Former President Donald J. Trump has big policy plans should he be re-elected, including mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and a supercharged crackdown against new migrants, tax breaks on tips and property taxes, expanded oil drilling on federal lands and the elimination of the Education Department.
A unified Republican government — the coveted trifecta of the Senate, House and White House — would make those goals easier to reach and help neutralize Democrats, who would no doubt try to stand in the way. And it would give Mr. Trump a free hand to install more conservative federal judges, including in the event of another Supreme Court vacancy, continuing a major trend of his first term.
It is a lineup Republicans are counting on.
“We are going to grow the Republican majority in the House; we are going to take back the Senate and send Donald Trump back to the White House,” Speaker Mike Johnson assured the MAGA crowd on Sunday night at Mr. Trump’s invective-filled Madison Square Garden rally in New York.
That outcome is no sure thing, but it is a real possibility given the closeness of the battle for the House, the Republican edge in the fight for the Senate and Mr. Trump’s neck-and-neck race with Vice President Kamala Harris. It would open the door to a Republican push on legislation after two years of divided government has kept Congress focused on the basics of keeping federal agencies open and aid flowing to Ukraine.
After his election in 2016, Mr. Trump also had unified control of government for two years. But his lack of experience, coupled with the resistance of some top Republicans — including Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader — limited his ability to get what he wanted out of Congress, particularly after an extended push to repeal the Affordable Care Act failed spectacularly.
This time, Republicans would be much better prepared to take advantage of their consolidated power.
Republicans on Capitol Hill are readying a push to renew the 2017 tax cuts, the most significant legislative achievement of the first Trump administration. Unlike other major legislation, a Democratic minority in the Senate could not thwart it with a filibuster, since Republicans would almost certainly use a special process known as budget reconciliation that requires only a simple majority to approve budget and tax changes.
Mr. Trump has promised to not only extend but also expand his tax cuts by tacking on a variety of popular new breaks such as eliminating taxes on tips, making car loan interest deductible and restoring a state and local property tax deduction sought by lawmakers representing states with high property values.
Those ideas would add to the already enormous cost of the tax bill and make approval more difficult. But if there is a single issue that unites Republicans across the spectrum, it is cutting taxes, and they would be in position to do so.
Another major fiscal complication for the Trump administration would be the need to raise the federal debt limit by early 2025, when many Republicans have refused to back any debt ceiling increase. Democrats would be unlikely to provide much help without some significant concessions.
Appearing this week in Pennsylvania Mr. Johnson also promised “massive reform” to the Affordable Care Act despite the multiple failures of the past and the political dangers involved. “Health care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda,” Mr. Johnson said in a campaign appearance captured on video by NBC News. He also vowed an aggressive 100-day agenda and said Republicans intended to “take a blowtorch to the regulatory state.”
Republicans have also made clear that they want to expand domestic oil and gas production, including reopening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling after it was banned there by the Biden administration. They see revenues from increased leasing and production as a way to offset the costs of the tax cuts and avoid being criticized for adding to an already soaring federal debt.
And with the Senate majority, Mr. Trump could resume packing the federal judiciary with conservatives, offsetting the more than 200 judicial nominees named by President Biden.
Republicans on Capitol Hill will also want to join Mr. Trump to push some of their culture war social issues, such as rolling back transgender rights, eliminating diversity initiatives in the military and other institutions and clamping controls on the Justice Department and F.B.I.
On some of the bigger issues such as immigration, Republicans in Congress would be responsible for finding a way to pay for what is likely to be a very expensive effort to round up and deport millions of immigrants deemed to be in the United States unlawfully.
As for the significant tariffs on foreign goods he says he intends to impose, Mr. Trump said that he would like for Congress to join him but that he would exert executive authority to put the tariffs in place on his own if necessary.
“I don’t need Congress, but they’ll approve it,” Mr. Trump said at a campaign event in Pennsylvania last month. “I’ll have the right to impose them myself if they don’t.”
On that front, Mr. Trump has indicated that if elected, he would be much more inclined to plunge ahead with his chief initiatives on his own if Congress resists, given the frustrations of his first term. Congressional Republicans are unlikely to put up much of a protest if he takes that approach.
That may be one of the major advantages for Mr. Trump of a Republican Congress: If Democrats don’t have a majority in either the House or Senate, they have limited power to fight back. Without committee chairmanships, they would not be able to convene congressional hearings, initiate investigations, pass legislation in an attempt to rein him in or — as they did in 2019 and 2021 — impeach him.
Still, should Republicans gain full control of government, fulfilling some aspects of Mr. Trump’s wish list could prove very difficult. The majorities won by either party are almost certain to be very narrow, providing little room for defections. It is the same dynamic that has handcuffed House Republicans the past two years.
As a result, the most extreme ideas, such as ending the federal income tax or abolishing federal agencies wholesale are unlikely to go very far. Others have tried in the past, only to discover that all federal agencies have some constituency in both parties.
Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and the few other more centrist Republicans will also have to be accommodated as much as the far right if legislation is to pass. At the same time, it would take only one or two Republican opponents to doom executive branch and judicial nominees if they are considered too extreme or unacceptable for other reasons — though Republicans have shied away from defying the president on his personnel choices, a move that could provoke a fierce backlash from Mr. Trump.
Ms. Collins is set to be the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee if Republicans win control, giving her significant influence on spending. Republicans would quickly confront the need to pass a dozen spending bills to fund the government. Many on the far right refuse to vote for spending bills without deep cuts or policy dictates that others in the party consider politically risky. Tight margins would make it hard for the G.O.P. to pass those on their own.
Those margins also mean that even in a Republican Senate, the majority would be well short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster, providing Democrats some leverage in shaping legislation. During his first term, Mr. Trump showed an early willingness to try to negotiate with Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker, and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, who was minority leader. He had flattering things to say about Mr. Schumer at a recent political dinner in New York.
If the filibuster proves a significant impediment, Mr. Trump is likely to demand that Senate Republicans move to jettison it as he occasionally did in his first term. Mr. McConnell resisted such demands, and the current front-runners to replace him — Senators John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota — say they have no intention of eliminating the filibuster. But the pressure from the party’s core hard-right supporters to do so could become overwhelming.
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