The Questions That Will Define Congress in the Coming Year

In the weeks after Paul Ry­an took the House speak­er’s gavel, re­port­ers began cast­ing vari­ous bills and de­cisions as his “first test.”  That in­stant cliché has more than run its course. But 2016 will test the new speak­er many times over, even if it’s thank­fully way too soon for hot takes on “Paul Ry­an’s Fi­nal Ex­am.”

Across the Cap­it­ol, where the fili­buster makes it even harder to get any­thing done, 2016 will bring the fi­nal year of battles between Sen­ate GOP lead­er Mitch Mc­Con­nell and re­tir­ing Demo­crat­ic lead­er Harry Re­id. Maybe the two long­time rivals will be in a mood to ne­go­ti­ate, or the pres­id­en­tial race could mean that polit­ic­al mes­saging trumps gov­ern­ing.

Here’s a run­down of 11 ques­tions that will ac­tu­ally de­term­ine what this Con­gress can still ac­com­plish, where the polit­ic­al fault lines will be drawn, and where power will truly reside.

Will Paul Ry­an Be a ‘Reg­u­lar’ Guy?

Ry­an has vowed to break with the John Boehner era by giv­ing real power to the com­mit­tees and rank-and-file mem­bers, rather than con­cen­trat­ing all the de­cision-mak­ing lead­er­ship suites. In Belt­way jar­gon, he prom­ised “reg­u­lar or­der.”

But that will be easi­er said than done, es­pe­cially in a Cap­it­ol Hill cul­ture of last-second de­cision-mak­ing. It cer­tainly isn’t the new norm yet. Re­cently, a quickly craf­ted bill to tem­por­ar­ily block Syr­i­an and Ir­aqi refugees from en­ter­ing the U.S. and tight­en screen­ing nev­er went through com­mit­tee. Nor did the massive “om­ni­bus” spend­ing pack­age ap­proved in Decem­ber, which mem­bers saw just two days be­fore cast­ing votes.

Ry­an has ar­gued that he gets a pass on the om­ni­bus be­cause he in­her­ited the broken spend­ing-bill pro­cess, and that a new day has dawned. “You’ll see a re­turn to reg­u­lar or­der, where men and wo­men in Con­gress can bring their bills to the floor, make their amend­ments in or­der, and we will run Con­gress the way the Founders in­ten­ded it to be run,” he told con­ser­vat­ive pun­dit and ra­dio host Bill Ben­nett shortly be­fore Christ­mas.

Will Cruz vs. Ru­bio Take Cen­ter Stage?

Ted Cruz and Marco Ru­bio have been fight­ing a lot over who is tough­er on im­mig­ra­tion, and that could eas­ily spill over onto the Sen­ate floor in 2016 as the primar­ies heat up.

While broad im­mig­ra­tion-policy over­haul bills are in a deep freeze, battles over refugee policy and visa screen­ings (see above) could provide plenty of chances for the two rivals to do battle. So could mes­saging votes on amend­ments. And bey­ond im­mig­ra­tion, look for both of the first-term sen­at­ors, when they’re not on the stump, to use Sen­ate votes and Sen­ate mi­cro­phones as a way to show their bona fides on spend­ing, tax policy, and oth­er top­ics.

Along the way, ex­pect more Re­pub­lic­an sen­at­ors to pick sides—es­pe­cially with pop­u­lar Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham now out of the race. Cruz is well-liked among con­ser­vat­ives na­tion­ally, but has made a lot of per­son­al en­emies in the Sen­ate. Will that hinder his abil­ity to grab en­dorse­ments?

Can Con­gress Tackle Crim­in­al-Justice Re­form?

Plenty of is­sues will suck up polit­ic­al oxy­gen, but without much con­sequence. No, Con­gress won’t suc­ceed at killing Pres­id­ent Obama’s cli­mate reg­u­la­tions or re­peal­ing Obama­care. But there’s a real bi­par­tis­an ap­pet­ite to make big changes to the na­tion’s broken crim­in­al-justice sys­tem. Goals in­clude eas­ing the harsh man­dat­ory min­im­um-sen­ten­cing guidelines for drug of­fenses, and re­form­ing the “back end” of the sys­tem to ease pris­on­ers’ trans­ition back in­to so­ci­ety and cut re­cidiv­ism.

