WASHINGTON (TNS) — Where have we seen this before?

Just as he did in when he first was elected president in 2016, Donald Trump prepares to take office with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress.

The first GOP trifecta lasted two years, during which time the president signed a massive tax cut into law; failed by one vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would have increased the ranks of the uninsured by more than 20 million people; and presided over the longest government shutdown in history when the GOP-controlled Congress failed to fund the border wall he had promised Mexico would pay for.

Now Republicans are again in control as the 119th Congress convened today.

U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Centre, ticked off immigration, taxes, the economy and energy as issues that needed to be addressed when the new Congress convenes.

“We’ll be ready to go work when we get sworn in,” Thompson said. “We’ve got a lot of work that we need to do. We’ll begin to work on President Trump’s agenda, which is our agenda.”

Two other Western Pennsylvania lawmakers will be at the center of the action.

As chief deputy majority whip, U.S. Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Peters, will be working to line up 218 votes to re-elect House Speaker Mike Johnson, and U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Butler, sits on the House Ways and Means Committee that will draft the new Trump tax bill.

With just a 220-215 majority — which will shrink even further when Matt Gaetz of Florida doesn’t take his seat and Elise Stefanik of New York and Michael Waltz of Florida join the administration — Republicans won’t be able to afford too many defections and pass legislation, unless they are willing to compromise with Democrats as they needed to do over the last two years.

“Are we in the majority? Yes, but by a very slim margin,” Kelly said. “It’s going to require a very united Republican Party. … The key is to get the legislation done, not to stop it. I don’t want to be part of a team that takes credit for stopping policies.”

And don’t expect much help from Democrats, said Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University.

“The Republicans will have a lot of incentives to stay in line, knowing they’re not going to get much help from Democrats on anything of consequence,” Baker said.

The first order of business will be to elect the speaker of the House.

“That’s the most immediate issue,” said Steven Smith, a political science professor at Washington University. “Johnson’s problem is there’s nothing he can do to avoid renegades.”

Johnson can’t afford many defectors, and the chaos over the year-end spending bill didn’t help his case among the far-right members of his conference who were responsible for 15 rounds of voting in 2023 before Kevin McCarthy became speaker.

Then it took three weeks to elect Mr. Johnson once the party’s most conservative members led the successful effort to oust McCarthy.

At times like those, Democrats might relish their minority status for a while, said Lew Irwin, a political science professor at Duquesne University.

“In their secret heart of hearts, there are Democrats who are relishing being in the minority for the early portion of the 119th Congress,” Irwin said. “It’s far easier to be in the opposition than to actually govern. One of their primary goals is to show to the American people what they say is Republican dysfunction.”

Looming over the next session of Congress larger than life will be President Donald Trump. As the last Congress about to pass a bipartisan spending bill funding the federal government, Trump jettisoned that measure and demanded that the Republicans either raise the debt ceiling or shut down the government. They did neither, but his involvement led Republicans to reject the legislation they already had negotiated and agreed to.

Smith said that incident “just shows how much Trump really likes to have people jump just for the sake of making them jump, even if it makes the party look bad. I don’t think they can change his ways.”

In the Senate, Republicans will face pressure from the president and his allies to confirm all of Trump’s Cabinet nominees, even those with questionable backgrounds.

“The Senate Republicans and the House Republicans are going to be under tremendous pressure to support Trump’s agenda,” Irwin said.

Here’s what else to expect when the new Congress convenes today.

Certifying the 2024 election

Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t claimed that the 2024 presidential election was stolen and isn’t calling on supporters to come to the Capitol. House Democrats haven’t petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Pennsylvania’s state-certified electoral votes. Any efforts to question the outcome of last November’s election won’t receive a majority of votes from either political party on the House, unlike four years ago.

Instead, when Congress convenes on Jan. 6 to certify the 2024 presidential election — ironically, with Harris presiding — it is expected to resume the same ceremonial, non-controversial process that had been in place until four years ago, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.

Debt ceiling

Early in Trump’s term, the federal government again will bump up against the cap on how much money the federal government can borrow to pay for spending Congress already approved. During President Joe Biden’s administration, House Republicans refused to raise the debt ceiling two years ago unless the bill also included spending cuts,

Now that problem will be Trump’s.

Energy

Trump has promised to expand the use of fossil fuels, despite their impact on climate change, including expanding fracking. The Keystone State is second only to Texas in natural gas production.

It remains to be seen whether he rolls back federal investments in clean energy, such as the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (Arch2), which will receive up to $925 million in federal funding for projects in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Kentucky.

Farm bill

The House and Senate have been unable to approve legislation renewing agriculture subsidies and nutrition programs for five years, and instead have approved a second one-year extension.

The legislation provides federal support for certain crops, insures farmers against natural disasters, and funds programs to feed poorer Americans, most notably the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps.

At issue are actions taken by the U.S. Department of Agriculture during President Joe Biden’s administration that increased SNAP funding by $256 billion without congressional action.

House Republicans, led by committee chair Glenn Thompson, R-Centre, want to limit such increases in the future. But their proposal would reduce SNAP spending by around $30 billion a year, cutting benefits for 40 million people, including 17 million children, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, citing Congressional Budget Office figures.

Agriculture contributes more than $132 billion to the Pennsylvania economy each year and supports almost 600,000 jobs, according to the state Department of Agriculture.

Federal spending

The temporary spending bill passed shortly before Christmas funded the government through March 14. The new Congress will have to pass another spending bill by then or face a new threat of a shutdown.

Once again, while the GOP’s conservative wing can block action in the House, its effort to take a meat ax to federal spending doesn’t have support in either chamber.

It also remains to be seen what proposed spending reductions the new Department of Government Efficiency, run by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswarmy, will come up with.

Republicans also continue to chip away at the billions of dollars allocated to the Internal Revenue Service to improve taxpayer service and increase audits of wealthy taxpayers. GOP lawmakers falsely have claimed that the money is funding 87,000 new agents to go after the middle class.

Immigration

Trump promised to deport the estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S., and congressional Republicans are discussing using a process known as reconciliation to bypass an expected Senate Democratic filibuster to fund the effort as well as increasing security and building a wall along the southern border.

“It’s going to require massive funding and getting that through is no small task,” Smith said.

Under reconciliation, the Senate can pass a bill by majority vote rather than the usual 60 votes, but can only use this process once every fiscal year.

And there are limits to what policy provisions can be included in a reconciliation bill.

Taxes

Trump’s major legislative accomplishment during his first term in the White House was the tax law that gave 55% of his benefits to the richest 10% of taxpayers, according to the Tax Policy Center, and added an estimated $2 trillion to the deficit. It proved so unpopular that Democrats won control of the U.S. House two years later.

Provisions of the law expire next year. Republicans want to renew it, which would add another $4.6 trillion in red ink over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Trump also has promised to end taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security benefits.

Republicans plan to use the same reconciliation process for tax legislation, which is how they passed the original law. But they can lose only two votes in the chamber and there are more than two Republicans who have promised to oppose any bill that does not restore the federal tax deduction for state and local taxes, which disproportionately hurts high-tax Democratic-run states that send billions of dollars more to Washington than they get back in services.

Trump, too, has promised to bring back that tax break even though it was sharply limited in his 2017 law.