American national politics has cycled back to unified Republican government. What can we expect? And how might members of Congress interested in governing best dedicate their time and effort in these noisy and contentious times?

At the Center for Effective Lawmaking, we have long studied what policy proposals legislators put forward, which of their proposals find their way into law, and which representatives and senators are the most effective lawmakers. Despite twists and turns over time, consistent patterns emerge in Congress after Congress. As such, we anticipate that legislative policymaking over the next few years will in many ways mirror that of the first Trump administration.1 Lawmakers who want to make the most of the coming years will be well served by learning five key lessons from their predecessors.

1. Both Republican and Democratic ideas will become law

As much as the early days of the Trump administration are focused on electoral mandates, nomination battles, Republican unity (or disunity), and executive orders, lawmaking in Congress ultimately requires coalitions and compromise. After the early sound and fury, when actual policymaking is required, ideas from both Democrats and Republicans will be weighed and incorporated into law.

We saw just this pattern emerge during the first Trump administration, which also featured Republican control of the House and Senate. The president and his congressional allies were successful in advancing significant tax cuts. But other policy items became unwieldy, such as the attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare, which ultimately failed when Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) cast the deciding vote against repeal. And in the face of filibusters, Democrats were included in the negotiations and coalitions on numerous policy fronts.

We score every member of Congress for their effectiveness in advancing a meaningful policy agenda through the legislative process and into law. On our metrics, despite being in the minority in the Senate throughout President Trump’s entire first term, Democrats averaged the highest Legislative Effectiveness Scores of any minority party over the past 50 years, with many outscoring their Republican colleagues.

2. Members of each party can take the lead on their priority issues

Because our Legislative Effectiveness Scores account for the relative substantive significance of each bill, we can definitively say that Democratic lawmaking effectiveness during the Trump administration went beyond commemorative legislation like renaming post offices. Democrats decisively shaped policy in part because they showed up. Despite being in the minority party, Democrats in 2017-2020 put forward more bills on issues like health care than did Republicans. And when the pandemic struck, Democratic health proposals surged further, with the average Democratic senator introducing more than 8.5 bills, compared to five bills each from Republicans. Democrats also dramatically increased their focus on government operations, putting forward proposals to erect what they saw as guardrails to preserve norms of good governance against an encroaching executive branch.

In interviewing senators and Senate staff members, we repeatedly heard narratives about how exactly these bills passed the Senate, often by unanimous consent or by being incorporated into larger must-pass legislation. Staff members speculated that Republicans were more focused on larger reforms and on judicial nominees, leaving the field open to good policy ideas advanced by Democrats, with the implicit support of their Republican colleagues. Such successes extended to issue areas like labor, employment, and agriculture – even to the extent that in the 116th Congress Senator Gary Peters (D-MI), who specialized in such policy areas, became the first ever minority-party lawmaker to achieve the overall highest Legislative Effectiveness Score in the Senate, surpassing all of his Republican colleagues.2

Such lawmaking successes should not be interpreted as suggesting that Republicans have been disengaging with the lawmaking process, however. Indeed, Republicans continued to take the lead in many policy areas of greatest interest to their constituents. And, even during the unified Democratic government early in the Biden administration, Republicans thrived in advancing their bills. For example, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) found particular success with his legislation focused on the armed forces and matters of national security, while Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) advanced into law several of his international affairs bills and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) scored victories with various crime and law enforcement proposals.3

3. The prioritization of lawmaking by Thune and Johnson offers new opportunities

Part of the enhanced lawmaking success we found among Democratic senators during the first Trump administration was due to the president being less-than-fully engaged with congressional lawmaking. For the most part, President Trump did not present a consistent set of legislative priorities for the Republican-led Senate to advance. Moreover, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was strongly focused on advancing judicial nominees, seemingly at the expense of lawmaking. To an extent, the inclination of party leaders to focus and succeed at lawmaking (or not) can be gleaned by their priorities prior to ascending to leadership.

Whereas Sen. McConnell had not been especially active and effective as an individual lawmaker early in his career, the track record looks more impressive for new Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD). Relative to similarly positioned lawmakers, during his time in both the House and the Senate, Thune has been in the “Above Expectations” category of the Center for Effective Lawmaking for about half of his terms, and never in the “Below Expectations” category.4 Similarly, in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had been significantly more committed to, and effective at, lawmaking prior to becoming Speaker than had others who sought the post.

