Trump, Congress will agree on some issues, but long-term questions loom

WASHINGTON - President-elect Donald Trump will enjoy Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress when he takes office in January and an early Capitol Hill honeymoon is likely on several issues, but a long-term romance may be more challenging.

Under normal circumstances, a president whose party controls both the Senate and House of Representatives can count on getting things done fairly quickly and Trump likely will not be an exception, but he will start with unusual handicaps.

Many fellow Republicans in Congress only backed Trump after he became the nominee. Some never did fall in line. He offended and attacked some of them in the campaign, including House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

On top of that, the New York real estate businessman and former reality television celebrity who will head the world's most powerful government and largest economy, has no governing experience.

'Speaker Ryan called Donald Trump earlier this evening, and the two had a very good conversation. The speaker congratulated Trump,” Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said.

Trump and the Republican leadership in Congress agree on at least one major policy: They want to repeal Democratic President Barack Obama's landmark health care law, known as Obamacare, enacted in 2010.

'Our top priority is to repeal Obamacare in the first 100 days,” New York Republican Representative Chris Collins, a leading Trump ally in Congress, told CNN on Wednesday.

Collins also predicted that the new president would move quickly to scrap trade deals and to build a wall along the 1,989-mile (3,200 km) U.S.- Mexico border. Some Republicans are skeptical about both of those campaign pledges.

Plans by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican, to rewrite banking law to ease regulations, and to limit powers of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, are likely to have smoother sailing.

Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson, who won re-election on Tuesday, predicted that Trump would find agreement with Congress on ways to boost economic growth, reform taxes, reduce regulation and keep energy prices down.

'It'll be a completely different perspective,” Johnson said on CNN. 'It's just not going to be that hard to get the economy moving again with that business person perspective.”

But others said Trump would need to reach out to supporters and opponents, alike, after a divisive campaign that at times threatened to plunge the Republican Party into civil war.

'My hope is that President-elect Trump will focus on issues that unite us,” Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins, an outspoken Trump critic, said in a statement.

Repealing Obamacare would shake the U.S. health care and insurance industries, which have broadly called for measured reforms, although not for its full-scale elimination.

America's Health Insurance Plans, or AHIP, a trade association that represents insurers such as Anthem Inc and Cigna Corp in Washington, said late on Tuesday that it would work with any new administration on the issue.

'We will work across the aisle - with every policymaker and the new administration - to find solutions,” AHIP said in a statement.

Trump has called Obamacare a 'disaster” and vowed to repeal and replace it. House Republicans have already voted more than 50 times to repeal all or part of the law.

Senate Democrats were certain to fight an Obamacare rollback, but could be outmaneuvered by Republicans at the procedural level with Trump's cooperation.

'It would be a tragedy, and I certainly won't in any way cooperate or work with an effort to take health insurance away,” Senator Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, told CNN.

TAXES, EXECUTIVE ACTIONS

Trump and congressional Republicans will find common ground on taxes. Trump generally sees eye to eye with Republicans in Congress in calling for major tax cuts, including those for the wealthy, although details of their plans are not an exact match.

Trump has called for cutting the U.S. corporate income tax rate to 15 percent from the current level of 35 percent; Ryan's tax plan proposes going to 20 percent.

Trump and Ryan both back reducing the current number of tax brackets to three from seven. Trump supports lowering the top individual income tax rate to 25 percent from 39.6 percent, while Ryan wants it to go to 33 percent.

Congressional Republicans likely would welcome a move by Trump to rescind some of Obama's executive actions on immigration, labor rights, the environment and global warming.

Virginia Republican Representative Dave Brat said one thing he expected Trump to do early as president would be 'taking a pen to all of Obama's executive overreach. ... That's a quick, easy fix to get the regulatory burden down.”

Many of Trump's other proposals have been thin on details. Some of them, such as spending hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure, do not easily square with Republican ideological orthodoxy, which embraces free trade and resists deficit-busting spending.

In addition, Trump has said he wants to do some things as president, such as ban Muslims from the country and allow torture in the fight against terrorism, that some experts say are legally questionable.

RYAN AND MCCONNELL

Trump has switched party affiliation more than once and donated to Democrats, as well as Republicans. He is not overly familiar with Washington's Republican establishment. With some leaders, such as Ryan, Trump's relationships are already sour.

Ryan, 46, is a generation younger than Trump. He is a clean-cut Midwestern budget and policy wonk who has been in Congress since 1999. He criticized many of Trump's utterances, such as his proposed ban on Muslims and his comments about groping women, and Ryan did not campaign with Trump at all.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, has been in Washington even longer than Ryan. McConnell also held Trump at arm's length, saying little about him in the campaign.

McConnell said in June that if Trump were elected president, he would not change the views of the Republican Party, suggesting instead that the party would likely change Trump.