Democrats plan to force votes on popular bills and dare Trump to veto them

Third Way co-founder says voters may not have heard the entire message

Democrats’ governing plan for the Congress they won this week runs through procedure. With control of the House agenda, the party gets to decide what comes up for a vote, and it plans to force Republicans onto the record on measures with broad public support — and to dare President Trump to veto bipartisan bills that reach his desk. NPR congressional correspondent Barbara Sprunt said a veto of popular legislation would place blame for inaction “squarely on his shoulders.”

The backdrop is a resounding midterm victory: Democrats won control of both houses of Congress this week, a result attributed to voter frustration over the high cost of living and gas prices. But the majorities they carry into January are not big enough to override a veto, and Republican roadblocks await in the Senate.

Democrats say they are clear-eyed about their mandate come January. “We’re going to fight to make sure that we make this country affordable for every single American,” Hakeem Jeffries, the presumptive next speaker of the House, said in remarks aired on NPR.

Voter disappointment is a risk, Sprunt said — but “it comes down to communication.” Democrats she has spoken with say the party must not overpromise and underdeliver, and must be upfront about its own limitations.

Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, said the party’s real pitch was different from the one voters may have taken away. “What Democrats were really promising was, return us to power. We will put a check on Trump for two years and then when we get to the White House in 2028, we can actually make your lives better,” Bennett said. “And it isn’t clear to me that voters heard the entire message. They might have just heard the last part. And so there could be some real disappointment.”

The agenda lever comes with a recent proof of concept. Sprunt pointed to last year’s effort to release the Epstein files: Republican leadership tried to prevent the measure from getting to the floor, but after some maneuvering it did, and Republicans voted nearly unanimously alongside Democrats to release the files. That, she said, is the position Democrats will hold — able to force Republicans to go on the record, often on measures that have a lot of public support.

Bipartisanship is possible too, she said — it has happened before. After Democrats won control of Congress in 2007, they passed a minimum wage increase, and it was a Republican president, George Bush, who signed it into law.

Gas prices may be the hardest test. Sprunt took the question after host Mary Louise Kelly noted there “seems to be bipartisan agreement among voters” that gas prices are too high. Lawmakers, Sprunt said, have no direct path toward lowering fuel prices beyond trying to end the war in Iran.

They can try to force Trump’s hand with a war powers resolution, though presidents of both parties have historically largely ignored such resolutions, she said. An alternative is to attach a provision to must-pass legislation — government funding and appropriations bills — explicitly stopping funds from being used in the war. That step, she said, could itself be vetoed by the president.

Trump is a wild card, Sprunt said: he has said he will veto everything, and he has also said he could see himself cutting deals with Democrats. Democrats say that despite the mixed signals, it’s important to send the bills to his desk — part of what Sprunt called “a needle to thread,” because Democrats want to show they’re taking action rather than waiting around for two years.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York voiced the dare directly, in remarks aired on NPR’s Morning Edition. “If we have a bill that is bipartisan to restore health care for the people who lost their Medicaid or to improve access to affordable medicines and other things, like, I dare him to veto that. I dare him to stand in front of the American people and say, you don’t deserve access to healthcare,” Gillibrand said.

Sprunt said the veto dare is “a tool, and they plan to use it.” If the president vetoes legislation that’s popular with the public, she said, the result is “news cycle after news cycle of Trump vetoes bill to lower healthcare costs, or what have you” — coverage, she said, that “places the blame for stuff not getting done squarely on his shoulders.”