As such, despite the challenges of governing with small majorities, both the House and Senate leadership are interested in and capable of conducting the hard work of lawmaking in the months and years ahead.

4. Congressional lawmaking is increasingly behind-the-scenes and via omnibus legislation

By tracing the text of every introduced bill and comparing it to the text of every law, we have been able to chart the degree to which lawmaking has moved from stand-alone laws to larger omnibus packages.5 During the first Trump administration, more bills became law embedded in larger packages than in stand-alone form.

What this means for lawmakers and congressional staff is that there are multiple paths to making an impact on public policy. While the largest legislative vehicles tend to be omnibus appropriations acts and the National Defense Authorization Act, such legislative packages bring along bills on issues that extend beyond defense and budget matters. Indeed, on trade, immigration, and housing – all priorities for the 119 th Congress – more bills over the past 30 years have been enacted in these areas by being embedded elsewhere than in stand-alone formats.

Members of both the House and the Senate have taken notice of this alternative path to lawmaking. They are starting to introduce more bills than ever upon recognizing that, although such proposals may not find their way into law on their own, ideas that get traction can move forward in larger packages. And, consistent with our earlier lessons, these embedded proposals have been coming from both majority- and minority-party members, building a sufficiently large coalition for passage.

5. Bipartisan lawmakers are more effective

Apart from an occasional budget reconciliation bill, such behind-the-scenes lawmaking rarely involves bundling heavily partisan ideas into a larger package. If embedded proposals become too problematic or are seen as too partisan, the whole package may lose its viability. Rather, individual bills that have bipartisan support, as seen in their co-sponsorship lists, have a better chance of being included in these larger packages.

Such is true for stand-alone measures also. Tracing the extent to which lawmakers include co-sponsors from the other party, we’ve found that across the past several decades bipartisan lawmakers are much more effective than partisan lawmakers.6 Despite greater partisanship and polarization recently, about a quarter of co-sponsors on the average House bill

The most effective lawmakers, however, tend to draw more than 40 percent of their co- sponsors from the opposing party. Some have even adopted a “Noah’s Ark” strategy of trying to keep Democrats and Republicans in about equal proportions when seeking co-sponsors. Doing so helps guarantee that the policy solutions are equally attractive across party lines. Interestingly, the boost in lawmaking effectiveness associated with such bipartisan co-sponsorship strategies appears to be about equal whether the sponsor is in the majority party or the minority party, and whether in the House or the Senate.

In sum, as politicians in Washington pivot from a season of elections to one of governing, numerous public policy problems can be addressed through effective lawmaking. Looking to the first Trump administration offers many lessons for lawmakers – Democrats and Republicans alike – as they get to work.

Craig Volden is a Professor of Public Policy and Politics at the University of Virginia, with appointments in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the Department of Politics. Alan Wiseman is the Associate Provost of Strategic Projects at Vanderbilt University, where he is the Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Political Economy and a Professor of Political Science and Law. They are the co-founders and co-directors of the Center for Effective Lawmaking.

  1. Further insights on effective lawmaking in the Senate during the first Trump administration can be found in: Craig Volden and Alan E. Wiseman, “The Surprisingly Effective Lawmaking of Minority-Party Democrats in the Senate during the Trump Era,” in Disruption? The Senate during the Trump Era, ed. Sean M. Theriault (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024), pp. 114-132. ↩︎
  2. For details, see: https://thelawmakers.org/legislative-effectiveness-scores/highlights-from-the-new-116th-congress-legislative-effectiveness-scores ↩︎
  3. For details, see: https://thelawmakers.org/legislative-effectiveness-scores/highlights-from-the-new-117th-congress-legislative-effectiveness-scores ↩︎
  4. For details, see: https://thelawmakers.org/find-representatives ↩︎
  5. For details, see: https://thelawmakers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/klsvw_cel_2024_final_CEL-brand.pdf ↩︎
  6. For details, see: Harbridge-Yong, Laurel, Craig Volden, and Alan E. Wiseman. 2023. “The Bipartisan Path to Effective Lawmaking.” Journal of Politics 85(3): 1048-1063. ↩︎