Congress often heads home at the end of the year with a long to-do list left undone. But as Washington begins to empty out this week, Congress is set to leave a remarkably long menu of business world items on the table.
The House of Representatives is unlikely to return until 2024, while the Senate is set to return next week to search for compromise around border policy.
On issue after issue — from Big Tech to energy to cannabis and more — priorities of the business world that commanded bipartisan support at the start of the year became engulfed by Washington’s infighting over spending levels and two House speakers.
While the clashes did succeed in averting the economic damage of a debt ceiling default and government shutdown, there was little in the way of new economic priorities.
Overpromising and underdelivering from Congress is far from a new phenomenon but was on overdrive this year, especially on key business issues.
As of Friday just 22 bills in total have been signed into law so far this year, according to the website GovTrack, a dramatic drop from 2021 and 2022. There were 365 new laws enacted over that 2-year period, according to the same site.
Here is a look back at some of the initiatives left on the cutting room floor in 2023:
An array of issues that fell by the wayside in 2023
The one issue that was perhaps most in demand by the business world this year was to reform the energy permitting process in the US.
That refers to the lengthy procedure currently required to get new things like solar plants or pipelines approved and operational; these yearslong delays are felt keenly by both fossil fuel and clean energy producers as power demands mount.
Nearly 80% of CEOs surveyed by the Business Roundtable at the end of the year cited “burdensome regulations” as an important policy priority in 2024 to promote US economic growth.
The effort to speed up permitting on energy projects did achieve a limited victory this year, with some provisions in this spring’s debt ceiling deal, but leaders have maintained a larger effort is needed.
Even as the debt ceiling deal was being finalized, powerful Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and John Barrasso (R-WY) promised in May to unveil a larger bipartisan effort in the summer. But the bill hasn’t yet come together, with Manchin instead announcing plans to retire from the Senate in 2025.
Another issue still lingering is the quest to allow cannabis banking in the US. Marijuana may be legal in many states, but businesses involved in the sector often can’t access financial services because of federal laws outlawing marijuana. A potential fix called the SAFER Banking Act passed a Senate committee in 2023 but has yet to receive a full hearing.
Another stalled initiative was the effort to rein in pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) who manage prescription drug benefits under health insurance plans. That bill was introduced in the Senate in January but has languished since then.
Misses in Big Tech
Another high-profile missed opportunity had to do with the fast-moving world of technology.
The year dawned with a sense that there was momentum for bipartisan compromise on long-simmering issues around Americans’ data privacy.
“We have been waiting a long time for a privacy law,” said the Commerce Department’s Alan Davidson, one of the Biden administration’s leaders on the effort, as the year began.
But the wait continues as efforts like the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA) — a bipartisan bill introduced in 2022 and passed through the House Energy and Commerce Committee — continue to sit idle.
There was also a lot of discussion about the dangers and opportunities of artificial intelligence, as the White House issued a much anticipated executive order on AI and lawmakers convened a series of forums to explore the issue.
Nevertheless, legislation still appears to be a ways off even as prominent figures including Tesla CEO Elon Musk (TSLA) suggest that something like a “Department of AI” may eventually be needed.
Green shoots
Of course, hope springs eternal. There are a series of issues that remain the subject of active negotiations where lawmakers hope for concrete results in early 2024.
One key issue is taxes. The CEOs surveyed this month by the Business Roundtable also tagged improvements to the tax system as a top priority for 2024, and there are some glimmers of hope there.
Bipartisan talks have taken place in recent week about a possible deal that could combine the reestablishment of some version of the child tax credit with provisions around company deductions for research and development investments that expired in 2022.
Those talks are likely now on ice until the new year but with a hope that they could pick up in earnest in January.
Another issue likely to remain on the docket in 2024 involves two ongoing cryptocurrency efforts — one bill focused on crypto’s market structure and another focused on stablecoins.
Retiring House Financial Services Chair Patrick McHenry has signaled he wants to accomplish something on crypto as a legacy item of sorts before he leaves in 2025 but it remains to be seen if Congress has the bandwidth.
The same goes for Capitol Hill’s ongoing response to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and other regional banks in 2023.
Lawmakers have coalesced behind a bipartisan effort that would “claw back” compensation from bank executives who oversee a failure. The bill notched a significant win in July when it advanced out of the Senate’s Banking Committee by an overwhelming margin of 21 to 2 but has been waiting for wider Congressional action since then.
The issue is whether there will be space for these policy actions in 2024 or whether both an election year and another round of government shutdown fights could again blot out the space for action on policy fronts.
“The sooner that Congress can figure out what the tax code of the future is going to look like, the better,” said Erica York of Tax Foundation.
But she acknowledged that the reality of an election year and a key tax deadlines at the end of 2025 may make the window for action there an exceedingly narrow one.
Ben Werschkul is Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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