A top agenda item for 119th Congress will be the 2017 Trump tax cuts

Friday is the first day of the 119th Congress. Republicans control the House and the Senate, although who will lead the House is still up in the air ahead of the day’s vote for House Speaker.

Top of the economic agenda for the new Congress? “What happens with the Trump tax cuts that passed in 2017,” said Adam N. Michel, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute.

Many provisions of that tax law expire at the end of this year, especially the individual tax cuts for most Americans. Interest groups are already clamoring for the elements they want to preserve or change.

“Congress will sort of inevitably have to do something,” Michel said. “And what they do, how they deal with that deadline will impact sort of every American’s finances.”

While unified GOP control of the White House and Congress makes things like confirming cabinet members and judges a bit easier in the Senate, “the House majority is incredibly slim,” pointed out Lindsay Owens, who leads the economic policy think tank Groundwork Collaborative.

For the more complicated policy items like taxes, immigration and energy policy, “we’ll see Congress attempt to use reconciliation, which is the tool that they have when they need to pass bills with a simple majority in the House and the Senate to move through key pieces of their agenda,” she said.

But even then, Owens added that Republicans will have to deal with some infighting over what to prioritize and how to pay for it.