The newly elected Democratic majorities in the Senate and the House are planning to pass a flurry of bills as soon as they take the reins next January, CNBC has learned, and are preparing to tussle with an antagonistic President Donald Trump.
The legislative push aims to show a united Democratic caucus taking quick action on the issues they were elected to solve, especially oppressively high costs on everything from gas to groceries.
In their first 100 hours after being sworn in, House Democrats plan to bring to the floor bills reinstating the enhanced health insurance subsidies that expired under the GOP-held Congress, and reversing the Medicaid cuts Trump signed into law last year.
Democrats — likely led by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who is poised to become the first Black Speaker of the House in U.S. history — also plan to push forward a bill that would undo Trump's sweeping tariffs and reassert Congress' role in setting import taxes. And they will again vote on legislation to end the Iran war or force Trump to seek congressional authorization to keep it going. Some details of the Democrats' plans had been previously reported by the New York Times.
But Democrats will need to strike a balance between these legislative priorities and a robust oversight and investigatory agenda that the party is mapping out to scrutinize Trump, his family, cabinet and supporters in the business world.
"We haven't evaluated who are going to be the targets of the investigation right out of the gate. We'll have those conversations over the next couple of weeks," Jeffries told CNBC on Wednesday.
"But clearly, things aren't going right for the American people. Capitalism is broken in the way in which it is being experienced by so many working-class Americans and middle-class Americans. We've got to make sure we build an economy, a free market economy, that works for everyday Americans," Jeffries said.
Democrats on the campaign trail for months hammered home a message of affordability. And as corruption emerged as a top issue for voters in the waning months of the election, they tried to connect the Trump administration's perceived bad behavior to Americans' pocketbooks.
Already, prominent Democrats are taking a similar tack as they prepare to assume majorities in both chambers.
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement on Wednesday that the panel's top priorities "will be affordability for us, accountability for them."
Wyden said the committee would double down on its efforts to make sure billionaires pay their fair share in taxes, address the "corporate chokehold on our nation's health care system" and reassert congressional authority over trade. He also vowed to target the "special interests" that had cozied up to Trump in the past two years.
"From the banks that helped cover up Epstein's crimes, to insurance companies that are delaying and denying health care to churn a profit, to the pharmaceutical company CEOs that price gouge while enjoying Trump's hand-delivered windfalls, when I am chair, they will be forced to answer to the Senate Finance Committee for their role in hurting the American people and enabling Trump's corruption," Wyden said.
Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, has vowed to take on Trump's family, corporate corruption, Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement overreach and the handling of files related to disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Garcia issued a pointed, two-word statement as results tipped toward Democrats on Tuesday night: "Lawyer up."
And Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., a former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and member of the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees, said in a recent interview with CNBC that she believed Democrats should target figures like Elon Musk, as well as cabinet secretaries like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Attorney General Todd Blanche.
But she acknowledged the challenges that could come with pursuing a large number of potential targets all at once, especially with a potentially unwieldy and ideologically diverse Democratic caucus.
"I think what we should do is pick one or two cases that really exemplify the worst of the corruption, and that we feel we have the most evidence of wrongdoing," Jayapal said. "There are so many things — I think it's important to focus on a couple."
Meanwhile, other Democrats are angling for some kind of ethics reform package that could include prohibitions on stock trading and use of prediction markets for government officials, a federal ban on gerrymandering and limiting super PAC spending.
"My expectation is that when Democrats are the majority, we will pass a strong bill to ban stock trading in Congress, in the executive branch, and beyond, and that this will be part of a larger package of ethics reforms that we pursue," said Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., a longtime advocate for such legislation.
