The Look Ahead – April 2025 – Elevate Government Affairs

THE LOOK AHEAD – APRIL 2025

Produced By:

Bret Manley (bret@elevatega.com) former Chief of Staff to Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL)

David Marten (david@elevatega.com) former Legislative Director for Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA)

Elevate Government Affairs (www.elevatega.com)

Balance of Power

Senate: 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, 2 Independents Caucusing with Democrats
House: 220 Republicans, 213 Democrats*, 2 Vacancies

FL-01 and FL-06 special elections are tomorrow. Republicans are expected to win both seats and will join Congress in April. A lot has been made of perceived lackluster support State Sen. Randy Fine is garnering running to replace Mike Waltz in FL-06. Some of this is certainly due to Sen. Fine picking a high-profile fight with Governor DeSantis (R) and the astonishing amount of money his opponent has brought in from disaffected voters nationwide. However, it’s worth noting that the media hasn’t caught up to the fact that special elections and midterms, which used to favor Republicans due to lower turnout, now favor the Democratic party.

- The old rules were that the higher the turnout the better it was for Democratic candidates, while lower turnout favored Republicans. Trump has upended that model, and since he’s not on the ballot, Dem turnout in special elections will be proportionally higher, relative to Presidential levels. This means Republicans could be in trouble in seats they’d normally win comfortably. Midterms have lower turnout than Presidential years, and special elections have the lowest. Only the most committed, high information voters show up to special elections – especially college educated professionals – and the Democrats’ base is filled with more of those people than the Republicans.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY)’s nomination for UN Ambassador was withdrawn, meaning she will no longer resign her seat to serve in the Trump Administration and will instead stay in the House and (according to Trump) rejoin House Leadership, though what exactly that means isn’t clear. Rep. Stefanik’s seat isn’t as conservative as FL-01 and FL-06, and, as we explained above, there was concern about losing a seat when the GOP only has a two-seat majority.
TX-18: Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-TX) passed away on March 5th after just arriving in Congress to fill the seat long held by former Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee until she passed away last year. It is unclear when the special election will take place. Governor Abbott could call an emergency election, or he could leave the seat vacant until the next general election. We expect a special election before November 2026 but probably after September 30th, 2025, when Republicans will need all the help they can get funding the government.
AZ-07: Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) passed away from cancer on March 13th. He had served in Congress since 2003 and as the top Democrat on the Committee on Natural Resources since 2015 until Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) supplanted him this January. The primary for this seat will be held July 15th and the general election on September 23rd. This is a safe Democratic seat.

Top Line Takeaways:

Permission to (Re)Launch: Reconciliation is complicated. We’ve covered the details extensively here so we won’t go back over it again (just ask us if you need a reminder) but the most important thing to know is that the House and Senate have to AGREE on the initial budget to begin putting together a bill that can skirt the Senate’s 60 vote threshold. The initial budgets the House and Senate passed, to much fanfare, were not the same. Meaning…they did not agree. The House said it wouldn’t (couldn’t) pass the Senate version and vice versa. Well, to the surprise of a lot of people, the House and Senate announced an agreement that both chambers would vote on…or did they? Certainly, that’s what the headlines said, but when you start reading about the details, they definitely did not. The plan is for each Chamber to adopt a budget that gives House and Senate Committees different instructions. What does this mean? It means they’ll each be able to pass a budget (probably), but it also means the product of each Chamber will be different. We are just at the permission slip phase. The permission slip says each Chamber can (but really shall) produce totally different bills! This is one of those cute Leadership tricks you see just to get the Conference to the next day. It’s a commitment to paying you on Tuesday for a hamburger today.
(2025) Earmarks Are Dead, Long Live Earmarks: With the passage of a CR through the remaining fiscal year, anyone who hoped their project would get a special check in the mail for fiscal year 2025 can rest easy – you get to try all over again for FY2026! We actually think these requests have a better chance. Why? Because the Trump Administration wants to seriously reorganize and downsize the federal bureaucracy, and you can’t do that via a CR. Get those requests in!
The Budget Goes MAHA: Ok, not really but we’re told to expect the President’s “skinny” budget by the end of April. “Skinny” budgets are popular in the first year of a new administration and have just as much force and affect as a full (or fat if you will) budget. Which is none. But it gives opposition researchers at campaigns nationwide something to read.
You Will Be Liberated, Whether You Like It or Not: See, we thought we lived in a free country. All those people in New Hampshire are still alive and everything!* But alas, April 2nd will be our liberation day. What we are being liberated from is unclear, but this is what team Trump is calling the day when “reciprocal tariffs” go into effect on just about everything. Folks we know at USTR have said to expect a slew of reports alleging abuse of the U.S. in some form or another tomorrow, which will kick off what must be the most aggressive tariff action anyone has seen in their lifetimes. Of course, Trump being Trump, there will be exceptions, exemptions, reversals, and ways to get off the tariff list, but, in the meantime, expect the world to respond in kind. We asked members of the Ways and Means Committee if the White House was talking to them about their plans, if there are any efforts to make these things permanent, or if we’re just riding this rollercoaster together. Your Look Ahead hosts were told, “we read about it in the news when you do.”
Reorganization Plans are Due: In our view, this isn’t getting enough attention. But this is what the fight will be about in September. The OMB/OPM memo we covered last month instructed each executive department to put together plans to lay off staff. They did that, and much of that has leaked. In addition, it asked each department to put together reorganization plans (due April 14th) that can be implemented September 30th. The Administration is going to need Congress for a lot of this because many of the programs and offices they’ll likely want to get rid of are required by law. How much coordination the Administration has with Congress will factor into the probability of success. Team Trump cannot bigfoot this – though they are trying! There are over 14 GOP Senators that will not need to be re-elected until after Trump leaves office. Something to watch in this space: committee hearings critical of specific government departments or sub-agencies. In other words, actual work being done to make the case for reorganization.
Trump Reads the Look Ahead, Obviously: In the March edition of the Look Ahead, we wondered aloud why the State of the Union doesn’t have any corporate sponsors. Diet Coke on the rostrum, emergency medical care brought to you by Cialis, Gatorade bath at the end, etc. Well, dear reader, the President heeded our call. This year’s annual White House Easter Egg Hunt will have corporate sponsors. If we don’t see Easter eggs rolling down the lawn with Clorox, Busch Light, or DuPont logos painted on them, it’s a real missed opportunity. Proceeds will go to the White House Historical Association. The event itself will be held on Monday, April 21st. One of your Look Ahead hosts used to live with the Easter Bunny from the first Trump White House; it’s unclear if he will reprise his role.

