Harris or Trump will be busy in 2025: Next president will face these issues in office
WASHINGTON ? Presidential administrations have a say in every facet of American life, from how much taxes are owed to whether there is U.S. government help to pay for doctors visits and picking the Supreme Court justices who can make crucial life-or-death decisions.
Though it's impossible to predict every calamity a president will have to deal with during their term, there are some big things looming that the next commander-in-chief will need to address starting in January.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris have a long way to go in telling Americans what they actually hope to do if they win the White House, but there are some known issues that will come across their desk no matter who wins.
How these decisions will go depends on a lot of unknowns, including the party makeup of the House and the Senate, the movement of the stock market and the actions of foreign governments.
"Generally speaking, I would anticipate that most, if any, legislative action is going to be deadline-forced, certainly in the absence of unified party control," Sarah Binder, a political science professor at George Washington University and an expert on Congress, told USA TODAY.
Most legislation needs 60 votes to pass the Senate, which allows the minority party to block bills. That means presidents dealing with the opposing party on Capitol Hill have routinely used executive power to get their priorities accomplished, a route that leaves their goals vulnerable to court rejections and the whims of the next president after them.
Regardless, whoever wins the presidency will have to craft a way forward.
Trump tax laws
Perhaps the single biggest policy question facing the next president will be whether to extend the Trump tax cuts of 2017, which substantially changed the federal tax code. That decision could influence what other policy priorities the next president can even consider.
"Everything is tiny compared to the expiring 2017 tax cuts," Georgetown law professor David Super, an expert on legislation and policy, told USA TODAY.
Many average Americans either saw little change in what they owed Uncle Sam or even saw an increase, so they might not care if these tax cuts are extended, but Super said ending the law would have a major impact on how much money the federal government brings in. Businesses and the wealthiest Americans saw the biggest savings under the tax cuts, he added.
Many provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, as the measure is officially known, that affect individuals and families are temporary and are scheduled to expire at the end of 2025. Many of the provisions affecting businesses expire over the following three years.
Among the expiring provisions that will have the biggest hit on taxpayers are the lowered tax rates and doubled standard deduction, both will revert to the previous levels. The child tax credit will also drop from $2,000 a child to $1,000 a child.
In May 2023, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that extending these individual tax provisions would reduce federal tax collections by $2 trillion over 10 years. It estimated that extending the business tax provisions would reduce federal tax collections by $953 billion over 10 years.
The amount of money involved is so large that what the next president and Congress does will dictate what other policy proposals are possible, such as filling anticipated gaps in Social Security and Medicare, expanding the child tax credit or addressing the rising costs of child care, Super said.
"The amount of money there, if they're extended, will crowd out lots and lots of other initiatives either candidate would be able to pursue, so that really, in some ways, is the center of everything. It will be difficult for either one of them to plan much until they know what's going to happen with that," Super said.
Super said he expects the next president, regardless of who it is, will want to retool the tax cut package to make popular changes like expanding the Child Tax Credit.
Obamacare stipends ending
In 2021, Congress increased financial assistance available to people buying their own health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces and made a lot more people eligible for the help. Those increased subsidies are set to expire at the end of 2025, and the next president will have to decide whether to work with Congress to extend them again.
By the time they expire, millions of Americans who have relied on the enhanced subsidies for almost five years can expect to see dramatic increases in their premiums, in many cases doubling the premium. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid's annual open enrollment report, 11.1 million of the 21.4 million Americans who get their insurance through the marketplace in 2024 receive these increased subsidies.
More: A record number of Americans enrolled in Obamacare in 2024
"If it disappears, then a number of people are going to have affordability crises for their health insurance, and probably some of them will chance it to go uninsured, and that will have the predictable consequences for some of them," Super said.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that a permanent extension of the subsidies would cost $335 billion over the next 10 years.
Government funding
The next president will likely have to work with Congress to avoid a potential government shutdown in the first six months, which could mean closed national parks, millions of furloughed federal workers, including food safety inspectors, and shuttered passport offices.
Congress hasn't passed the necessary spending bills ahead of its annual Sept. 30 deadline, and lawmakers are expected to pass a stopgap measure to fund the government until December. After that, they're likely to punt again to keep the government open into early next spring, which would coincide with the likely deadline to raise the ceiling on how much money the U.S. government can owe (kind of like raising the country's credit limit.)
"Hope springs eternal that Congress will get its work done in December and fund the government through the fiscal year. But the most likely scenario is a couple of lily pads (stopgap bills) that set up a springtime government funding showdown for the next administration," said Will Dunham, who was the top policy aide for former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.