The ef­fort has power­ful al­lies on Cap­it­ol Hill. One of the lead­ing pro­ponents is John Cornyn, the Sen­ate’s second-rank­ing Re­pub­lic­an, who has teamed up with lib­er­al Demo­crat Shel­don White­house on the is­sue. Both Mc­Con­nell and Obama have high­lighted crim­in­al-justice re­form as a pri­or­ity top­ic next year.

Is Obama’s Trade Agenda Still Alive?

The pres­id­ent says he’s hope­ful that the sweep­ing Trans-Pa­cific Part­ner­ship can clear Con­gress. But it looks to be a slow burn amid di­vi­sions on trade in both parties and the GOP pres­id­en­tial field. Sen­ate Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Mitch Mc­Con­nelltold The Wash­ing­ton Post re­cently that the bill won’t come up un­til after the 2016 elec­tions and warned that “there’s push­back all over the place.”

Obama ac­know­ledged the dif­fi­culty dur­ing his year-end press con­fer­ence. “There are both pro­ponents and op­pon­ents of this in both Demo­crat­ic and Re­pub­lic­an parties, and so it’s go­ing to be an in­ter­est­ing situ­ation where we’re go­ing to have to stitch to­geth­er the same kind of bi­par­tis­an ef­fort in or­der for us to get it done,” hesaid Dec. 18.

Does Paul Ry­an Care About Free­dom?

This one is re­lated to wheth­er Ry­an truly hon­ors his pledge to re­store “reg­u­lar or­der.” The arch­con­ser­vat­ive and rest­ive House Free­dom Caucus, which helped to push John Boehner out the door, now have a speak­er who ad­vert­ises him­self as a “move­ment con­ser­vat­ive.”

But Ry­an has already shown a prag­mat­ic streak—just look at the horse-trad­ing in the year-end budget deal. And Ry­an’s al­lies re­buffed ef­forts by the roughly 40-mem­ber Free­dom Caucus to yank the bill to the right. But it’s also true that Ry­an has been giv­en something of a pass so far, giv­en that he only took the gavel with around sev­en weeks left in the ses­sion. How much Ry­an listens to the group, and how much pa­tience they ex­hib­it if losses start pil­ing up, will be a something to watch all year.

What About Those Refugees From Syr­ia and Ir­aq?

The House eas­ily passed a quickly as­sembled bill in Novem­ber that’s de­signed to toughen se­cur­ity screen­ings of refugees from Ir­aq and Syr­ia, a meas­ure the White House op­posed, ar­guing it would im­pose im­prac­tic­al re­quire­ments that ham­string re­set­tle­ment ef­forts.

The is­sue is likely to re­sur­face in 2016 as se­cur­ity con­cerns re­main high on the polit­ic­al agenda in the wake of at­tacks in Par­is and San Bern­ardino. And law­makers on both sides of the aisle also hope to force fed­er­al of­fi­cials to bet­ter screen the so­cial me­dia activ­ity of visa ap­plic­ants—even if a news re­port that helped to sparked that ef­fort turned out to be false.

Will Con­gress Help Pu­erto Rico?

Meas­ures to tackle the is­land $70 bil­lion debt crisis didn’t make it onto the om­ni­bus deal. And there’s a thick­et of wealthy com­pet­ing in­terests with a stake in how U.S. policy does—or doesn’t—provide re­lief.

The New York Times put it this way: “On the sur­face, it is a battle over wheth­er Pu­erto Rico should be gran­ted bank­ruptcy pro­tec­tions, put­ting at risk tens of bil­lions of dol­lars from in­vestors around the coun­try. But it is also test­ing the power of an as­cend­ant class of ul­tra-rich Amer­ic­ans to steer the fate of a ter­rit­ory that is home to more than three mil­lion fel­low cit­izens.”

Ry­an says he’s com­mit­ted to ac­tion early and has tasked com­mit­tees to come up with a solu­tion by the end of March.

Does Trey Gowdy Have a Trump Card?

The House Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Benghazi has been out of the pub­lic eye since a trio of events put the GOP probe onto the de­fens­ive last fall. There was Hil­lary Clin­ton’s smooth per­form­ance at a mara­thon pub­lic hear­ing; Rep. Kev­in Mc­Carthy’s quickly in­fam­ous com­ments that put a highly par­tis­an gloss on the com­mit­tee’s work; and a fired com­mit­tee in­vest­ig­at­or go­ing pub­lic with ex­plos­ive al­leg­a­tions.

