It’s happened over and over again since 2011. A deadline quickly approaches. Congressional Republicans and President Barack Obama are locked in a stare-down for weeks. Then, just before calamity hits, a deal is struck — usually.

But as Obama comes to Capitol Hill for his final State of the Union address on Tuesday, the political dynamics have shifted dramatically. Both sides have lost their most powerful tool to get stuff done — leverage.


The government is funded until a month before the election. The debt ceiling won’t be hit until 2017. And that means the spurt of bipartisan deal making that Congress and White House managed in 2015 will probably come to a screeching halt until Obama’s successor takes office.

“There isn’t the sense of urgency on a lot of these issues that there was last year,” said John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 3 Senate Republican. “Needing the president as a partner to do things? A lot of the stuff we needed to get done, got done last year.”

Indeed, there are precious few pressure points for the GOP majorities in the House and Senate to extract much at all out of the White House – and vice versa. There will be likely be no hostage-taking in the face of a government shutdown and, in turn, few viable places for Republicans to try to force fights over foreign policy, the environment or the president’s unilateral actions on guns.

Republicans say whatever the president is doing now is temporary because he will be out the door in January 2017. It’s a full reversal from a year ago, when former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) had set up a brutal confrontation between Obama and the House GOP majority over his immigration executive actions and funding the Department of Homeland Security.





That’s just fine for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whose mantra of protecting his majority is built on stability and governance. But it doesn’t sit well with hard-liners itching for more confrontation with the White House as Obama makes his way toward the exit.

The House and Senate GOP majorities have lost their “leverage in the power of the purse … on everything through September,” said Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), a vocal member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. “And so that is a leadership strategic-planning failure.”

The legislative landscape, however, fits House Speaker Paul Ryan’s plans to lay out a detailed Republican agenda without the threat of disaster.

“It cuts both ways,” said Rep. Mick Mulvaney, a South Carolina Republican who is a leading voice in the HFC. “There’s not something staring us in the face that could blow up in our face, but, at the same time, there’s not a must-pass piece of legislation.”

He said Republicans could potentially exert leverage through the budget process and said welfare reform is also possible. A deal on criminal justice reform is another major effort that could come together this year.

But after years of frustration since the GOP’s 2011 House takeover and — with a few exceptions — paralysis in his dealings with Congress, the president has decided to go it alone to advance his agenda. Of course, that means nips and tucks instead of full-fledged reforms. Obama is planning to ditch the traditional policy laundry list in favor of a higher-altitude speech, the White House has signaled in the lead-up to the State of the Union.

Obama has relied on unilateral actions, and the next time he might need Congress is during a lame-duck session next winter. Aside from the executive action on guns, he’s bypassing confirmation battles by signaling to Republican leaders that he’s perfectly fine avoiding a vote on Arne Duncan’s successor as education secretary.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, recounted buttonholing the president over acting Secretary John King’s status at an education-reform bill signing in December.

“‘I strongly recommend that you appoint an education secretary and nominate one. And if you do we’ll have an immediate hearing in January, and I will work to get the secretary confirmed by the end of the month,’” Alexander said he told the president then. “I still hope that’s what he does.”

The president’s go-it-alone approach means Obama is sure to encounter stiff resistance to almost anything that does require attention from Capitol Hill. Republicans have called his executive initiatives an abuse of power and an end run around Congress, and they’re searching for ways to water down his latest move on guns.

One option is to refuse to allocate money to implement it during the appropriations process, since the plan relies on funding to conduct background checks and provide mental health services.

The House GOP chairman overseeing the Department of Justice’s budget said he will extract pain out of the White House as it moves to implement the president’s guns proposal.

“You’re missing the most powerful tool appropriators have: month-to-month, week-to-week oversight over spending of these agencies,” Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas), chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, said in an interview. “I don’t need an amendment, I don’t need another bill, I don’t need the permission of leadership. … I’m going to box them in, I’m going to build an electric fence around the Department of Justice.”

Republicans could also take a shot in court and hope they draw a conservative judge.

But Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a close Obama ally, said the president has “much more latitude” to act unilaterally than the GOP would like to admit. Obama intentionally rolled out the plan before the State of the Union to make sure that Americans realize the focus the White House is putting on the issue.

“The president told us he wanted to move this before the State of the Union to highlight it,” Durbin said. “The timing of it was planned so it could have separate impact.”

The strategy worked, as Republicans are now searching for a rebuttal to the idea that they are powerless to slow down Obama’s actions. But in contrast to a year ago, when Boehner vowed to fight Obama’s immigration actions “tooth and nail,” leaders now say voters just need to wait a year to undo the president’s work. That’s assuming, of course, a Republican wins the presidency.

“His power and authority will be increasingly marginalized, because anything he does on the executive or regulatory side will last less than a year,” Thune said.