Legislative Action in March

In the Senate: The nominations keep churning. Who knew there were so many Senate-confirmed positions? We did, but holy hell is it a reminder that try as hard as Leader Thune might, Senate procedures are not equipped for the modern-day need to get a bureaucracy in place quickly. Meanwhile, every Senate staffer we know is thrilled by the prospect of a second vote-a-rama in less than six weeks—and as we covered above, this one doesn’t even mean anything beyond giving committees another blueprint to go off of. This is one of those times when David is glad to not be in the Hart building drinking a Red Bull at 3am as he formats vote recs. Leader Thune has said he will try to move the new budget this but whether or not he can do that will depend on the Parliamentary Rules of the Senate. If there are too many issues to work out it’ll get bumped to the week of the 7th and thus the House will likely have to wait.

In the House: Continued action on CRAs will fill calendar time while House Leadership tries to score another win on reconciliation. They only have two weeks until the Easter Break, and we doubt House Leadership will give it a go until the two new members from Florida are sworn in. Look for a vote at the end of next week if they’re able to pull everyone together, but they could push until after Easter if they can’t get everyone on the same page, or for some reason the Senate can’t move the budget this week. The House will also consider the SAVE act again, which requires voter ID in federal elections.

Committee Spotlight

House Appropriations: With the enactment of the Continuing Resolution until September 30th, appropriators have turned their attention to Fiscal Year 2026 but there is no budget request (we are hearing a “skinny” budget will come at the end of this month), and neither the House or Sente have issued guidance on their respective Community Project Funding/Congressionally Directed Spending processes. Currently, the House subcommittees are splitting their time between oversight hearings and member day hearings where members of Congress can testify before them to advocate for their priorities. We expect Member submission portals to open at the end of the month and staffers are saying June markups.

House Transportation and Infrastructure: House Transportation and Infrastructure will have a markup tomorrow, April 2nd, mainly focused on a variety of maritime cargo bills. T&I will also begin working with stakeholders on language for a Coast Guard reauthorization to be ready in May. Subsequently we have been told that stakeholders will be invited next month to hear priorities for the highway reauthorization for an expected markup in early fall.

Senate Commerce: We’re told to expect a hearing this month on Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL), and if you’re focused on generating press, you’d probably want to do it sometime around the college basketball national championship on April 7. Meanwhile, aviation continues to take center stage with the much-hyped hearing with Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg now coinciding with “Liberation Day” on April 2. Bashing Boeing continues to be a bipartisan affair (even by the new Administration!) but expect a lot of tough questions about safety, Boeing’s culture, and how it plans to match competition from Airbus and China.

Senate Environment and Public Works: Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy will make his first appearance as part of the run up to reauthorizing our nation’s surface transportation programs, commonly referred to as the “highway bill”. He will get a lot of questions about potential cuts to agency programs and staff, ongoing ATC issues, transit funding, and the fate of IRA and IIJA projects and funding that run through the Department of Transportation.

