.”
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While Trump promised to begin issuing a flurry of executive orders on Day One, they will be constrained by the law and the courts. Making good on many of his promises will depend on action from Congress.
But Republicans are still at odds over how to navigate the thicket of issues they will encounter, including how quickly to pass border funding and complicated questions about tax policy, slashing clean energy grants, lifting the debt ceiling and limiting new red ink.
“It’s a huge challenge,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said in an interview.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is determined to move the entire agenda in one massive bill, telling NBC News last week that he plans to pass it through the House by April. But the hard-right House Freedom Caucus disagrees and prefers to split it up into two bills.
Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader John Thune, of South Dakota, plan to pursue a two-track strategy: one smaller bill to boost border security funding and another later in the year for the more complicated pursuits, like extending the expiring Trump tax cuts.
Republican senators say the House could surprise them and succeed by passing one bill. But they doubt it, and if it fails to do so by April, they’ll pressure House Republicans to break up the package and send Trump the low-hanging fruit quickly.
The process debate is just the beginning.
Republicans have to secure virtually unanimous support within their ranks to pass any bill, with their 220-215 House majority set to shrink, at least temporarily, with three expected vacant seats during Trump’s first 100 days.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, whose committee will write the border security and immigration enforcement section, said he expects it to cost about $80 billion to $100 billion.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, said Democrats will be prepared to bring parliamentary challenges to the GOP’s immigration measures and strip out policies that don’t comply with the so-called Byrd rule.
“We’re expecting quite a few battles on immigration,” Durbin said.
Republicans also want new provisions to expand domestic energy production, including fossil fuels, while repealing unspent clean energy funds that Democrats passed in the Inflation Reduction Act, said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
She said they’ve already begun exploring policy options and added that she prefers a two-bill approach that includes her energy policy plans in the first measure.
“This isn’t a new exercise for us. We’re looking at IRA grants and we’re looking at the methane tax and other things,” Capito said in an interview. “Because energy is a very important part.”
She didn’t have an estimate of the cost or savings Republicans will find on energy, describing the numbers as “all over the board.”
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said it will require “100%” involvement from Trump to settle some of the intraparty disputes.
The House is “just a little concerned they can get both of them done in the same year,” he said, referring to the one-bill strategy. “And, of course, we’re a little nervous about the border. We’ve got to get something done.”
Tuberville also noted that Republicans will need to figure out how to handle a potential expansion of the federal deductions for state and local taxes (or SALT) — an issue that has split GOP lawmakers from high-tax states like New York and New Jersey from most of the party in red-leaning areas — as well as the debt ceiling.
House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith, R-Mo., told NBC News last week that his panel is prepared to pass a sprawling tax bill to extend Trump’s tax cuts, among other measures, in “one week.”
“We’re ready. Give us the budget reconciliation instructions,” Smith said, adding that the budget committees need to agree on a path. “It has to pass the House, the Senate, and then those are the instructions that we get to navigate. Because what they tell us depends on what we can do. So I can’t do anything until they pass their budget resolution.”
Sahil Kapur is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.
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