America's Talking - 2025 Year in review: Congress

Episode Date: December 28, 2025

The Center Square staff discuss Congress' accomplishments and challenges in the past year. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulib, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. It's been a tumultuous year in Congress. After the November 2024 election, Republicans hold slight majorities in the U.S. House and Senate, but not the 60 votes needed to prevent a filibuster in the Senate. Joining me to discuss this is the Center Square's congressional reporter, Teres Boudreau. Tres, you covered Congress all year, what were some of the highlights, or perhaps more accurately, low-lights? Well, it is safe to say that it's been a wild year for Congress. Starting even January, there were President Donald Trump's cabinet nominees. Quite a few of them were more on the controversial side. So Department of Defense head, Pete Heggseth, he, Vice President J.D. Vance actually had to come and cast the tiebreaker vote for him. And then Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who's the head of the HHS now, he also received.

some pushback. So already in the beginning, things were off to an interesting start. But then in March, there was the risk of a shutdown because the government had been running off of continuing resolutions. So just kind of putting government funding on cruise control. How Speaker Mice Johnson is able to get people to vote for another continuing resolution. And then that's where the real work started was after they punted the government. funding deadline, the one big beautiful bill, so-called one big beautiful bill, the budget reconciliation bill that included a bunch of Trump's priorities, that became the issue, you know, basically from spring to July 4th when it was signed into law. Because it was a bill, I mean,

it was massive, cost like $3 trillion of the next 10 years. But because Republicans used the budget reconciliation process, they were able to bypass the filibuster in that circumstance. And if they had not, if they had just tried to put this through in some, in a normal, through the regular process, a normal bill, it would not have worked because Democrats were very much against it. So that included the permanent tax cuts, you know, from the 2017 tax cuts and jobs act. That included reforms to a snap, the supplemental nutrition assistance program. So, you know, it increased strength and work requirements, made sure that people who are non-citizens who are here legally are not getting benefits. And then similar reforms were need to Medicaid as well. And there are just a lot. There are a lot of things in it. I mean, there was energy permitting expansion, you know, even more tax credits that were put in place. So they're supposed to be temporary, such as the tax deductions for tips and tax deductions for overtime. Seniors now get a up to $6,000 deduction, qualifying seniors.

So it was really a massive, massive bill that implemented a whole bunch of Trump's campaign promises and priorities. And so that passed on July 4th against all odds, a lot of people thought. So that's kind of been the big focal point of this year so far for Congress. But there was a lot of stuff that happened after that as well. Like the rescissions bill, for instance, you know, after implementing trillions worth of tax cuts, Republicans decided that they wanted to rescind, basically, you know, claw back $9 billion in government spending on different non-life-saving foreign aid programs and some public broadcasting stations, which they said are woke and therefore shouldn't be funded by taxpayer dollars. So that was yet another, you know, added more fuel to the fire for Democrats, congressional Democrats, just being really frustrated, really angry. And that kind of all led to let up to the government shutdown that we recently had. And it was, again, like I said, wild dear for Congress, because this was the longest government shutdown, partial or full. This was a full one that we've had in American history, 43 days. You know, I think most people remember it. It only ended in, in November. But that kind of was a, seems like a culmination of Democrats' frustration that

Republicans were essentially getting so many things done that they didn't agree with. And so, you know, Democrats, they say that, oh, they shut the government down over health care. There's the enhanced Obamacare premium tax credits that will expire. And Democrats refuse to continue government funding, they said you have to make sure that these enhanced credits don't expire. People are going to see their premiums go up. And they shut the government down over that because Republicans refused. And eventually it reopened. Congress was able to pass another continuing resolution. But they also knocked out three of the 12 appropriations bills that the regular order providing full your funding the right way. There's nine of those left.

But so that was another, that was another huge thing. I mean, during the shutdown, there were air traffic controllers who and other essential workers who had to work without pay. There missed two paychecks. And so we really saw a lot of flight delays and reductions. That was one of the really big things that happened. You also saw a lot of concern over SNAP funding running out or people seeing reduced benefits. So luckily, lawmakers don't seem to have another, you know, appetite for another shutdown come January. That's the deadline for the, for them to pass the remaining nine appropriations bills to fund the government. And it doesn't seem like we'll be seeing any of the rebellion or grandstanding again this time. But it does raise questions whether or not there will be a fifth continuing resolution because lawmakers are left for Christmas and they don't really have a lot of time when they come back. And they're not back until after the first of the year, correct, and that's when they've got essentially the month of January to get something done or we'll see another government shutdown. Yeah, they come back January 6th, so that's less than

a month. And, you know, like I said, there were so many things that went on last year that the appropriations process, which is supposed to be done annually, kind of fell by the wayside. I mean, even right now, we're seeing this whole thing with Epstein files. Lawmakers, beginning in August, spent a lot of time drafting petitions and getting signatures for that to force the government to release all the information it has on the now deceased convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. He was a very well-connected person. And so for years, there's been a lot of people who, after he died in prison in 2019, were saying there must be more to this story, essentially. And so just yesterday in this past week, the government has been releasing troves of files, not just. yesterday, I'm sorry, on Friday last week, has been releasing troves of files. But a lot of them are just redacted. They're redacted or the things that we've already seen before. So even as lawmakers

are recessing for the year, for the holiday break, there's still the madness isn't ending, you know, if you want to take a more pessimistic view of it. So yeah, hopefully we'll not have another government shut down. Hopefully Congress will be responsible and be able to do. turn out the remaining nine appropriations bills instead of punting the funding deadline yet again. But we'll have to see, you know, I think most people are hoping that next year isn't quite as wild of a ride, but, you know, who knows? Thank you for joining us today, Terez. Hopefully you get some time off during the holidays because come January 5th, you're going to be right back at it at the budget game. And listeners can keep up with all of Terez's reporting.

and more at thecentersquare.com.