Senate Finance: The most interesting thing currently happening in the Senate is in S-133, which real Senate nerds will know is Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough’s office. The Parliamentarian and her staff have held informal discussions with both Democratic and GOP aides about the “current policy baseline,” which Senate Republicans are attempting to utilize in reconciliation to make extending the TCJA tax cuts not incur a budgetary cost, thereby reducing the overall cost of the bill. It’s an accounting trick, to be sure, but it could work, and it would allow them to plow hundreds of billions into new spending on the border, DoD, and energy that they may not otherwise get to if MacDonough doesn’t go along with it. It also potentially sets up a big test for Leader Thune, who like Leader McConnell before him is a consummate institutionalist. If the Parls says no to using the novel scoring approach, Thune will come under enormous pressure from his colleagues to dismiss MacDonough—who is a nonpartisan official and served under both Dem and GOP majorities—and install someone who would go along with their plan.

Get Smart – How Does the President’s Tariff Authority Work?

With “Liberation Day” upon us, you may be wondering how the President of the United States has the authority to just willy nilly impose whatever tariff he or she deems appropriate. Aren’t there laws that govern this type of thing? Yes, there are! And Congress wrote these laws to give the President wide latitude to operate with little…or really no…Congressional input. Congress is the hot dog suit meme, we’re all over here trying to find the guy that did this. Let us explain!

Doesn’t the Constitution Have Something to Say About This?: You bet it does! In fact, it’s literally in the enumerated powers portion of Article One, Section Eight which is like the Holy Grail of Congressional authority. A couple of key phrases:

“The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises…”. Literally every, or almost every, “constitutional authority statement” required to introduce bills when House Republicans have the majority cites Article One, Section Eight.
“To regulate Commerce with foreign nations…” Seems pretty clear!

So Congress Just Like…Gave It Away?: Well…not all at once. The first act that explicitly transferred authority to the President was the Tariff Act of 1890, also known as the McKinley (as in future President William McKinley) Tariff Act. What did it do? Well, it gave the President authority to impose duties on imports from countries that placed “unequal and unreasonable” (undefined of course) restrictions on U.S. goods. Wait…that sounds an awful lot like reciprocal…we’ve been liberated since 1890!?

There are Numbers Though I Keep Hearing About? There are two numbers you hear about in tariff conversations – 232 and 301 – and they refer to sections of the U.S. code dealing with trade. This is where Congress gave away the bulk of the authority that President Trump is currently using with his tariff actions.

Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (Section 232): This gave the President the authority to impose tariffs if a particular import threatened the national security of the United States, following an investigation. A funny thing happens when you give an Executive the authority to act subject to an investigation while also giving them the power to run the investigation. It means once an investigation is opened, there can only be one conclusion.
Trade Act of 1974 (Section 301): This gave the President the authority to impose tariffs in response to unfair foreign trade practices. You’ll be shocked to learn that Congress allowed the President to decide what is or isn’t “unfair”.

Is Trump the First President to Take Advantage of These Laws?: No. We can guarantee anytime you read the word “unprecedented” in Politico or the Washington Post that there is, in fact, a precedent. If not several. Remember, Congress isn’t normally in the habit of passing laws that the President won’t sign…which means he either asked for it or supported it. Benjamin Harrison, after passage of the Tariff Act of 1890, imposed duties on sugar from countries he deemed treated the U.S. unfairly. Also recall that the federal income tax didn’t exist until the 16th Amendment was ratified in 1913. The U.S.’s primary source of income was tariffs. Of course, both Roosevelts were huge believers in tariffs and Richard Nixon imposed a blanket 10% tariff on all imports.

So Where Do Free Trade Agreements Fit in Here?: Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), like the one we have with Mexico and Canada, don’t totally eliminate the President’s tariff authority but they do limit it, depending on what the FTA says. Usually, the President cannot unilaterally impose tariffs covered by FTAs though there is some ability to do it temporarily. There is a dispute mechanism built in for FTA countries who can sue in what is essentially international court. Countries abide by the results of this court (the World Trade Organization) because it affects access to capital. In other words, people don’t like to loan money to other people who don’t do what they say they’re going to do with that money. This takes time though…so it’s possible there’s an explanation in here to why Trump’s tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods are here so immediately and gone just as fast.

Can a President Back Out of a Free Trade Agreement?: No. There’s wiggle room (that can be challenged in court) on tariffs with an FTA partner but Presidents cannot exit…or enter for that matter…a free trade agreement with another nation or nations. Only Congress can approve that…at least until they give that authority away.

So What Are We In For Here?: A wild ride, no doubt. In the short term, the only real thing that can curb a President’s tariff actions is a collapse in political support. We’re only two months and two weeks into this Administration. We will probably have an answer on the political support by mid-to-late summer. Until then, brace for impact.

*New Hampshire’s state motto is “Live Free or Die” as well as the tag line for the 4th (or 5th?) Die Hard installment despite the movie not taking place anywhere in or near New Hampshire. We didn’t want to ruin the joke for people who knew that by putting this up top. So if you didn’t know, now you do!

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The Look Ahead – April 2025