If GOP Wins Senate, What Is Its Agenda?

There is no Republican Contract with America in 2014 or plan for the first 100 days if the party can regain control of Congress.

For the most part, the GOP has been content to turn the battle for the Senate into a referendum on President Obama, while Democratic candidates have tried their best to distance themselves from the White House.

Expectations are modest for what Republicans can get done with at most a slim Senate majority that can't overcome a filibuster — much less a veto.

There's also some doubt about how high they will even aim.

Disagreement within a narrow Republican majority could easily curtail the boldness of their legislative agenda.

ObamaCare is a case in point: Despite all of the criticism leveled at the law, there's no indication that Republican leaders in Congress are gearing up to rally the caucus — and the country — behind a bill to replace it.

The process of a GOP Congress coming up with a full replacement for ObamaCare would be "messy, difficult and really, really long," James Capretta of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center told IBD.

Rather than showcasing Republicans' ability to govern heading into 2016, such an effort could be doomed by an inability to reach a consensus.

"Various Republican factions have deep disagreements about how to proceed with serious (health) reform," Capretta, a Bush White House budget official, and Romney-Ryan campaign adviser Lanhee Chen wrote in Politico.

Targeted ObamaCare Fixes

Senate Republicans could finally get a chance to vote on repeal, but once it inevitably fails, they will have to narrow their target.

Repealing ObamaCare's medical-device tax could provide a Republican Congress with an early victory, says Greg Valliere, chief political strategist at Potomac Research.

Even liberal Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has voiced her opposition to that 2.3% excise tax, Valliere notes.

ObamaCare's rule requiring employers to offer coverage to workers clocking 30 or more hours per week is another likely target with some bipartisan opposition, he says.

A potential hurdle to passage is the estimated $47.5 billion 10-year cost of the Save American Workers Act, which would lift the full-time threshold to 40 hours per week.

Valliere also anticipates a vote on approving construction of the $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast.

The lifting of export restrictions on crude oil and natural gas also could be an early focus.

Several other pro-growth measures would follow a campaign in which Republicans have made Obama's economic stewardship central to their critique.

Tax Reform Tops Agenda?

Speaker John Boehner this week highlighted tax provisions that the House has acted on but that remain "stuck in the Democratic-run Senate.

Among them: bills to let small businesses permanently deduct the upfront cost of purchasing new equipment and property, and to make permanent a 50% bonus depreciation rule.

Rather than tackle these one at a time, Valliere expects corporate tax reform to be a GOP Congress' big, ambitious undertaking.

"There is a bipartisan consensus that something is wrong with the corporate tax code," Valliere said.

A 35% statutory federal corporate tax rate looks excessive compared with our trading partners and has driven the growing number of international mergers that lead U.S. corporations to move their headquarters overseas.

But the question of whether tax reform should raise revenues may quickly separate the parties, Valliere said.

Rep. Paul Ryan, who is favored to take over the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, recently raised the idea of getting the official budget scorekeepers to "dynamically" score tax reform.

Doing so would make it easier to defend plans that are judged to boost growth but might today be scored as a tax cut.