Deals and disorder preview 2019

Congress is poised to head home for Christmas after a lame-duck session marked by a partisan showdown that nearly led to a government shutdown — as well as the surprising passage of a handful of bipartisan bills. 

Despite harsh post-election rhetoric, the legislative results of the past few weeks suggest a Democratic House and Republican Senate could work together to send significant pieces of legislation to President Trump’s desk in 2019. But such a scenario is far from certain, especially now that the 2020 presidential cycle has already begun, and some House Democrats want their leaders to impeach Trump next year.

{mosads}Lawmakers this month approved a new farm bill, changes to how sexual harassment allegations will be handled on Capitol Hill and a sweeping criminal justice reform bill that marks a bipartisan high point for the 115th Congress. On Wednesday, Congress added to its accomplishments, adopting legislation to make lynching a federal crime. 

Earlier this year, Trump signed landmark legislation to combat opioid addiction, which has been ravaging the country. And he approved a series of spending bills covering 75 percent of the federal government, providing money for the Pentagon, Health and Human Services and other agencies for fiscal 2019.

The list of achievements belies the image of nonstop partisan warfare that emanated from Capitol Hill over the course of the cycle on issues as varied as ObamaCare repeal, GOP tax cuts and immigration. Some lawmakers think the focus on the discord is a mistake.

“That’s kind of the amazing thing about it. You had this big vote … on criminal justice reform, a huge bipartisan success, the opioid legislation, all those appropriations bills, so we’ve done a lot of big, bipartisan things,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) told The Hill. 

“But of course, you don’t read about those,” he said.

The most memorable political event of the lame-duck occurred in the Oval Office last week when Trump got into a lengthy and testy exchange with Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). After the 17-minute explosive meeting was replayed throughout the day on cable news, many speculated that a shutdown was likely, if not inevitable. 

Yet, it looks very likely that a shutdown will be averted after Trump backed down on his $5 billion funding request for the border wall. Such a stalemate would have furloughed hundreds of thousands of federal workers over the holidays.

To be sure, there are plenty of contentious issues remaining on Congress’s plate heading into 2019.

Republicans and Democrats came up short on a longer-term deal to fund the remaining 25 percent of the government, punting a fight on the border wall to early February, when Democrats will have more leverage.

“I think they concluded that the wall was not going to happen,” said Rep. Steny Hoyer (Md.), the Democratic whip. “So, I think they made a political conclusion that they’re just going to punt.”

Working together in the new Congress will not be easy as a new Democratic majority prepares to take control of the House next month and Trump eyes his reelection bid in 2020.

Democrats have been careful in talking about impeachment, not wanting to overstep on the issue. But the party will be under heavy pressure to scrutinize the Trump administration aggressively, and the oversight is likely to make it even tougher for Democrats to cut deals with the mercurial president in a new era of divided government in Washington. 

Immediately after the midterm election, Trump praised Pelosi but warned that he would adopt a “warlike posture” if her party tried to investigate him.

“I would expect that we’ll be able to get some things done next year,” Cornyn said of divided government in the new Congress. But he added: “I think it will be interesting to what extent all of the investigations, and the subpoenas and the hearings of the administration crowd out the time, the limited time we have. But we’ll just have to wait and see.” 

{mossecondads}Hoyer acknowledged the difficulties ahead, saying he hopes next year’s Congress will have better luck passing spending bills by Oct. 1, when the next fiscal year begins. But he also cast some doubt that such cooperation is possible in a Capitol that’s consumed by partisan bickering.

“I hope to avoid that next year; I’m not sure that I can,” he said, referring to stopgap spending measures. “This is not necessarily an unusual happenstance.”

Other Republicans praised the criminal justice deal but predicted it wouldn’t suddenly usher in a new era of bipartisanship.

“Hopefully it can be the beginning of a new chapter of bipartisan cooperation, but more likely it is a bright shining light in a darkness of bickering and more hyper-partisanship,” said Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), who had worked with Democrats on climate change and immigration issues but lost his race for reelection last month.

This week’s criminal justice vote was a welcome surprise after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for weeks had refused to bring the issue to the floor, despite entreaties from a long list of powerful voices within his own party. The lopsided 87-12 vote represented not only an end-of-year victory for Trump; it was a win for Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who had made criminal justice reform a legislative priority.

The legislation — which merges a House-passed bill aimed at reducing prisoner recidivism with several reforms to sentencing laws and mandatory minimum prison sentences — is the most sweeping reform to the criminal justice system in a generation. 

House lawmakers are expected to take up the Senate-passed bill before they depart for the holidays this week. 

“I want to say that none of us expected an 87-12 vote, but we did expect 75 to 80 [votes], so the overwhelming passage of this legislation, I think, speaks to a lot of things, but most importantly … bipartisanship,” said Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who shepherded the bill through the upper chamber.  

“It just proves that when people trust each other you can sit down and get legislation that’s good for the country,” he said.

Jordain Carney contributed.