But at some point the pan­el’s work will be made pub­lic, and Chair­man Trey Gowdy has re­peatedly said the com­mit­tee has broken new ground in its long probe of the 2012 at­tacks in Benghazi that left four Amer­ic­ans dead. But what the in­vest­ig­a­tion adds to the pub­lic un­der­stand­ing of the at­tack—and then-Sec­ret­ary of State Clin­ton’s hand­ling of it—won’t be clear un­til the fi­nal re­port sur­faces.

Is There More En­ergy to Burn?

Se­cret­ive talks over the year-end spend­ing-and-tax deal sur­pris­ingly pro­duced the most far-reach­ing piece of en­ergy le­gis­la­tion signed in­to law since 2007. (For those who missed it, Re­pub­lic­ans and a few con­ser­vat­ive Demo­crats scored a big win by lift­ing the dec­ades-old crude-oil-ex­port ban, while the bill also gave Demo­crats reas­on to cheer by ex­tend­ing tax cred­its for re­new­able elec­tri­city pro­jects for five years.)

If there’s more polit­ic­al ap­pet­ite for policy-mak­ing on en­ergy, there are sev­er­al areas of po­ten­tial com­prom­ise, though please read that with all the grains of salt needed when con­sid­er­ing the mod­ern Con­gress. Top­ics in the mix in­clude ef­forts to re­form the un­wieldy na­tion­al bio­fuels man­date; bet­ter pro­tect­ing the power grid against cy­ber-at­tacks; and con­sensus meas­ures on en­ergy ef­fi­ciency that have pre­vi­ously been en­snared in fights over the Key­stone pipeline and Obama­Care.

Obama­care polit­ics—and maybe a sweet spot on men­tal health?

The House will come back swinging against Obama­care yet again. While the cham­ber already passed le­gis­la­tion re­peal­ing pro­vi­sions of Obama’s sig­na­ture health law, the Sen­ate passed a broad­er ver­sion in Decem­ber that went even fur­ther—such as re­peal­ing Medi­caid ex­pan­sion—and the House will vote on this in Janu­ary.  While it’s clear Obama won’t sign the meas­ure, the bill serve as a blue­print if the GOP wins the White House come Novem­ber. Ad­di­tion­ally, Ry­an has vowed to of­fer a re­place­ment plan to the Af­ford­able Care Act in 2016.

For now, the anti-Obama­care ef­forts are more polit­ics than real­ity, giv­en who oc­cu­pies the White House. But there is a health-policy top­ic that could po­ten­tially be ripe for co­oper­a­tion. With­in Con­gress’s health-fo­cused com­mit­tees, the idea of re­form­ing the men­tal health sys­tem has been swirl­ing as a re­sponse to re­cent mass shoot­ings. House Re­pub­lic­ans have touted Rep. Tim Murphy’s bill to im­prove men­tal health ser­vices, but Demo­crats have re­ser­va­tions. On the oth­er side of the Cap­it­ol, mul­tiple law­makers have been work­ing on pro­pos­als, in­clud­ing Sen­ate Ma­jor­ity Whip John Cornyn and a bi­par­tis­an ef­fort by Sens. Bill Cas­sidy and Chris Murphy. The Health, Edu­ca­tion, Labor, and Pen­sions Com­mit­tee aims to hold an­oth­er hear­ing on men­tal health le­gis­la­tion in late Janu­ary and may try and move broad le­gis­la­tion.

Will FOIA Re­form Really Hap­pen?

This is something of a sleep­er is­sue. But it’s im­port­ant. There’s a bi­par­tis­an push un­der­way to im­prove the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment’s com­pli­ance with Free­dom of In­form­a­tion Act re­quests.

The twin prob­lems of slow—of­ten very slow—re­sponse times and ex­cess­ive secrecy were brought in­to sharp re­lief last June at a two-day hear­ing be­fore the House Over­sight and Gov­ern­ment Re­form Com­mit­tee.

Reps. Jason Chaf­fetz and Eli­jah Cum­mings, who are the GOP chair­man and top Demo­crat on that pan­el, are work­ing to­geth­er on le­gis­la­tion to re­form the FOIA pro­cess with steps that in­clude pre­vent­ing agen­cies’ over­use of ex­emp­tions that en­able them to with­hold doc­u­ments. But the sched­ule for get­ting any­thing onto the floor in either cham­ber re­mains un­clear.

Rachel Roubein contributed to this article.