A can-do list for the 116th Congress
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi swears in members of the 116th Congress at the Capitol in Washington on Thursday. Credit: EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock/Jim Lo Scalzo
The first few days of the new year contain the seeds of promise that Washington can move forward. Despite the shutdown of some federal operations, there is an appetite in Congress to retake that branch’s seat at the table of government. Democrats, who now control the House of Representatives, want to address the economic worries of many Americans, and some Republican senators want a compromise to end the more than 2-week-old shutdown over the funding of a wall on the Southern border.
There really is no alternative but for Congress to provide more checks and balances on the Trump administration. More chaos will only harden the cynicism and alienation that are corroding our democracy.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi will have to guide a new class of House members, historic in its diversity and more aligned with the nation’s population, toward delivering on what she calls kitchen-table concerns. And while the House must provide the oversight that Republicans in the last session failed to do, it must be done smartly and effectively. Simply lining Pennsylvania Avenue with subpoenas and repeating the pathetic political shenanigans of the GOP will ensure a divided government, not a bipartisan one.
Democrats would be wise to wait until special counsel Robert Mueller completes his investigation before deciding how to respond to the results. However, the House should investigate the separation of families policies of the Department of Homeland Security, and the rollback of regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency, and it must probe President Donald Trump’s financial entanglements with foreign governments, particularly Russia and Saudi Arabia.
The game also has changed for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Utah’s Mitt Romney already has signaled he is willing to take on Trump, and vulnerable members up for re-election in 2020 want to steer a path toward more independence from the administration. In all of this, there is opportunity for Congress to move forward on needed legislative changes.
Patch up the holes poked in the Affordable Care Act by shoring up the health care exchanges. Cement the requirement that insurers cannot deny coverage or increase premiums because of pre-existing conditions. Increase funding for marketing and outreach to get more people enrolled. Reduce the cost of prescription drugs.
Rebuilding, repairing and improving roads, bridges, rails, airports and sewers should be an easy area of agreement. Trump has talked about such investments since the 2016 campaign, but little has happened since his initial proposal in early 2018, which came up short. It included just $200 billion in federal funds over 10 years, and would have forced state and local governments to cough up the rest. Any infrastructure agreement has to involve significant federal funds and a commitment to the nation’s most critical needs, including rail-safety technology, sewer upgrades and the Gateway project to build a new Hudson River rail tunnel.
The 2017 tax overhaul has mistakes that need correction. There’s a concern, for instance, about how and when restaurant owners and retailers can depreciate costs from renovations. As of now, neither industry can immediately write off such renovations. That’ll require a fix — and it’s not the only one like that. So, while Congress fixes sloppy draftsmanship and mistakes, it needs to make one big change, too. Eliminate the egregious and damaging $10,000 deduction cap on state and local taxes, or SALT. Among the new Democrats in the House who won solid red seats are some from California, New Jersey and other high-tax states who campaigned on and recognize the need for a SALT fix. When Congress considers tax legislation this year, it must consider this: No fix to last year’s tax law would be complete without fixing SALT.
After the wall impasse is resolved, Congress should take the next, ever more difficult step of trying to repair our broken immigration system — one in which more people arrive by air and illegally overstay their visas than actually cross our Southern border. It should grant legal status to people brought here as children and extend temporary protected status to Haitians, Hondurans, Nicaraguans and Salvadorans who were granted legal status to live and work here after they fled social unrest and natural disasters. A significant number of these immigrants came to Long Island and have become integral members of their communities, having bought homes and started businesses. Trump’s decision to revoke their status is cruel. Overall, we must redesign the visa system to make it more flexible to meet our labor needs.
There is common ground for both parties and both chambers of Congress. Find it.
