Trump’s agenda: 7 things to watch

President has big policy plans for 2018, but political distractions could loom over any accomplishments

WASHINGTON – President Trump may have big policy plans for 2018, but political distractions could shadow the prospects of big legislative achievements.

Trump wants to rein in the threat from North Korea and list four top domestic priorities on his 2018 agenda: health care, welfare, immigration and infrastructure.

“I would expect to see those four areas, as well as national security, which never goes away,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said.

The Republican-controlled Congress has struggled to pass some of Trump’s major priorities since his election — and their challenges will increase in 2018. The GOP’s bare majority in the Senate will shrink when Alabama Democrat Doug Jones is sworn in.

In January, lawmakers will have to confront a thicket of unfinished business. What’s more, they will be consumed with their own 2018 midterm elections — and the increasingly con- tentious Russia investigations. “A midterm election year is a year when most legislation comes to a standstill,” said David Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Akron.

Here are seven key issues Trump and Congress will confront:

North Korea

Trump will lobby China and other countries to twist the economic screws on North Korea in the hopes of forcing that rogue nation to give up its nuclear weapons program.

Trump and his advisers hope to settle the dispute diplomatically but have not

Infrastructure

In his 2018 budget proposal, Trump sought $200 billion over 10 years to spend on infrastructure, leveraging private-sector spending to focus federal dollars on “transformative” projects. That went nowhere in 2017. The president plans to rev up that push early next year in the hope that Democrats will cooperate. Infrastructure spending is generally a bipartisan issue, and few dispute the need to improve the nation’s highway and bridges. Trump and Democrats have competing plans, and conservatives are likely to oppose massive spending.

Health care

Trump insists he has not given up on his goal of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, even though Republicans in Congress could not muster enough votes to deliver on that long-promised goal this year.

After Congress passed a massive tax bill in December that repealed Obamacare’s individual mandate, Trump declared the law was “essentially” repealed, but the law was barely touched. Overhauling Obamacare would get more complicated in 2018, when Republicans will have just 51 seats in the Senate.

Immigration

Congress has a deadline in March to decide the fate of about 700,000 immigrants brought to the USA illegally when they were children. Trump nixed an Obama-era program that shielded them from deportation, and he said Congress should figure out a legislative fix. There’s bipartisan support in Congress and among the public to grant legal status and even a path to citizenship for immigrants.

Welfare

In announcing a legislative priority after the tax bill, Trump said a welfare overhaul is “desperately needed in our country.” A budget proposal last year called for adding work requirements to some government programs and tightening eligibility requirements for lowincome tax credits.

Iran

Trump announced in October that he no longer would certify that Iran is in compliance with an Obama-era deal in which Tehran pledged to give up the means to make nuclear weapons while the United States and allies eased economic sanctions. Instead, Trump called on Congress to improve the agreement, and its fate is likely to come to a head in 2018.

The debt limit

The U.S. Treasury will run out of money to pay its bills in the spring — unless Congress and the president agree on legislation to raise the nation’s debt limit.

Conservatives have generally opposed increasing the nation’s borrowing authority, so Trump will probably have to negotiate with Democrats.