Republican lawmakers have repeatedly used raising the debt ceiling as a political bargaining chip. When exactly the drop-dead end date to raise the debt limit will hit isn't clear, but it has repeatedly been paired with spending bills in the past few years, and the experts USA TODAY spoke with expect that to happen again, especially if one party controls the White House but not both chambers of Congress.
Wars in Ukraine and Gaza
Military aid to help Ukraine in the war with Russia has been bipartisan. But Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is stepping down as his party's leader in the chamber in December, and Binder said the Senate could look a lot "Trumpier" than ever before if Republicans win control of the chamber this November.
"We're back to the world of it matters who wins; certainly who wins the White House, it's going to matter what the Senate looks like," she said.
Harris could choose to lift the conditions Biden has placed on how weapons provided by America can be used, such as prohibiting Ukraine from using certain weapons for attacks within Russian soil, Super said.
What happens in Gaza, where Israeli forces are trying to rout the terrorist organization Hamas from among the Palestinian population, could depend a lot on who is in charge, Super said. Trump has a long-standing relationship with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but Harris does not even have the relationship that President Joe Biden does. She is also facing a lot of pressure from liberal activists to curb the Israeli offensive.
"The Biden moment here is probably the high-water mark for support for Israel within the Democratic Party," Binder said. Biden and Harris have been working to negotiate a cease-fire.
Dunham said that whether aid packages for the two conflicts are considered separately or together will depend on factors like how quickly existing Ukraine aid runs out and what is happening on the ground overseas.
Supreme Court openings
The ages and health status of several Supreme Court justices mean the next president could be replacing up to three justices in the next term, possibly tilting the balance of the court or solidifying the conservative majority for decades to come.
After the court's 2022 decision ending Roe v. Wade's guarantee of access to abortion, many other recent decisions based on the same legal theories previous courts used to make social changes, like legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide, are expected to be challenged in the next few years.
More: Americans want to rein in Supreme Court justices, poll finds
Abortion access could also come before the court again. Harris has promised to support reinstating the protections guaranteed under Roe (something that would be difficult with that 60 vote threshold in the Senate), while Trump has said the issue should be left to the states as it is now. Some Republicans on Capitol Hill are pushing for a national abortion ban.
At 76, Justice Clarence Thomas is the oldest justice on the bench. Justice Samuel Alito is 74. Together the two are considered the most conservative justices on the bench.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is 70, has had some health concerns that have caused some Democrats to think she might be considering retiring.
Justices rarely give any public signal before stepping down.
Most of the 116 Supreme Court justices who have served in U.S. history have resigned by their early 80s, but there's no requirement that they step down from a lifetime appointment because of age. Many consider the party of the president who will be replacing them, Chicago-Kent College of Law professor Carolyn Shapiro, an expert on the Supreme Court, told USA TODAY.
"It's inevitable that some justices look at who the president is and whether they want the person in the White House to appoint their successor. It's one of the problems with life tenure that they are able to make those calculations," Shapiro said.
Thomas was nominated by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, Alito by President George W. Bush in 2005.
"If Donald Trump wins, I think it's highly likely that Justice Alito and or Justice Thomas will retire, so he would be able to replace really the two most conservative justices with other equally conservative, or even more conservative, justices who are significantly younger," Shapiro said. But they probably would stay if Harris wins, she said.
Sotomayor was nominated by President Barack Obama in 2009. She might consider retiring if Harris wins and gets to replace her, Shapiro said.
"It's possible that a president would be able to appoint at least three justices, two of the most conservative justices, and one of the liberals. So everybody should understand that the makeup of the Supreme Court is very much on the ballot. So if you don't like the direction that the Supreme Court is going, you should vote for the candidate who is not going to add more justices of the same view, and that would be President Harris," Shapiro said.
Immigration
Border crossings have dropped precipitously in recent months, but both candidates have spoken at length about wanting to change immigration policy.
Trump has talked about rounding up people in the country illegally for mass deportations, something that would have legal and economic implications. The political makeup of Congress would play a role in whether that effort would be funded.
More: After record-breaking years, migrant crossings plunge at US-Mexico border
Harris said in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention that she would sign the bipartisan border security bill that was proposed earlier this year, which Trump urged Republicans to oppose. It would have expanded detention capacity while making it harder for people to qualify for asylum while also expanding the number of green-card-eligible visas every year for the next five years and guaranteeing that children of H1-B visa holders remain eligible for green cards once they turn 21.
But Dunham said it is unlikely that bill will be brought up again without substantial changes. He add it's also another area that might not see much movement without a deadline or a specific crisis to address.
"That bill died a pretty resounding death," he said. "Anything in the immigration policy space is going to have to evolve pretty considerably from that bill to get the 60 votes to pass."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What policy issues will Harris or Trump face as our next president?
